john lennon parents biography

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John Lennon biography

John Winston Lennon was born in Liverpool on 9 October 1940 . A founder member of The Beatles, and their singer, songwriter and guitarist, he was murdered in New York City on 8 December 1980.

The early years

Julia Lennon taught her son to play the banjo, and they shared a love of Elvis Presley’s music. The first song he learned to play was Fats Domino’s ‘Ain’t That A Shame’.

In 1957 she bought John his first guitar, a Gallotone Champion acoustic “guaranteed not to split”. Julia ensured it was delivered to her house rather than Mimi’s, as her sister was disapproving of music. She told her nephew, “The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it”.

Lennon’s first school was Mosspits Lane Infants School in Wavertree, Liverpool, which he attended from November 1945 to May 1946. He then changed to Dovedale Primary School, and upon passing his 11 Plus attended Quarry Bank Grammar School (1952-1957). He formed The Quarrymen in March 1957, and in July the same year met Paul McCartney at the garden fete at St Peter’s Church in Woolton, Liverpool.

The pair quickly bonded, and began rehearsing and writing songs together at McCartney’s home at 20 Forthlin Road. Lennon’s first completed song was ‘Hello Little Girl’ , later a hit for the Fourmost. McCartney also introduced Lennon to George Harrison , and convinced him to let the young guitarist join the group, eventually named The Beatles after a series of other names were rejected.

We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader – he was the quickest wit and the smartest and all that kind of thing.

Lennon failed all his GCE O level exams, but with the help of his head teacher was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art. There he met Cynthia Powell , who became his first wife. They married after she became pregnant with their son Julian, who was born on 8 April 1963 .

With The Beatles

An unruly pupil, Lennon dropped out of college before his final year. By this time, however, The Beatles were working hard to establish a name for themselves. Initially managed by Allan Williams from May 1960, they were booked later that year to play at the Indra club in Hamburg. The trip wasn’t a success: McCartney and drummer Pete Best were accused of arson after a fire started in the cinema where they were staying, and George Harrison was deported for working while under the age of 18. Lennon returned to Liverpool after his work permit was revoked.

The Beatles returned to Hamburg after Harrison turned 18, and from April 1961 began another residency. While there they recorded ‘My Bonnie’ with singer Tony Sheridan .

In 1962 they returned to Hamburg to play at the Star Club, and in May were signed to EMI subsidiary label Parlophone. Their first single, ‘Love Me Do’ , was released on 5 October.

By the following year The Beatles had become a worldwide phenomenon, under the auspices of manager Brian Epstein . Their success looked unstoppable, though in March 1966 Lennon was interviewed by journalist Maureen Cleave, who quoted him as saying:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I do not know what will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. We’re more popular than Jesus now . Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary.

The quote led to protests in the southern and midwest US states, which included public bonfires of Beatles records and memorabilia. Lennon issued an apology of sorts at a Chicago press conference in August 1966, saying:

I was not saying whatever they’re saying I was saying. I’m sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologise if that will make you happy. I still do not know quite what I’ve done. I’ve tried to tell you what I did do, but if you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then OK, I’m sorry.

By this time The Beatles had long tired of the demands of Beatlemania and the frenetic pace of touring. Lennon later wrote:

I always remember to thank Jesus for the end of my touring days; if I hadn’t said that The Beatles were ‘bigger than Jesus’ and upset the very Christian Ku Klux Klan, well, Lord, I might still be up there with all the other performing fleas! God bless America. Thank you, Jesus.

Latest Comments

John was one of the best musicians of all time, possibly the best, certainly a genius.

The greatness of John Lennon as i see it:

–The increasing tension. For example I Should Have Known Better. Before Lennon, all pop music structure was AABA, where the tension decreased in the middle part B. But with Lennon the tension from the verse continued in the middle part. Besides that, in this song it is not only a key change in the transition to the middle part, it is even a little key change in it. The increasing tension was what first characterized The Beatles. The first single where the verse lacked this increasing tension was Can´t Buy Me Love. (But the chorus is OK). I didn´t know then it was a McCartney composition. – Other ways of increase the tension by Lennon is to pack together several little songs. Happiness Is A Warm Gun consists of three or four songs, and Bring On The Lucie consists of three songs. –All You Need Is Love has another way: First talking, then repeating half singing, then singing, and finally the climax in chorus. –The melody does not changes, but the background. For example in Strawberry Fields Forever and in Julia the singing melody uses the same notes, but instead the accompaniment changes! Listen to Puccini. He got tired of his sang melodies in Boheme and in Tosca he composed a lot where the sang melodies are often on the same notes, but the background changes instead. The effect can be stronger. –Octave Leap. For example, in the middle part of Please Please Me, Lennon makes an octave run in “…it´s so hard to reason with YOU…”, the climax of the song. George Martin didn´t understand the quality in that. In his orchestration of it in Off The Beatle Track, Martin excludes the octave, the most important bit of the song! –Verse and resolve. Typical for Lennon is a melody followed by a resolve, for example in No Reply “…I saw the light!”…and in Girl “girl! girl!…”. Lennon said that “a good song must have climax and resolve”. –Only one chord. In Tomorrow Never Knows there is only one chord, or bass note, an innovation in pop music. In the Middle Ages it was common with that bordun note, an unchanged bass note. When Lennon played the song the first time for George Martin, Martin didn´t like it. –Whole-tone scale. Most scales have both whole step and half steps between the notes in an octave. In the verse in Norwegian Wood, there is most whole steps, and that´s like the impressionists, for example Debussy. It sounds very clean. –Church Modes. A Hard Day´s Night is written in the mixolydian mode, an ancient vocal scale, preserved in British, Irish and American folk song. –If you play the beginning of Please Please Me slowly, you can hear the similarities with the Westminster bells ringing. When Lennon was a little boy, he loved visiting the divine services. Afterwards he used to improvise anthem music. Westminster bells could unconsciously have inspired him to the beginning of Please Please Me. There is also anthem music in the beginning of All You Need Is Love: “love love love…”. –The lamentation second. A little half step up in the scale. And that´s to indicate a pain. In All You Need Is Love Lennon sings the refrain twice unchanged and then suddenly the third time, rises a little, a very expressive and important step up. That step up started in the baroque epoch, and was called The lamentation second. When Lennon played it the first time to George Martin, Martin didn´t like it. He leaned towards McCartney and muttered: “It´s certainly repetitive”. –From darkness to light. Happiness Is a Warm Gun starts with a little melancholy, and ends with enthusiasm.—In the middle part of I Am The Walrus the darkness switches over to light: “sitting in an English garden…”. And the transition from the chaos and darkness in Revolution 9 to the light in Good Night. That is very typical in Wagner´s music. I think that temperamentally the two were similar. And I think Wagner would have loved the arrangement in Glass Onion. –Suggestive and hypnotic music. With small intervals between the notes in combination with some dissonance chord, Lennon can create a suggestive and hypnotic feeling in for example Across The Universe. It is more like Wagner than pop music. –Few notes. With few, but effective notes, Lennon can create more feeling than McCartney with all his notes, for example in If I Fell and Love. –A melody sang three times, in succession, with just a little change every time. When you hear it you can get frustrated or desperate not getting out from the melody. That we have in the middle part in I Call Your Name and in the middle part in And Your Bird Can Sing. And at the same time the melodies are stick together with a countermelody at the guitar. Rather hypnotic

get a life u spent way tooooooo much time on this

When does healthy admiration become obsession?

