‘You can feel the disease…’

The organisers of this year's national celebrations have chosen 'Come Together' by the Beatles as the official theme song for the 50th anniversary of Malta's Independence. So if there are any minor tremors reported in the New York area... well, it can't be John Lennon turning in his grave, because he was actually cremated.

And perhaps that's just as well, for the Walrus alone knows what John would have made of the fate of his musical output, some 34 years after his death. And not even the Walrus can possibly know what was going through the organising committee's mind, when it opted for a cynical portrayal of the dying 1960s hippie generation to celebrate Malta's Golden Independence anniversary.

They don't see it that way, of course. The official justification is that the song reflects the theme of 'unity', which they claim underpins the celebration as a whole. But this only draws our attention to the fact that such an absurdly inappropriate theme was even chosen in the first place. Malta has been endemically divided for all 50 of its years as an independent state, and there are no indications that this will change any time soon. So who do we think we're kidding by celebrating 'unity' on a day which is supposed to reflect our intrinsic national characteristics?

Pressed to think of a song which actually says something about us as a nation, I would have gone for something like Pink Floyd's 'Us and Them' (or maybe 'War Pigs' by Black Sabbath). But seeing as how the festivity organisers have distorted the meaning of Independence Day anyway, by infusing it with the usual sugar-sweet mythology of a 'nation striving for unity' - when individual members of the same committee were openly sowing division until just 11 months ago - it is perhaps fitting that the chosen song would likewise be hopelessly inappropriate.

This may come as a shock to some people out there (but not to any diehard Beatles or John Lennon fan) but 'Come Together' is not about unity. The title alone may deceive you into thinking that. It may even remind you of intense gangbang scenes in a porno movie, but let's not go there right now. But 'Come Together' is a song, not a political slogan. It comes complete with its own inbuilt context, comprising both musical motif and lyrics. And because it's the Beatles, it also drags with it a whole history of critical interpretation and pop culture references. None of this can be lightly ignored, especially seeing as it will be the song - and not just the title - to get played on the radio and at official events.

Did the organisers actually listen to it, I wonder? And if so, which part of the lyrics did they think inspire a sense of togetherness? The bit about "old flat-top grooving up slowly" with his "joo-joo eyeballs" and his "walrus gumboots"? Or maybe the line (ahem):"He shoot Coca Cola"? Yes, that must be it. Come together for a line of coke. And perfectly apt, too. That's how many people will probably celebrate Malta's national festivities anyway...

The real problem however concerns the wider musical/historical context. 'Come Together' was the opening track of 'Abbey Road': the last Beatles album, which came out in 1969. John Lennon's contributions to Abbey Road and The White Album (the album before) are mostly cynical and sardonic, and nearly all involve pastiche-like stereotypes of vaguely dysfunctional hippie-like people. Polythene Pam ("so good looking but she looks like a man"); Mean Mr Mustard ("Sleeps in a hole in the road"), and most iconic of all, 'Sexy Sadie': which represents John's final rejection of the (very 1960s) influence of The Maharishi, and with him all that oriental, peace 'n' love shebang that had underpinned so much of the Woodstock generation.

You get sense of this from 'Come Together', too. "He got hair down to his knees"... but "hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease." This is the same person who says "I know you, and you know me" (and later, "one and one and one is three")... leading to the chorus: "One thing I can tell you is you got to be free".

Come together, right now, over me.

Please note: "Over me"... that's right, "me" being the same long-haired, walrus-gumbooted, armchair-diseased man with "toejam football" and a "Mojo filter".

Some interpret 'Come Together' as one of several sardonic self-portraits by a man who had flirted with but ultimately rejected the idealism of the hippie age; others see it as an extension of the Sexy Sadie motif, dismissing same idealism which had "made a fool of everyone". Nobody, however, interprets it as a genuine rallying cry in favour of unity, still less as suitable for a national commemoration. Least of all John Lennon himself. This is how he described the inspiration for the song in an interview:

"Come Together was an expression that Tim Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and I tried, but I couldn't come up with one. But I came up with this, 'Come Together', which would've been no good to him - you couldn't have a campaign song like that, right?"

But then again, John Lennon songs have a history of being tragically misinterpreted. I remember 'rock masses' from my teens, and they always included at least one version of 'Imagine'... usually during the offertory. I 'imagine' the parish priest didn't really listen to the lyrics very closely, either. Otherwise he might have noticed that the song actually exhorts listeners to picture a world with "no religion"... "no hell below us, above us only sky...": i.e., a world in which "all the people" live life "for today" and "in peace".

'Imagine' is in fact a classic John Lennon atheist anthem, second only to 'God' ("I don't believe in Jesus", etc.) from the album 'Plastic Ono Band'. It still amuses me to think of it as the traditional background music of choice for the consecration of the Holy Eucharist.

Coming back to 'Come Together'. Is this what the organisers really intend us all to sing along to in celebration of (one of) Malta's national Day(s)? I can't see it working in practice. How on earth are we to keep a straight face, as we greet our 50th birthday with a chorus of "Got to be good looking 'cause he's so hard to see"?

Or will they do the unthinkable, and adapt - i.e., BUTCHER - John Lennon's lyrics to suit a theme which in any case is already woefully irrelevant to the occasion?

Both are farcical possibilities, but the latter would be quite frankly sacrilegious. I'd rather sing about a man with "feet down below his knees" than any amount of blathering propaganda cooked up by anyone... let alone the very last people under the Sun-King who should even be mentioned in the same sentence as 'unity'.

So while I don't exactly share the outrage of the Foundation for Ultra-Nationalism in Music - which insists on a Maltese composition on purely ideological grounds - I can't help sharing its view that the decision-makers could have done much, much better than merely sift through their own private record collections (after wiping off around 45 years' worth of accumulated dust) in search of their own favourite songs.

That's just lazy, and - if it is even possible to use the word in an article about a John Lennon song - unimaginative. So by all means let us have a Maltese composition instead.

I recommend 'Wish I Never Be Existed' by Abstrass...