All it's keyed up to be ... Lennon's Steinway Model Z in Texas. Photograph: Richard Nira/AP
"Imagine", wrote my colleague Ed Pilkington, from New York, "an utterly unremarkable upright piano, hazelnut brown, standing on the pavement in front of a museum, a theatre, a prison or a school. Would you stop, or would you glance at it momentarily and walk on by?"
Ed goes on to explain that this particular piano just happens to be the one John Lennon composed Imagine on. It's been owned since 1970 by George Michael (who paid £1.45m for it at auction, and is currently making a tour of sites in the US associated with political violence and the deaths of, among others, John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King and the victims of the Oklahoma bombing and the al-Qaida attack on the World Trade Centre.
Even without these dramatic associations, John's piano can't really be called "utterly unremarkable." This is because it's not any old saloon bar or knees-up "Joanna", but a Steinway Model Z, made in Hamburg (most Steinways are made in Long Island City, Queens, New York). Model Zs have never been cheap to buy. I think what Ed means is that this particular piano, with its mechanism housed in a bland, functional 60s-style casing looks "utterly unremarkable", while, of course being special in every other way. This includes the way it plays, its smooth, mellow tone and its big Steinway sound that, while no match for the same company's magnificent Model D Concert Grands, is something really quite special.
While certainly not an "everyday design" in terms of cost, performance, craftsmanship and sheer overall quality, the Steinway Z is a reminder that some of the very best machines and artefacts around us can seem quite ordinary, almost banal, if only looked at rather than used. And, it's true that John Lennon's Steinway Model Z does look very much like the sort of piano you might find in a school hall or the living room a of music teachers struggling by on a music teachers' salary while dreaming, perhaps, of sitting at the keyboard of a Steinway Model D.
Lennon's piano, then, is the very opposite of either "bling" or "iconic" design - fashionable today - both concerned, unashamedly with, first and foremost, the ways thing look. And provoke, gleam and generally grab the attention even of those trying hard not to look their way.
This started me wondering what other designs are like this, super-special inside, yet "utterly unremarkable" outside. I don't know enough about laptops, but I'm sure there must be some very ordinary looking and even cheap looking plastic boxes housing some super-special gadgetry and loaded-up with mind-bending programs.
Only the other day, I saw a Lotus Carlton, a bland-looking four-door, five-seat saloon of 1990-vintage, with an even blander interior, that nevertheless boasts a top speed of at least 176mph - Ferrari fast - with handling and grip, apparently, to match. Actually, there's a spoiler on the boot-lid which slightly gives the game away and slightly spoils my argument, yet even so it also made me think of designs that seem less than special at first glance, but are the very devil-in-disguise when you get to see beyond their commonplace wrapping. I'd like to know if you have any suggestions for designs like John Lennon's Steinway upright that look "utterly unremarkable" and yet are among the very best of their type.