Live and let live. This man is happy writing what he wrote, and his chosen subject was a brilliant choice: the musical genius and founder of the Beatles, John Lennon. YOU are the one who needs to get his own life.

Wrong , Tony. Johan spends a great deal of his time throughout these blogs with his obsessive love of Lennon and obsessive ignorance/hate of McCartney, this with opinions and self-created thoughts presented as fact with no corroborating sources or quotes. Johan is indeed in need of a life; dog and Robert (particularly) know of what they speak.

Thank you Mike.

Is there a problem with someone wanting to inform other people of famous people? I think it is interesting

beautiful, are you a writer?

Thank you. I am not a writer. I just happened to be paralyzed when I heard Please Please Me and Do You Want To Know a Secret the first time.

John Lennon will never die.

Much of pop and rock music, including heavy metal, is written in the mixolydian mode. As for the rest, you have mischievously selected aspects of music theory to suit your argument. I’m not fooled and I suspect many others aren’t either.

From what I can gather a lot of what makes John Lennon’s Beatle songs musically interesting comes from Paul Mccartney’s involvement (Tomorrow Never Knows, Come Together, A Day in the Life). This is made clear when you look at their solo works.

If you want to talk about Lennon’s genius talk about his lyrics, which flow wonderfully and are full of wonderful imagery. Across the Universe is the best example of this and might very well be Lennon’s best work (it’s also my favorite Beatles song, which is amazing since Paul is my favorite Beatle not John).

I agree! I love John Lennon

When John is still living, I always wish for a Beatles reunion. The day John Lennon died, my wish & hope for their reunion also died. 🙁

All I can say is that it still breaks my heart to know John is no longer here. I was 17 when he was senselessly murdered. I can still remember it like it was yesterday. John is the best musician ever, sadly we only got a small sample of his work. He is so greatly missed by so many. We will always have you in our hearts and mind through your creativity. I so glad you were with us as long as you were.

You forgot to mention the family home before he moved in with his aunt Mimi. He originally lived at 9 Newcastle Road, Wavertree when he was a little boy.

That insect that took him away from his family,friends and us should never be mentioned by name.Throw him on the dustbin of history,that useless git.

May the Lord Jesus, bless and keep your family and friends. I feel your pain. I suppose John had finished his course here on earth, so let’s look forward to seeing him there.

John said this out of pure honesty. At the time, The Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

I think Plastic Ono Band is one of the best albums ever. Someone at the height of his fame exposing his vulnerabilities and pain. Remarkable.

I read some where that the night that John got shot Yoko said to the doctors or the news reporters that she didn’t want to announce his death on the tv right away because she said Sean was in front of it.

If you were here today… …you’d love CD’s, email, and trolling on the Internet. Miss you, John. 🙂

that hurt more than it should have

He was controversial yet spiritual. Many never understood him. People misunderstood his words. He would use power of communication to read people. This is partly what resulted to his shooting. He knew folks hated him anyway.

He was an amazing singer. I saw John ,Paul, George and Ringo 1966 in Essen/ Germany. I will never forget the concert, when i was sixteen!!!

John was a true genius. However his most blatant act of stupidity was when he took up with Yoko. I still blame her for being one of the primary reasons for him wanting to leave the Beatles. It’s still a head scratcher to me why he was attracted to her. She had no real talent, she sang like a cat getting it’s tail pulled, her looks were a 2 on a scale of 1-10, and she was dumb as a stump. I will always believe that she somehow brainwashed him.

True. As George Michael sang: “turn a different corner and we never would have met.” I,too, wish John had turned a different corner. He might even still be alive.

I have been a Beatles fan all my life. There music was what helped me when I was growing up. John Lennon will always be a hero to me and I’ll be forever grateful for all of them in my life!

Well, Ono was from a wealthy family and as for her being all those great things you have mentioned….you are probably righ…Japan has the worst bands ever becoming famous just because Japanese tend to like crappy music.

Whatever or whoever Yoko might be, we should respect her simply because John respected her, and she probably saved him from dying of an OD in 69/70. However, her role in the murder is equivocal, and she couldn’t save him from Ronald Reagan’s minions. I agree with Paul, the assassin’s name should be forgotten, he was just a tool.

Ronald Reagans minions? Really, Manteau? Politics has no place here but if you really want to do this I’m game.

This site is intended to celebrate the Beatles’ legacy, which really centers around intimate and universal love. What ironic heartbreak that the comment section is soiled by haters and goons.

John Lennon was probably the most brilliant and prolific music composer of the 20th century. With that brilliance comes a certain inability to relate much as Edison, Tesla and Einstein had difficulty relating. They all shared the commonality of being misunderstood. The man was genius and should there be any doubt look at what he has written and its social impact. He and the rest of the Beatles changed the face of music forever.

I like John Lennon, but the most brilliant and prolific composer of the 20th century is probably George Gershwin (discounting classical music) and I would rank Cole Porter, Bob Dylan, and several others above John Lennon.

Yeah, but let’s hear those other composers sing! On several occasions when I have attended a wedding what song did they play? Not Porter, Dylan, Gershwin or McCartney! John Lennon’s Grow Old With Me.

you are right

Dear Warptek, John had been an fervent supporter of Jimi Carter back in 1976., He had been an undesirable alien in the US of A from 1972 to 1975, when he eventually was granted his green card. He had won…too easily against a disgraced Nixon. In the meantime, John had nothing to fear from Carter’s team. But in November 1980, two things happened almost at the same time : The election of Ronald Reagan and John’s own return to the forefront of the pop*rock scene. You know what happened. Now, if you say politics are a forbidden subject here, we should never talk about John at all! I hate politics, but I’m convinced ( Like Sean ) that John Lennon’s assassination was a political one.

In November of 1980, two things happened almost at the same time: John’s return to the forefront of the pop*rock scene and the “Who Shot JR” episode of Dallas. You know what happened …

he was a really good friend of mine

I noticed a mistake and would like to correct it politely. John’s first school was actually Mosspits County Primary School. He was expelled in 1946 for misbehaviour and then enrolled in Dovedale Road Primary School. My source is ‘An Intimate Day by Day History’ by Barry Miles.

