‘Power To The People’ is John’s fourth solo single, written after conversations with Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn, activists and writers for the communist magazine Red Mole.

It was released on 12th March 1971 with the B-Side ‘Open Your Box’ by Yoko Ono.

“Well, that came from a talk with Tariq Ali, who was sort of a “revolutionary” in England and edited a magazine called Red Mole. So I felt I ought to write a song about what he was saying. That’s why it didn’t really come off. I was not thinking clearly about it. It was written in the state of being asleep and wanting to be loved by Tariq Ali and his ilk, you see. I have to admit to that so I won’t call it hypocrisy. I wouldn’t write that today.”

– John Lennon, 1980

John: I like slogans. I like advertising. I love the telly. I spent an afternoon talking to Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn and we got to the point where my part in the revolution – ‘what is the artist’s part in a revolution?’, etc. – was songwriting. And that night I just came out with ‘Power To The People’.

To me it’s like a newspaper song, when you write about something instant that’s going on right now. I’m like a reporter and I just report on my thoughts or my feelings or the news that’s going on. I make singles like broadsheets.

It was another quickie, done at Ascot. It sounds like [Gary] U.S. Bonds with Fats Domino thrown in; straight rock. A bit scrappy, but it’s not bad. I just wanted to say it. As Yoko says, ‘The message is the medium.’ Especially with singles; they’re like messages. ‘All You Need Is Love’, ‘Happy Xmas’, – they’re just chants that anyone can sing along with. ‘Give Peace A Chance’ was sung at all the [Vietnam] moratoriums, and still is, and that’s what I wanted to write – songs that people would sing in the street.

It was to have a particularly big hit with, the bigger the better, but I wrote it for all those big meetings for people to sing because we couldn’t be there. [Pete] Seeger said at one of those big meetings, ‘Well, we haven’t got a leader but we’ve got a song.’ ‘Power To The People’ was the same thing – there’s less people singing that song but there’s still quite a lot of them.

We can destroy the capitalist system by making the workers aware of the really unhappy position they are in. Breaking the dream they are surrounded by. They think they are in a wonderful, free-speaking country. They’ve got cars and tellies, and they don’t want to think there’s anything more to life. They are prepared to let the bosses run them, to see their children fucked up in school. They’re dreaming someone else’s dream – it’s not even their own. They should realize the black and the Irish people are being harassed and repressed and that they will be next. As soon as they start being aware of all that, we can really begin to do something.

Yoko: If we are the aware ones, we should extend a hand to the squares and say, ‘listen, we’re with you’. Sticking your tongue out is very dangerous. It’s a childish game and it will lead to violence. The hippies should be aware, if they don’t want to talk to the Establishment, how do they expect the Establishment to talk to them?

Let’s not be snobs. I think I was a snob, in a sense, as an artist. Now I’m coming to the point where I think that I should do something not in terms of far-out-ness, but easy to understand – just to communicate the idea of peace. And that’s not compromise.

I think we are going to see a feminine age. And I don’t mean that the females will all be leaders. I mean that even men will have feminine tendencies, in the sense that instead of being more militant, they will become more mother-like, liking people for what they are.

We mustn’t be traditional in the way we communicate with people, especially with the Establishment. We should surprise people by saying new things in an entirely new way. Communication of that sort can have a fantastic power, so long as you don’t do only what they expect you to do.

John: And the women are very important too; we can’t have a revolution that doesn’t involve and liberate women. It’s so subtle the way you’re taught male superiority. It took me quite a long time to realize that my maleness was cutting off certain areas for Yoko.

She’s a red-hot liberationist and was quick to show me where I was going wrong, even though it seemed to me that I was just acting naturally. That’s why I’m always interested to know how people who claim to be radical treat women. How can you talk about ‘Power To The People’ unless you realize ‘The People’ is both sexes?

They knock me for saying ‘Power To The People’, and say that no one section should have power. Crap. The people aren’t a section.

‘The People’ means everyone. I think that everybody should own everything equally and that the people should own part of the factories and they should have some say in who is the boss and who does what.

