Geez, people are working overtime to hate this song.

Lennon was not in favor of a gray, boring world without love, beauty or relationships.

He wanted a world at peace where you didn’t have to worry about you or yours having to kill or be killed in war, and instead could devote yourself happily to love, beauty and people.

I sure would like to live in such a world. Wouldn’t you?

As to religion, I would say Lennon opposed religious beliefs that led people to war, as has happened, and to abstract notions which can distract from the beauty of the here and now.

He was also writing in the early 70s when it looked like recent history was nothing but war — WW I, Spanish Civil War, WW II, Cold War, Korean War, Vietnam War and the many smaller violent conflicts. Stopping war seemed particularly imperative because a nuclear WW III looked horrifyingly possible.

Yes, Lennon had been radicalized with much leftist BS as many of us, including myself, had.

However, I consider reducing Lennon and his song to cheerleading for hell to be as dishonest as the leftist fantasies of capitalism as the endless subjugation of the masses by fat cats in top hats.

Very nice. Much closer to the way I would sing it. The three-part harmony is very much in the Appalachian 18th-19th century tradition.
Not surprisingly, you can hear the same “open” intervals in old-style Welsh Christmas Music, called “Carolau Plygain” (pr. carol-lye pluh-gine).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zwClDQ34hk
The guy singing bass is Robin Huw Bowen, whose “day job” is as the leading practitioner of the Welsh Triple Harp. Look up some of his videos for a real treat.

“Pernell Roberts, post-Bonanza, did some folk stuff including Fair etc.”

News to me – I had no idea he had such a beautiful voice!
Adam was always my favorite of the Cartwright sons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRJ0cS975l8
Bonus on this video are the lyrics; his version is much longer and somewhat different from the one I know, but that’s typical of folk songs.
“In our village, we sing it THIS way.”

There are a LOT of “r’s” in that first verse!
The vocal criticism is generally spot on; the “imaginary r” was hammered into us by all my choir teachers. However, soloists and traditional singers are allowed some leeway, for idiosyncratic aesthetics, and Roberts is not hitting them excessively IMO, but just enough for his performance.

C. S. Lewis did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Divorce

Pernell Roberts, post-Bonanza, did some folk stuff including Fair etc. Good voice but, having talked to somebody with experience, he pronounces the terminal “arr” or “err”, instead of allowing one to hear it. I recall a guy doing “beautiful dreameuh”. You heard, in your head, the “err” but not the harsh vocalization.

Picky picky.

Thanks for the link.

YouTube favored this recent posting by Saelkie Folk, which is very traditional in presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e18CBYKu_zI
“Lovely folk song with Irish roots which found its way to the Appalachian tradition.”

I usually sing it much slower, with more of a plainsong-ballad interpretation (if I may coin such a descriptor).

Bob Dylan recorded it in his “The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete” (the internet knows everything); Buffy St-Marie on “Many A Mile” but neither site linked to a YouTube audio.

Discographies:
https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/

https://www.discogs.com/release/2214540-Buffy-Sainte-Marie-Many-A-Mile

Nope. It sounds — if you listen to it — as though it were written by Satan, selling the virtues of Hell. Because those lyrics do describe Hell, no question:

Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Nothing to kill or die for.

No family, no friends.

No art, no beauty, no possessions, no anything.

Just a dull, grey, empty void with nothing but endless boredom and ennui to want death, but it never comes to you….

Yeah, just Imagine that. :-/

Since mutual disarmament is guaranteed to work, why should’t the other guy go first?

Somehow, I have to be the lamb. I have to be the defenseless one. Said all the Christians I ever heard making the case.

So while imagining all this stuff is a fun thing except for terminal boredom, its real world application concerns most folks. So, if the US disarms, the USSR will be so moved by the act, and so relieved by the disappearing threat, they’ll disarm and leave everybody alone. Damn’ near gospel thirty plus years ago. One of those things you can’t believe anybody actually believes.

I’m not sure there’s a relationship, or a similarity, even. But answering NIMBY with HAYBY (How About Your Back Yard) frequently ends up with changing the subject. As in, “I get to be the lion, right?”

The Pilgrims may have wanted something like, but they had to get through King Phillip’s War–killed ten percent of their men of military age–to get to the promised land. Oh, wait…..