When kids today grow up and teach them about The Beatles, they'll see John Lennon's face and say "He's from that Citroën commercial!" A weak Twitter defense of this commercial from Sean Lennon makes this even more inexcusable. Unreal.

The commercial is archival footage of Lennon discussing the necessity of originality and inspiration in creating memorable music.

Looking backwards for inspiration, copying the past, how's that rock-and-roll? Think of something on your own, start something new. Live your life now.

That man was onto something! You know who else is onto something? The cutting edge engineers at Citroën! With its sleek body design and smooth handling, the Citroën DS3 really is the only way to live your life now. Or something.

The fact that this ad exists is gross, but the fact that Yoko Ono gave this project the greenlight because she needs more money to buy another truckload of fabergé eggs makes the whole thing even more heinous.

And not to pile on or anything, but to complete the ever elusive "tarnish a legend trifecta", we have John Lennon's son, Sean, defending his dad via Twitter:

You know, there are other ways to keep John Lennon in the public consciousness other than slapping old footage of him into a car advertisement. Make a documentary, re-mix and re-master "The Plastic-Ono Band", even plaster his face on a salad dressing and donate the proceeds to charity. Anything but this.

UPDATE:

Thanks to a tipster, they pointed out that it isn't even John Lennon's voice that is used in the commercial.

Believe me it [sic] not even close to Brit ears. Don't need to see the pics to know this. The general ambience is pure Voice Booth too. Sounds about as real as the John in Yellow Submarine. The real non-Lennon moments are in the phrases "been done" "backwards for inspiration" and "start something new". Not the right part of Lancashire at all there. Its all too ponderous overall like they had to stretch the clip a bit and therefore slow down Lennons's delivery a bit. So much for originality then...

Surprisingly, we're not experts on regional Lancashire dialect, so we'll take their word on it.

For further proof, and it is quite obvious when you listen closely, is some actual audio from Lennon himself:

The abomination continues!

[via AdFreak]