It’s the same as students should be able to select teachers. It might be like communism, but I don’t really know what real communism is. There is no real communist state in the world. You must realize that. Russia isn’t. It’s a fascist state. The socialism I talk about is a British socialism, not where some daft Russian might do it, or the Chinese might do it. That might suit them. Us, we’d have a ‘nice’ socialism here. A British socialism.

Society is under the delusion that art is something you have extra, like crème de menthe or something. But societies don’t exist with no artist. Art is a functional part of society. We’re not some kind of decadent strip show that appears on the side. We’re as important as prime ministers and policemen.

So ‘Power To The People’ isn’t expected to make a revolution. It’s for people to sing like the Christians sing hymns.

Use the media. Don’t be a snob. The media is the thing. If you’re a writer, write. Infiltrate the Daily Express, don’t not work for it on principle.

It’s like we’re self-styled doctors of philosophy, but we’re self-styled politicians and naturally got a degree.

What we’re trying to do is gather the forces outside which are far superior to the forces inside and make them work at full potential to get rid of the cancer. Because the politicians rely on us out here they need us to propagate them, to keep them going and people forget that, that the politicians need them more than we need the politicians. And we’ve got to get them aware of that without frightening them with anarchy, and the word anarchy and all that, about not needing government and all that bit.

There are two choices: doing something or not doing something, and that’s the choice facing all of us. We decided to do something and when you don’t do something you’re not doing anything and you’re aware of it. And once you do something you set up a kind of a thing in your mind or yourself and there’s no turning back.

I have to take it slower and I have to deal with people, even people who are thinking the same way as us. We have to agree on steps to be taken. Make a deal, whether it’s on paper or a shake of the hand, and then move forward together, at a bit slower pace. See, I’m very impetuous, so I like it now, everything tomorrow, and I’m beginning to find out that it doesn’t work. It’s just impossible to do it like that so I’ve got to slow down.

People say ‘You’re staying in bed, why don’t you go down and shake hands with the people?’ The answer is that communication isn’t just shaking hands. And how much communication do they really want? These are intelligent people but do they really want to see pictures of us like Nixon or the Queen shaking hands with a few people in the street and nothing happening at all except where I sign a few autographs? There are intelligent people asking us, ‘Why in this luxury hotel and not in the street?’ And the answer is it’s impractical and less is done shaking hands on the street corner.

They’ve got to look at it from our point of view, not from theirs. They always see it from theirs. It must be hard to imagine what it is to be Nixon or Queen Elizabeth, which is the position we’re in. You can’t go on the street and shake hands and protest at Hyde Park unless you’ve got a bullet-proof outfit to protect you. This is public to me. This is communication, talking to you and we’re either doing this all the time or we stay completely alone in our room.

Maybe we get a full day a week alone where we revitalise and come out the next week. We don’t even go to dinner with people or anything like that. We stay together, we talk and think about things and go over everything we’ve done and what we’re going to do, go round the grounds like the Squire Of Trelawne and enjoy the trees.

Who told us we were artists? All kids draw and write poetry and some of us last until we’re about eighteen, but most drop off about twelve and that’s when some guy comes up and says, ‘You’re no good.’

That’s all we ever get told all our lives, ‘You haven’t got the ability, you’re a cobbler.’ It’s like in one of my books, ‘You’re a broomstrivest’. The father keeps saying to him, ‘You’re this and get it right what you are’. And that’s all we’re told all our lives – what our limits are.

What we’ve got to make people aware of is not their limits, but what these people’s limits are, what they think the limits are. People are limited into thinking they couldn’t run their own affairs and what we’re trying to say is that you are unlimited and you’re all geniuses and you were all artists and musicians until some bastard told you about twelve, ‘You must do woodwork, and you do metalwork and we haven’t got room in lithography for you, so you’ve got to be a letterer’. That was going on all the time. It happened to all of us. But if somebody had told me all my life, ‘Yeah, you’re a great artist, you’re a great artist’, I would have been a more secure person all the time.