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Imagine this: Natalie Merchant honored with Lennon award

NEW YORK — At this stage of her life, Natalie Merchant is more proud of getting an honor named for John Lennon because of what it says about her activism than her music.

The singer is the sixth recipient of the John Lennon Real Love Award, and will headline a tribute concert to the former Beatle in New York on December 6.

“It’s gratifying,” Merchant said in an interview. “To have any connection to John Lennon, especially with activism, is quite prestigious and meaningful to me because he was one of the main artists who inspired me when I was growing up to think about the wider world and my impact on it.”

Merchant volunteers three times a week for a Head Start program near where she lives in Hudson Valley, helping disadvantaged children. She often performs free concerts for children and, at the height of her fame three decades ago, volunteered at a homeless program in Harlem, where most of the people thought she was a student from nearby Columbia University.

She got to know Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, when they worked on the anti-fracking movement in upstate New York.

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