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TL;DR:

  • Paul McCartney said one of The Beatles’ songs was the predecessor of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
  • Paul also compared the song to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
  • The tune in question was the B-side to one of the band’s biggest singles.
John Lennon wearing blue during the "Imagine" era
The Beatles’ John Lennon | Ron Howard/Redferns

John Lennon‘s “Imagine” is one of the former Beatle’s most famous songs. Paul McCartney said one of The Beatles’ songs was the predecessor to “Imagine.” In addition, he compared the track to the work of a famous children’s author.

Paul McCartney said an idea from a Beatles song got repurposed for John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’

The Beatles’ song “I’ll Get You” features the line “Imagine I’m in love with you.” In his 2021 book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul discussed the tune. “The word and idea of ‘imagine’ is something John would repurpose in his own song ‘Imagine,'” he said. 

“It’s also a bit like the opening of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds‘, with its exhortation to ‘Picture yourself,'” Paul added. “So it’s a filmic thing, as well as a literary thing.” 

Paul McCartney compared ‘I’ll Get You’ to the books of a famous children’s author

Paul compared “I’ll Get You” to the work of an author who focused on imagination. “When I say ‘literary,’ I think of the imagined world of Lewis Carroll that John and I both loved so much,” Paul wrote. “Carroll was a big influence on both of us; that can really be seen in John’s books In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works.”

Furthermore, John discussed the song’s chord sequence. “We’d learnt the sort of C, A minor, F, G, and D sequences — the straight, ‘triady’ things,” he said. “But then you start to juxtapose them a bit, and the opening of ‘I’ll Get You’ is an example of what happens. Otherwise, these are fairly standard chords, until you get to ‘It’s not like me to pretend.’ That’s a weird chord under ‘pretend.'”

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How ‘I’ll Get You’ and John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ performed on the pop charts in the United States

“I’ll Get You” was never a single. It was the B-side to The Beatles’ “She Loves You.” The latter song topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks, staying on the chart for 15 weeks in total.

“Imagine” was popular as well. It reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, staying on the chart for a total of nine weeks. The tune appeared on the album Imagine. The album hit the top of the Billboard 200 for a week, remaining on the chart for 47 weeks altogether. Aside from Double Fantasy, Imagine was John’s most commercially successful post-Beatles album in the U.S.

“I’ll Get You” wasn’t a big hit but Paul felt it was the predecessor to a much more famous song.

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