Time really works for Lennon. His compositions can age better.The tendency in later years in the voting of The Beatles best 20 songs, Lennon´s compositions always are dominating, with for example: –Strawberry Fields Forever, –Come Together, –Don´t let Me Down, –I Am The Walrus, –Revolution, –A Day In The Life, –Help, — Rain, –All You Need Is Love and don´t forget Hey Bulldog, a song that George Martin and McCartney stopped being released as single! and now there is a long story of that classic Lennon song in You Tube!! Today Harrison´s songs Something, While My Guitar Weeps and Here Comes The Sun are equally popular as McCartney´s most popular songs!! And Lennon´s solo songs are today more played than McCartney´s, for example: –Jealous Guy, –Imagine, –Woman, – –Instant Karma, –Give peace a Chance, –Love, –A Working Class Hero, –Grow Old With Me (on weddings nowadays). This Lennon´s success is despite George Martin´s always patronizing of him. George Martin preferred McCartney´s conventional and “vertical” melodies.

I don’t know why people persist in describing John’s upbringing as harrowing or tragic. After WW2 there were many children of John’s age, taken from institutions in Liverpool and from dysfunctional family situations, babies to teenagers, who were shipped off to the white commonwealth countries for a supposedly better life. While many did get this, others were horribly abused, physically, sexually, and mentally in foster homes and catholic institutions. Some of these people from John’s generation grew up so psychologically damaged they were institutionalised for the rest of their lives. The rest grew up effectively stateless and denied British citizenship to return to their place of birth and their families. It was years before they received any compensation from the British government and is one of the most shameful episodes in post war British history. John Lennon had a lucky escape. He came from a broken home and that was extremely sad but he was raised by people who loved and protected him and provided the best for him that they could. He grew up to be an angry young songwriter, no doubt about it, but I sometimes sensed that John himself was gaining perspective with increasing maturity before he was senselessly murdered.

In the praised film about The Beatles Eight Days A Week by Ron Howard from 2016, Lennon´s songs are dominating: Please Please Me, You Can´t Do That, A Hard Day´s Night, If I Fell, Help, Ticket to Ride, It´s Only Love, Day Tripper, I´m A Looser, Girl, Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, I´m Only Sleeping, Tomorrow Never Knows, Don´t Let Me Down. When they took up the recording of Sgt Pepper, they played Strawberry Fields Forever, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and A Day In The Life, no other songs from that album,but at the same time there is a big picture of McCartney.(formerly a very common typical situation).

There’s a fine line between healthy admiration and worrisome obsession as another commentator indicated here.

Without McCartney, there would’ve been no Lennon. And vice-versa. Said and done – concisely and simply.

Johan-Thank you once again for your willingness to praise John to the heavens and criticize Paul to no end. Your opinion and you are entitled to it. But, it’s old and repetitive and boring. The Beatles were John, Paul, George and Ringo. Not just John and not just Paul. You will never be objective when it comes to this topic but you will always be a bore. Merry Christmas.

The burden that lies upon a genius’ shoulder is that in spite of the freedom in ways of living, he is driven by an unconcscious and mysterious god within himself. Certain notions and ideas come to him – not knowing where from, not knowing that something within himself is driving him to create and he does not know to what purpouse these notions have. The artist, just like the genius is in a battle between these unconscious urges and the comfort and safety which all humans strive for. For that reason the life of a genius, so often ends in tragedy.

This is, in my opninion, of the upmost truth in the case of John Lennon. His nonchalant attitude when asked about his songwriting, may suggest that he himself, is not even aware of these urges. He suggests that he’s merely “putting words together”. However, the lyrical components of songs such as Strawberry Fields Forever and Across The Universe prove to me that John, was in some sense a higher being. His mind was able to grasp certain aspects that lie in the unconscious of all human beings.

This man was extraordinary, and to me the greatest artist to ever live.

john lennon is the bet singer songwriter of all the time

I was 10 years old when he died I was such a Beatles nerd but that ended when he died.

In the twelve month period from November 1966, John Lennon wrote five of the greatest songs ever – Strawberry Fields, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, A Day in the Life, All You Need is Love and I am the Walrus. Who else is comparable?

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John Lennon

John Lennon facts: Beatles singer's age, wife, children, parents and more revealed

3 November 2023, 11:43

John Lennon was one of the most iconic singers of the 20th century, from his time with the Beatles to his solo career.

Tragically taken away far too soon aged just 40 in 1980 , John Lennon was behind so many of the world's favourite songs, and remains a pop culture legend.

40 years on from his death, here are the biggest facts about Lennon that every fan should know:

How old was John Lennon and where was he born?

John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940. He was 40 years old at the time of his death.

Full name John Winston Lennon, he was born at Liverpool Maternity Hospital to parents Julia (née Stanley) (1914–1958) and Alfred Lennon (1912–1976).

His dad Alfred was a merchant seaman of Irish descent, who was away at the time of John's birth. His parents named him John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John 'Jack' Lennon, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

• Read more: When John Lennon found a homeless man at his door and invited him in

John's father was often away from home but sent regular cheques until he went absent without leave in February 1944. When he eventually came home, he offered to look after the family, but Julia was by then pregnant with another man's child, and rejected him.

After Julia's sister Mimi complained to Social Services, Julia gave her custody of John. His father planned to emigrate with John to New Zealand, but Julia and her partner stopped them and forced the five-year-old to choose between them. In the end, he went home with his mother.

John had no further contact with his father for nearly 20 years.

When did John Lennon form The Beatles?

Aged 15 in July 1957, Paul McCartney met John Lennon and his band, the Quarrymen, at the St Peter's Church Hall fête in Woolton.

The Quarrymen performed mostly rock and roll and skiffle music. McCartney was soon asked to join as a rhythm guitarist.

George Harrison joined in 1958 as lead guitarist, followed by Lennon's school friend Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, in 1960.

After trying several names, they chose The Beatles in August 1960, and signed drummer Pete Best before a residency in Hamburg, Germany.

Within a few years, and with the arrival of drummer Ringo Starr , the Fab Four quickly became the biggest stars on the planet, selling over 800 million records worldwide.

Who was John Lennon's wife?

Cynthia Powell was an artist, who was married to John Lennon from 1962 to 1968.

They got engaged after Cynthia was found to be pregnant with son Julian .

In 1968, Lennon left Cynthia for Japanese artist Yoko Ono , and divorced in 1968 on the grounds of adultery.

He was married to Ono from 1969 to his death.

However, in 1973, Lennon and Ono split for a period, leading to Lennon having an 18-month relationship with May Pang, which Lennon later called his "lost weekend".

How many children did John Lennon have?

John Lennon had two sons.

Julian Lennon was born on April 8, 1963 at Sefton General Hospital in Liverpool. He was the son of John and Cynthia.

• Read more: Who are all the Beatles' kids?

He then had a son called Sean Lennon with Yoko Ono, who was born in 1975.

Both Julian and Sean have become musicians themselves, and are on good terms.

What are John Lennon's biggest songs?

