Before Bono... Lennon

Sometimes it's hard to remember that it's been almost 25 years, a whole generation, since we saw John Lennon alive. So much has happened since then, that it becomes easy to say the Beatles were overrated when you take them out of the context of their times. But I don't think there would be a Bono without a Lennon (or a Dylan)...

A solitary white piano at a thought-provoking John Lennon retrospective in Paris invites visitors to play the song that everyone knows but, in these times of terrorism and war, few seem to hear ... "Imagine all the people living life in peace."

That Lennon, 25 years after his murder, still comes across as a hopeless dreamer is itself a sad indictment of how little progress the world has made toward achieving the lofty and, yes, perhaps utopian, goal he expressed in song.