 Lennon and Ono co @-@ produced the song and album with Phil Spector , who commented on the track : " We knew what we were going to do ... It was going to be John making a political statement , but a very commercial one as well ... I always thought that ' Imagine ' was like the national anthem . " Lennon described his working arrangement with Ono and Spector : " Phil doesn 't arrange or anything like that — [ Ono ] and Phil will just sit in the other room and shout comments like , ' Why don 't you try this sound ' or ' You 're not playing the piano too well ' ... I 'll get the initial idea and ... we 'll just find a sound from [ there ] . " 