IMAGINE. (Ultimate Mix, 2020) - John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band (with the Flux Fiddlers) HD

• Read more: John Lennon's 10 greatest ever songs

Outside of his Beatles songs, Lennon's most famous solo records include:

- Working Class Hero

- Just Like Starting Over

- Happy Xmas (War is Over)

- Jealous Guy

John Lennon death: How was he killed?

On the evening of December 8, 1980, John Lennon was shot dead in the archway of the Dakota, his home in New York City.

The killer was Mark David Chapman , an American Beatles fan who had travelled from Hawaii.

• Read more: Remembering John Lennon's death 40 years on - how the world reacted

Chapman explained that he was angered by Lennon's life and public statements, in particular, his phrase about the Beatles being "more popular than Jesus" and the lyrics of his songs 'God' and 'Imagine'.

Chapman also said he was inspired by Holden Caulfield from JD Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye .

The American planned the killing over several months, and waited for Lennon at the Dakota that morning. At one point, he even met Lennon, who signed his copy of the album Double Fantasy .

• See more: Paul McCartney "often dreams" about old friend John Lennon: "They're always good"

Later that night, Lennon and wife Yoko Ono returned, and as they walked towards the entrance, Chapman fired five shots, four of which hit Lennon in the back.

Chapman stayed at the scene, reading The Catcher in the Rye, until he was arrested by the police. Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 11.15pm.

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John Lennon

• Born October 9 , 1940 · Liverpool, Lancashire, England, UK
• Died December 8 , 1980 · New York City, New York, USA (murdered by gunshot)
• Birth name John Winston Lennon
• Height 5′ 11″ (1.80 m)
• John Winston (later Ono) Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, England, to Julia Lennon (née Stanley) and Alfred Lennon , a merchant seaman. He was raised by his mother's older sister Mimi Smith . In the mid-1950s, he formed his first band, The Quarrymen (after Quarry Bank High School, which he attended) who, with the addition of Paul McCartney and George Harrison , later became The Beatles . After some years of performing in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, "Beatlemania" erupted in England and Europe in 1963 after the release of their singles "Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me". That same year, John's first wife Cynthia Lennon welcomed their only son Julian Lennon , named after John's mother. The next year the Beatles flew to America to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) (aka The Ed Sullivan Show), and Beatlemania spread worldwide. Queen Elizabeth II granted all four Beatles M.B.E. medals in 1965, for import revenues from their record sales; John returned his four years later, as part of an antiwar statement. John and the Beatles continued to tour and perform live until 1966, when protests over his calling the Beatles phenomenon "more popular than Jesus" and the frustrations of touring made the band decide to quit the road. They devoted themselves to studio work, recording and releasing albums such as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "Magical Mystery Tour" and the "White Album". Instead of appearing live, the band began making their own "pop clips" (an early term for music videos), which were featured on television programs of the time. In the late 1960s John began performing and making albums with his second wife Yoko Ono , as the Beatles began to break up. Their first two albums, "Two Virgins" and "Life With The Lions", were experimental and flops by Beatles standards, while their "Wedding Album" was almost a vanity work, but their live album "Live Peace In Toronto" became a Top Ten hit, at the end of the 1960s. In the early 1970s John and Yoko continued to record together, making television appearances and performing at charity concerts. After the release of John's biggest hit, "Imagine", they moved to the US, where John was nearly deported because of his political views (a late-'60s conviction for possession of hashish in the U.K. was the excuse given by the government), but after a four-year legal battle he won the right to stay. In the midst of this, John and Yoko separated for over a year; John lived in Los Angeles with personal assistant May Pang , while Yoko dated guitarist David Spinozza . When John made a guest appearance at Elton John 's Thanksgiving 1974 concert, Yoko was in the audience, and surprised John backstage. They reconciled in early 1975, and Yoko soon became pregnant. After the birth of their son Sean Lennon , John settled into the roles of "househusband" and full-time daddy, while Yoko became his business manager; both appeared happy in their new life together. After a five-year break from music and the public eye, they made a comeback with their album "Double Fantasy", but within weeks of their re-emergence, Lennon was murdered on the evening of December 8, 1980 by Mark David Chapman , a one-time Beatles fan angry and jealous over John's ongoing career, who fatally shot Lennon four times in the back outside his apartment building, The Dakota, as Lennon was returning from a recording session. Within minutes after being shot, John Lennon was dead at age 40. His violent death was a sudden and tragic end to the life of a talented singer and musician who wanted to make a difference in the world. - IMDb Mini Biography By: paulabb
• Spouses Yoko Ono (March 20, 1969 - December 8, 1980) (his death, 1 child) Cynthia Lennon (August 23, 1962 - November 8, 1968) (divorced, 1 child)
• Children Sean Lennon Julian Lennon Kyoko Ono Cox
• Parents Alfred Lennon Julia Lennon
• Relatives Mimi Smith (Aunt or Uncle) Julia Baird (Half Sibling)
• Round-framed glasses and army-surplus jacket
• Songs about personal issues, political and social themes
• His Rickenbacker 325 guitar (replaced later with an Epiphone Casino)
• Bizarre, humorous personality and outspoken, rebellious nature
• He frequently wrote songs about love being the answer to the world's problems
• During the 1960s he had attempted to instigate a live action adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien 's "Lord Of The Rings" books (of which he was a fan), starring himself and his Beatle bandmates. Lennon had expressed interest in the role of Gollum, with Paul McCartney playing Frodo, Ringo Starr playing Sam and George Harrison playing Gandalf.
• In a 2007 interview on the BBC Radio program Desert Island Discs, his wife, Yoko Ono , revealed what his last words were. She said that he wanted to go home and see son Sean before he went to sleep rather than go out for dinner after leaving the recording studio. According to Ono: "I said 'Shall we go and have dinner before we go home?' and John said, 'No, let's go home because I want to see Sean before he goes to sleep.'" Moments later, he was gunned down in front of the historic Dakota building where the family lived in New York City.
• Elton John is the godfather of his son Sean Lennon
• It was after hearing Paul McCartney 's new single "Coming Up" that Lennon decided to return to music in early 1980. His reported response was, "Oh shit, I've got to get back." Lennon loved the song.
• His mother Julia Lennon (44) was killed by a drunk driver when John was seventeen; his stepfather broke down at the news, and John had to go with the police to identify her body (he later named his first son [ Julian Lennon ] for her, and remembered his mother in the song "Julia", ten years after her death). His best friend and former band mate Stuart Sutcliffe died from a brain hemorrhage in 1962, when they were both 21; John asked Stuart's mother for the old scarf he'd worn to art school, and kept it as a memento.
• When real music comes to me - the music of the spheres, the music that surpasseth understanding - that has nothing to do with me, 'cause I'm just the channel. The only joy for me is for it to be given to me, and to transcribe it like a medium...those moments are what I live for.
• Will all the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry. [At Royal Variety Performance 4th November 1963]
• God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
• My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.
• Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

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Biography Online

Biography John Lennon

“If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.”

