Gimme Some Truth

"Gimme Some Truth" is a protest song written and performed by John Lennon from his 1971 album Imagine.

Like several songs on the album, such as the title track "Imagine", "Gimme Some Truth" has blatant political references emerging from the time it was written, during the latter years of the Vietnam War.

The song expresses Lennon's frustration with deceptive politicians ("short-haired yellow-bellied sons of Tricky Dicky"), chauvinism ("tight-lipped condescending mommy's little chauvinists"), and acts of military violence such as the My Lai massacre. The song encapsulates some widely held feelings of the time, when people were heavily participating in protest rallies against the government.

When Lennon referred to Nixon as "tricky dicky," he was using a nickname--"Tricky Dick"-- that liberals had been applying for decades.

The song references the nursery rhyme "Old Mother Hubbard," using the rhyme's content (about a woman going to get her dog a bone, only to discover that her cupboard is empty) as a political parallel to the events of the day, a practice that goes all the way back to when the rhyme was originally printed in 1805. The song's reference to "soft soap" employs that slang verb in its classic sense, i.e., insincere flattery that attempts to convince someone to do or to think something, as in the case of politicians who use specious or beguiling rhetoric to quell public unrest or to propagandize unfairly.

Origins

Work on the song began as early as January 1969 during The Beatles' Get Back sessions, which would eventually evolve into Let It Be. Bootleg recordings of the group performing songs that would eventually go onto the members' solo recordings feature a few performances of "Gimme Some Truth."

Personnel

John Lennon's fellow former Beatle George Harrison plays lead guitar on the song, with Klaus Voormann (a longtime friend of the Beatles and designer of the cover for their Revolver album) on bass.

Cover versions and performances by other artists

• Primal Scream recorded this song as a B-side to their 'Country Girl' single in 2006.
• Ash released it as a B-side to 'Angel Interceptor' in 1995.
• The Wonder Stuff included 'Gimme Some Truth' on the expanded version of album 'Hup'.
• Travis's version is a B-side to 'More Than Us', released in 1998.
• Billy Idol's band Generation X recorded it as B-side to 'King Rocker' in 1978.It also appears as a bonus track on the remastered version of 1979's Valley of the Dolls
• Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs released a version on "Under the Covers, Volume 2".
• On the album Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, The Wallflowers' frontman Jakob Dylan (son of Bob Dylan) covers the song and Dhani Harrison (son of George Harrison) reprises his father's role as lead guitarist. Mexican group Jaguares made another cover version for the same album.
• In The Polyphonic Spree's 2007 tour for The Fragile Army, they opened their show with the song playing while projecting the lyrics on a piece of fabric strung across the front of the stage.
• Pearl Jam has covered this song on some of their live shows, more notably on the third leg of their 2003 tour. After finishing the song in Madison Square Garden, Eddie Vedder acknowledged the strength and courage the people of New York showed after the attacks of 9/11.

Other works named after the song

• A 2000 direct-to-video documentary film showing the recording sessions and evolution of Imagine took its title, Gimme Some Truth: The Making of John Lennon's Imagine Album, from this song.
• Jon Wiener took the title of this song for his 1999 book, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files, about Nixon's attempt to deport Lennon in 1972.

External links

• Tittenhurst Park
• Song lyrics
• "Gimme Some Truth" facts at Songfacts