– John Lennon

Short Biography of John Lennon

John Lennon was born, October 1940, during a German air raid in Oxford Street Maternity hospital, Liverpool. During his childhood, he saw little of his father Freddie, who went AWOL whilst serving in the navy. For several years, John was brought up by his mother’s sister Mimi.

In his early years, John was a mischievous student, who would be quick to take the mickey out of teachers and other students. His school reports were often scathing. “ Certainly on the road to failure … hopeless … rather a clown in class … wasting other pupils’ time. ”

Whilst in his early teens he got his first guitar and would spend many hours playing. His aunt Mimi used to regularly say:

“The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it.”

After the Beatles were famous, John presented Mimi with a silver platter with this quote written on.  He failed all his O-Levels but was still accepted to the Liverpool College of Art. However, he was expelled from College before his final year because of his disruptive behaviour.

In the late 1950s, John formed a rock group called the “Quarry Men Skiffle Band”, which was a precursor to the Beatles. In 1957, he met and formed a successful musical partnership with Paul McCartney . They complemented each other very well. Lennon focused on the more satirical aspects and McCartney veered towards the more optimistic cheerful qualities. Lennon was considered the leader of the Beatles, due to his superior age and also his musical abilities. It was, however, McCartney who persuaded Lennon to allow George Harrison to enter the band as lead guitarist.

The first concert of the Beatles was at the Cavern Club in Liverpool on 21st March 1961. After being rejected by many music labels, they eventually signed an agreement with Parlophone in 1962. George Martin who was responsible for signing the Beatles, later said he was not particularly impressed by their demo tapes, but liked their wit and humour – of which Lennon was usually at the forefront.

During the great success of the Beatles during the 1960s, John Lennon would often be seen as the figurehead for the group, although they maintained that the decisions of the group were democratic.

Paul, George and John Lennon

In 1961, the Beatles travelled to Germany, where they played many concerts in Hamburg. After two successful years, they returned to England and concentrated on recording singles. In 1963, the group’s profile took off with hit singles, such as “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You.” The popularity and enthusiasm for the Beatles were such that it led to the term “Beatlemania” being used. Lennon and the Beatles began a hectic schedule of recording, live performances and media appearances.

Despite his natural rebelliousness, Lennon agreed to the suggestion of manager Brian Epstein to dress smartly and have a similar haircut. In the early years of the Beatles, the smart-suited Beatles were part of their cultivated image.

In 1964, they released the single “ I Want to Hold Your Hand ” – it entered the US charts in early 1964 and soon sold over two million copies. Beatlemania was now a global phenomenon. It marked a shift in musical attitudes, especially in the US. The Beatles success of 1964, was known as the start of the “British Invasion”. In 1964, they toured the US for the first time, and in February appeared on the Ed Sullivan tv show.

The Beatles in 1964, JFK airport US.

John Lennon was no stranger to controversy. In 1966, he made an off the cuff remark in an interview with the Evening Standard.

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink   … We’re more popular than Jesus now—I don’t know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity.”

He claimed this was a mere observation, which was probably true in England. Nevertheless, it led to a boycott in the US, especially in the deep south. There was also a wave of record burnings – although Lennon wryly remarked that to burn them they had to buy them first.

John Lennon and Meditation

In 1967, John Lennon and the Beatles became more interested in meditation and Eastern religions. They spent several weeks in the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi . Although John later broke ties with the organisation, he continued to advocate meditation.

“I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.”

“I’m not a god or the God, but we’re all God and we’re all potentially divine — and potentially evil. We all have everything within us and the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh and within us, and if you look hard enough you’ll see it.”

– John Lennon, The Beatles Anthology (2000)

In India, they composed music for their albums The Beatles and Abbey Road . The visit also saw more Eastern musical influences begin to percolate into their music.

John Lennon Solo Career

John Lennon by Roy Kerwood

In 1969, the Beatles started to split up; Lennon was keen to branch out musically and develop his own solo career. There were also frictions over the presence of his wife, Yoko Ono in the Beatles recording sessions.  After the break-up of the Beatles, Lennon pursued a very successful solo career. His first album was released in 1970 with John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970).

“It was just a gradual development over the years. Last year was “All You Need Is Love.” This year it’s “Give Peace a Chance.” Remember love. The only hope for any of us is peace…. Get out there and get peace. Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you’ll get it as soon as you like.” (Statement to the press,  July 1969)

In the early 1970s, John Lennon also became a figurehead for those opposed to the Vietnam War. His song “ Give Peace a Chance ” became an anthem for the anti-war movement. Due to his anti-war stance, the Nixon administration tried to have him deported, but after a long struggle, he was able to gain a green card in 1976. His song “ Imagine ” has also become a tremendously influential song; it has been voted ‘the most popular song’ by the British public.

In 1975, he retreated from the music world, preferring to spend time looking after his new son, Sean.

John Lennon married Cynthia Powell in 1963, though the marriage was kept secret. They had one son, Julian. The marriage broke down in 1967. Lennon married Yoko Ono in March 1969.

In October of 1980, Lennon made a return to music recording. But, just two months later on 8 December 1980, John Lennon was shot dead in Dakota, New York. He was shot by David Chapman – an obsessed fan. He later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was imprisoned for life.

By 2012, John Lennon has sold 14 million solo albums, whilst the Beatles have become the best-selling group of all time – with an estimated 600 million recording sales worldwide.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of John Lennon” , Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , 28th May. 2007. Updated 25 January 2018.

John Lennon: The Life

John Lennon: The Life at Amazon

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JOHN LENNON.

John lennon.

John Lennon is arguably the greatest songwriter of his generation. As founder and leader of The Beatles and also as a solo artist, Lennon has won seven GRAMMY® Awards, including two Lifetime Achievement Awards, Five BRIT Awards including two Special Awards for Outstanding Contribution to Music, 21 NME Awards, 15 Ivor Novellos and an Oscar (Academy Award). He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2008, Rolling Stone ranked Lennon in the Top 5 of the magazine’s “100 Greatest Singers Of All Time” list.

written by Anthony DeCurtis

‘ Gimme Some Truth ’ appears on John Lennon’s 1971 album Imagine , and in a sense it serves as the aesthetic and ideological counterbalance of that album’s legendary title track.

‘ Imagine ’ evokes a utopian world in which our heightened consciousness would make everything that oppresses us wither away, ‘Gimme Some Truth’ looks our real troubled world square in the eye and demands answers right now. If one song floats like a feather on a piano melody as gentle as an evening breeze, the other rides a droning, distorted guitar line and a searing slide-guitar solo. If one vocal sounds as intimate as your good angel speaking to you from someplace inside your own mind, the other pins you against the wall, so impassioned that the singer can barely take the breaths he needs to spit out his lyrics.

Those are two of the many sides of John Lennon, two expressions of the many truths that he came to know. These days we live in a world that to value an unthinking consistency above all other virtues. If you hold an opinion that contradicts something that you said twenty years before, it’s not assumed that you’ve simply matured or reconsidered your earlier views for perfectly good reasons. No, you’re a waffler, a hypocrite, a flip-flopper. People are not encouraged to ‘contain multitudes’, in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s immortal phrase. They are encouraged to be as small and one-dimensional as possible if they want to avoid controversy.

Lennon did not see himself or his world in those terms. He thought of his songs as snapshots of what he was thinking and feeling at the moment of composition. He believed that the one quality his calling as an artist demanded of him was complete emotional and intellectual honesty. And from his earliest years, he had no interest in disguising what he had to say to bring it into conformity with what anyone else thought his ideas should be, or even with points of view he may have felt at one time himself. If he was true to the emotion that had given birth to the song, that was enough.

‘I made the decision at sixteen or seventeen that what I did, I wanted everybody to see,’ Lennon explained in 1980. ‘I wasn’t going after the aestheticism or the monastery or the lone artist who supposedly doesn’t care what people think about his work. I care a lot whether people hate it or love it, because it’s part of me and it hurts me when they hate it, or hate me, and it’s pleasing when they like it. But, as many public figures have said, “The praise is never enough, and the criticism always bites deep.”’

From his undying love of rock’n’roll to his songs of social consciousness, from his devotion to women and family, to his eventual understanding of the fragility of all our lives, Lennon devoted his genius to chronicling the unvarnished experiences of one man’s journey through life. Whatever truths he found, he shared, and they are embodied in his songs. Well beyond his own tragic end, and even our own lives, they are his unending gift to us, and to everyone who comes after.

John and Sean Lennon playing frisbee, Japan, Summer 1977 Photo by Nishi F. Saimaru ©1977 Nishi F. Saimaru & Yoko Ono John and Julian Lennon, 1970 Photo by Richard DiLello ©1970 Richard DiLello

For better or worse, very few things remained constant in John Lennon’s life. In his early years that was not his fault. His mother and father bolted unpredictably in and out of his life, and then his mother was killed in a car accident when he was seventeen. After that he trusted very few people, fearful that they would leave him, so that truly loving anyone was an enormous risk, until he fully settled into his marriage to Yoko Ono.

But one love that lasted throughout Lennon’s life was rock’n’roll. In December of 1970, Lennon did the interviews with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone that would eventually be published as the book Lennon Remembers . Having just undergone primal-scream therapy and completed his fiercely autobiographical Plastic Ono Band album, Lennon was subjecting every aspect of his life to unforgiving self-examination. Rock’n’roll, however, emerged unscathed.

When Wenner asked him, ‘What do your personal tastes run to?’ Lennon replied, ‘“ Wop-bop-a-loo-bop ”, you know? I mean I like rock’n’roll, man, I – I don’t like much else… That’s the music that inspired me to play music.

There’s nothing conceptually better than rock ’n’ roll. No group, be it Beatles, Dylan or Stones, has ever improved on ‘ Whole Lotta Shakin’ (Goin’ On) ’ for my money.

Maybe I’m like our parents, that’s my period. I dig it and I’ll never leave it.’ It’s no surprise then that when Lennon attempted to communicate the depths of despair in his song ‘ Yer Blues ’, he sang, ‘Feel so suicidal, even hate my rock’n’roll’. From his standpoint, what could be worse than that?

Earlier in that Rolling Stone interview, Lennon explained that ‘I only liked simple rock and nothing else.’ However, for Lennon, there was really nothing simple about rock’n’roll. For him, it was a style of music that got directly to the essence of things, without pretence or affectation. As ambitious as he became as an artist and activist, there was always part of him that grew impatient with overwrought complexity – whether embodied in the tangled, allusive lyrics of Bob Dylan; the semi-classical aspirations of George Martin (and Paul McCartney); or the endless realpolitik arguments of the best and brightest in government for why nations couldn’t achieve peace.

A product of the tough port city of Liverpool, Lennon prided himself on his no-nonsense demeanour, and he eventually became a New Yorker, a breed not exactly known for restraint in their opinions. In interviews and conversations, when he encountered overly elaborate explanations, Lennon would start to wonder if he was being conned. He came to view obscurantist “literary” writing as a form of dishonesty, a means of shielding yourself from the consequences of just saying what you mean. If everything in a lyric was open to interpretation then you didn’t have to take responsibility for it. Apart from a brief psychedelic period in the mid-to-late Sixties, Lennon always strove for honesty and directness in his lyric writing. He inherited that standard from the rock’n’roll songs he grew up loving. They were the core of his musical DNA.

‘I remember the old rock songs better than I remember my own songs,’ Lennon said in a 1980 Interview. ‘If I sat down in a room and just started playing, if I had a guitar now and we were just hanging out singing, I would sing all the early and mid-Fifties stuff – Buddy Holly and all. I remember those. I don’t remember the chords or the lyrics or anything of the Beatles stuff. So my repertoire is that. I still go back to the stuff the Beatles performed before they wrote, you see. I would still enjoy doing it.’

Still from the 'Ten for Two Concert' footage, Crisler Arena, Ann Arbor, Michigan, December 10, 1971 ©1971 Yoko Ono Still from the 'One to One Concert' footage, Madison Square Garden, NYC, August 30, 1972 ©1972 Yoko Ono

But simplicity was far from the only gift Lennon received from early rock’n’roll. Even if lyricists like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Buddy Holly didn’t write lyrics that aspired to the sort of literary effects typical of the poetry Lennon might have read in school, they helped teach him about playfulness and a love of language purely for its own sake.

Lennon loved children’s poems, fairy tales, Mother Goose rhymes and the zany nonsense literature of such writers as Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. He read them voraciously as a child, and retained his fondness for them into adulthood. They are primary sources for the pun­wielding, wild and whirling words of his two splendid books of stories and drawings, In His Own Write (1964) and A Spaniard In The Works (1965).

So no wonder Lennon answered ‘Wop-bop-a-loo-bop’ when Wenner asked him about his ‘personal tastes’. Songs like Gene Vincent’s ‘ Be-Bop-A-Lula ,’ Lee Dorsey’s ‘ Ya Ya ’ and Larry Williams’s ‘ Bony Moronie ’ all revel in silly rhymes, light-hearted neologisms, and childlike, sing-song syllables. It was music that seemed to Lennon at once innocent and rebellious. In their playfulness such songs evoked the freedom of childhood, and in their raucous rhythms and refusal of adult language and decorum they posed an implicit – and occasionally explicit – threat to the established order. That grown-ups not only mocked the music but tried to stamp it out only provided undeniable proof of its power. That was another lesson from the early days of rock’n’roll that Lennon never forgot.

The insurgent force of rock’n’roll originated as adolescent rebellion – anything that kids did was good, anything adults did was bad. As bracing as it was, the culture surrounding the music even had a nihilistic strain. It was associated with juvenile delinquency, and an appetite for destruction. Teenagers became a social class of their own, and youth was not merely a chronological time period, but a state of mind and a set of values, even if that mostly consisted of rejecting the tepid conformity of Fifties post-war life. Rock’n’roll’s attitude was best summed by a line tossed off by Marton Brando in his role as Johnny Strabler, the leader of a motorcycle gang in the 1953 movie, ‘The Wild One’. When a girl asks him, “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” Brando offhandedly replies, “Whaddya got?”

Such scenes were thrilling and Lennon constructed much of his early identity on their basis. But as the Sixties counterculture began to take shape, and Lennon found himself as one of its leaders, it became evident to him that a more sophisticated approach to changing the world around him was necessary. At first the Beatles were encouraged by their handlers to avoid controversy at all costs, but their intelligence and desire to engage the issues confronting their generation finally made that patronising strategy impossible to sustain. Lennon’s insistence on speaking his mind, beginning with his correct observation in 1965 that the Beatles were ‘more popular than Jesus’, generated shockwaves, and he came to understand that if his words were going to have such an impact, he needed to learn how to use that power to advance the ideals he believed in.

But first he needed to understand who he was, and that process of social, political and psychological self-discovery that makes such songs as ‘Working Class Hero,’ ‘God,’ ‘Isolation’ and ‘I Found Out’ absolutely gripping. Those songs all appear on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), Lennon’s first solo album after leaving the Beatles . It’s an undeniable, acknowledged masterpiece, widely recognised as one of the greatest albums in the history of rock’n’roll. But even at that, its true significance is often not fully understood.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band front and rear covers

Among the album’s many sources, Lennon’s scarifying dive into the depths of himself in primal-scream therapy is the most obvious, which has lead to the album being heard almost exclusively in personal terms. But part of Lennon’s daring was his willingness to explore how social forces shaped him as fully as the terror of abandonment he experienced as a child. In the absence of more substantive options for forging an identity, accepting the chains that society provides seems like a worthwhile choice – or, as Lennon succinctly put it, ‘a working­ class hero is something to be.’ Still, Lennon’s songs didn’t simply indict “the Man” or “the system”, as so many protest songs did. Lyrics like ‘Keep you doped with religion, sex and TV/And you think you’re so clever and classless and free’ exploded the pretences of counterculture hipsters, and challenged them to question how “liberated” and free they really were.

Of course, Lennon also understood that every movement needs its slogans, and he made use of and even coined some of the best of them. ‘ Give Peace a Chance ’ ‘ Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) ’, ‘ Power to the People ’ and the lovely ‘ Happy Xmas (War Is Over) ’ are all intentionally meant to preach to the progressive choir, to keep the spirits of activists up and their hopes high. But even those songs are often more complex than they are thought to be. The conviction that ‘War is over if you want it’ suggests that if war persists perhaps we have not sufficiently desired its end, or done enough to bring that end about. (Just this year Robert Randolph and the Family Band recorded a torrid cover of Lennon’s anguished ‘I Don’t Wanna Be a Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die’ about very different armed conflicts than the Vietnam War that Lennon had in mind.

Similarly, ‘ Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) ’ is going to get friend and foe alike. If you want to “shine on” you need to make sure your actions keep you on the uplifting end of karma’s ever­-turning wheel.

Finally, ‘ Imagine ’, too, is not merely a pastel vision of a utopian world. It is a challenge and a responsibility, a sentiment akin to Mahatma Gandhi’s statement that ‘We need to be the change we wish to see in the world’.

Sometime in New York City (1972) is Lennon’s most overtly political album, and its opening track, ‘ Woman Is The N***** Of The World ,’ is one of its most compelling songs. Co-written with Yoko, It is perhaps the first feminist anthem recorded by a prominent male rock star, and it marks both the impact his marriage to Yoko had on his evolving political consciousness, but also the deepening of his own understanding of women’s role in the world – and in his life. John and Yoko use of the charged term ‘n*****’ in the song was both a provocation and a deft bit of political analysis and guerilla marketing. Comparing the political oppression of women to the plight of blacks, and using the most racially incendiary term in the language to underscore the connection, incited heated and necessary debate, as it was intended to.

Some Time In New York City album cover Woman Is The N***** Of The World Single Sleeve Woman Is The N***** Of The World advertisement

Lennon knew as well that no truth is absolute, and that the presence of love can excite our deepest fears.

Many songs have been written about jealousy, but none match Lennon’s ‘ Jealous Guy ’ for insight and honesty. Declarations like ‘I was shivering inside,’ ‘I was swallowing my pain’ and ‘I began to lose control’ are rare in any style of popular music, let alone a delicate ballad. Lennon’s ability to plumb the depths of himself and state his fears so directly – with such a raw, eloquent beauty is one of his most profound gifts.

Meanwhile, ‘ I’m Losing You ’ explores those feelings of desperation in a musical context that reflects those emotions rather than soothes them. And, as always, Lennon could be caustic.

The fear of being abandoned and alone drives ‘ Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down And Out) ’, to its bitter conclusion: ‘I’ll scratch your back, and you knife mine.’

The serrated rhythms of ‘ Well, Well, Well ’ capture the mood of a couple – guess who – who are “nervous, feeling guilty” and talking about revolution ‘just like two liberals In the sun.’

Such moments of dread and self­-doubt require the gentleness and encouragement of ‘ Hold On ’ – ‘hold on, John; hold on, Yoko; hold on, world: It’s gonna be all right.’

The hard-fought optimism that love provides, the rock-solid conviction that, however difficult the struggle, you’re not in it alone, leads to the sweetness of ‘ Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) ’ – a paean to a true love child and the awareness, in one of Lennon’s most memorable lines, that ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’ That acceptance of the world and its inevitable changes is the ultimate gift of love. The inability to control life makes it more precious, because it requires knowledge of life’s evanescence, even as love has made life so much more desirable.

Which is the beauty and poignancy of ‘ Grow Old With Me ’, Lennon’s lovely, deeply felt wish for a long life with Yoko. The song was inspired by Robert Browning’s poem ‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’, and replies to a song Yoko had written called ‘Let Me Count the Ways’, drawing on the well-known sonnet that begins ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’ by Browning’s wife, Elizabeth Barrett. The nineteenth-century marriage of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning is among the most moving love stories in literary history, and John and Yoko clearly identified with them. Among the many reasons why ‘Grow Old With Me’ is notable is how strongly it counteracts the rock’n’roll mythology of living fast and dying young. It is a hymn to longevity, to the possibility that love can deepen and grow, that romance never has to end.

In one of his final interviews, Lennon described the central aesthetic question of his and Yoko’s life this way. ‘In a way,’ he told the New York Times critic Robert Palmer, ‘we’re involved in a kind of experiment. Could the family be the inspiration of art, instead of drinking or drugs or whatever? I’m interested in finding that out.’

While one of the innumerable tragedies of John Lennon’s death at the age of forty is that he never fully got the opportunity to answer that question, the fact that he asked it in the first place suggests that as far as he was concerned the ‘experiment’ he referred to had already reached an irrefutable conclusion. The life he had built with Yoko and their son Sean had provided plenty of material for great art. But as life became richer and more satisfying, its ephemeral nature became more apparent. When you’re experiencing so many moments that you wish would last forever, you are inevitably haunted by the awareness that they can’t.

The solution, Lennon understood, was a calm awareness that we are all living on ‘ Borrowed Time .’ That song’s gentle reggae lilt lightens the weight of its ideas, and captures the sense of wise acceptance that had increasingly come to be part of his world view. Lennon still lived his life with passion and intensity, still committed to his beliefs with conviction, but the anger that had been with him for so long had eased. Without question, there are many complex reasons for that welcome development, but the simplest reasons perhaps are the most determinative ones. He had settled into his marriage; he was enjoying fatherhood; he had come back refreshed to his music, and as he entered his forties, he had matured. He had discovered that many things could and should be important, but not everything had to be a matter of life or death. In short, he was happy.

Humour, always an under-appreciated aspect of Lennon’s music, was still very much a part of his new vision, hilariously, ‘ Crippled Inside ’ takes the serious theme of the lies of the world – and ourselves – to hide our vulnerabilities and fears, and sets it to a tinkly, honky-tonk beat. The song in that sense mirrors its subject – a cheerful surface genially concealing a scarier reality.

Similarly, the jaunty ‘ Nobody Told Me ’ comments on the confusion of living in confounding times (‘Most peculiar, mama!’) with such panache that it remains perfectly relevant as a soundtrack for today. ‘Scared’ and, particularly, the hauntingly beautiful ‘How?’ address the internal version of such confusion and terror, with characteristic honesty.

Perhaps Lennon’s greatest philosophical song is ‘ Watching the Wheels ’, which appears on Double Fantasy . It can be thought of as his explanation of his life to fans who had wondered what he’d been doing since 1975 when he had stopped making albums and devoted himself to his life with Yoko and Sean. ‘Ah, people asking questions, lost in confusion’ Lennon sings. ‘I tell them there’s no problems, only solutions.’ Given the tumultuous life he had lived to that point, that optimism was earned.

Without being at all self-righteous, the song also has a strong spiritual undercurrent. The wheel, being a circle, is one of the oldest symbols of unity in human history. The karmic wheel, the mandala, the wheel of fortune all spin, and, as the song suggests, peace of mind comes from neither panicking nor growing complacent with their turnings. That is the state of mind Lennon had achieved by the end of his life.

Acceptance is not necessarily passive. Lennon still believed the world could – be made a better place in both personal terms and for humanity at large. Speaking about Double Fantasy on the very day he was killed, Lennon describes himself as reconnecting with his audience in this way: ‘I’m saying “Here I am now, how are you? How’s your relationship going? Did you get through it all? Weren’t the Seventies a drag? Here we are, well, let’s try to make the Eighties good, because it’s still up to us to make what we can of it.”’

Double Fantasy album cover Watching The Wheels single cover

The confluence of those crucial events had a decisive effect on the remaining years of Lennon’s life. For the next five years he would disappear from public life almost completely, devoting himself to raising Sean and re-immersing himself in his life with Ono. It was an unprecedented move for a rock star of his fame and stature, and he characteristically threw himself into it without reserve. When he re-emerged again in 1980 to do interviews for Double Fantasy , an album dedicated to the ideal of family and domestic bliss that he had embraced with Ono, Lennon delivered spontaneous lectures on feminism and the importance of sharing gender roles in relationships.

When a reporter from Playboy asked if Lennon had been working on any ‘secret projects’ during this period, Lennon made it decidedly clear that his personal life was the only project he had been interested in – or had any time for. ‘Are you kidding?’ Lennon replied. ‘There were no secret projects going on in the basement. Because bread and babies, as every housewife knows, is a full-time job…And it is such a tremendous responsibility to see that the baby has the right amount of food and doesn’t overeat and gets the right amount of sleep. If I, as housemother, had not put him to sleep and made sure that he was in the bath by 7:30, no one else would have…Now I understand the frustration of those women because of all the work. And there is no gold watch at the end of the day.’

As strong a personality as you could encounter even on his most cooperative day, Lennon couldn’t stand the idea that some people viewed him as passively under Ono’s spell. ‘Listen, if somebody’s gonna impress me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Yoko Ono, there comes a point when the emperor has no clothes,’ he insisted. ‘There comes a point where I will see. So for all you folks out there who think that I’m having the wool pulled over my eyes – well, that’s an insult to me. Not that you think less of Yoko, because that’s your problem; what I think of her is what counts! But if you think you know me or you have some part of me because of the music I’ve made, and then you think I’m being controlled like a dog on a leash because I do things with her, then screw you. Because – fuck you brother or sister, you don’t know what’s happening. I’m not here for you. I’m here for me and her and the baby!’

For John Lennon, the truth was not a fixed category, but a shifting one that took into account all of the factors that determine the circumstances of our lives. He lived by a code of honesty, of self-revelation, of the belief that the best songs he could write were the ones that communicated a clear picture of who he was at the moment of their creation. That process of speaking person-to-person is how the truth took shape for him. His life and his work were continual experiments in discovery and rediscovery. His values remained constant. What changed were the times, the ways in which those values could best be presented and transmitted, and the definition of those values given the current state of the world.

Whether he was singing rock’n’roll songs or writing songs that captured how fragile our lives are, whether he was extolling the virtues of women or railing against the evils perpetrated by our governments, Lennon viewed his work as one rich story, one step on the journey to Creating a better world, one ongoing, never-ending search for truth.

‘I always consider my work one piece…and I consider that my work won’t be finished until I’m dead and buried – and I hope that’s a long, long time,’ he said on the last day of his life. ‘So to me it’s part of one whole piece of work from the time I became public to now…And the eighties is like, we’ve got a new chance.’

Every decade, every new year, every day, every moment constitutes a ‘new chance.’ As Lennon sings in ‘ Borrowed Time ’, ‘Now I am older/The more that I see, the less that I know for sure/Now I am older/The future is brighter, and now is the hour.’ Now, and whenever anyone hears any of these songs.

Written by Anthony DeCurtis Originally published in the John Lennon ‘ Gimme Some Truth ‘ 4 x CD Box Set

Here's What We Know About John Lennon's Tragic Childhood

John Lennon is a musical legend. From his time with The Beatles  — one of the biggest and most influential rock bands in history — to his solo work, Lennon is remembered as a musical genius. Even his untimely death at the age of 40 via assassination helped cement his place in musical history. However, we've learned a lot more about Lennon's personal life in recent years, and most of it is unflattering, to say the least. Lennon himself admitted he was a no angel in an 1980s interview with Playboy (via Ultimate Classic Rock ); he picked fights with men, physically assaulted women, and cheated on his wives. His own son, Julian Lennon , expressed his disgust with the person he remembered his father to have been, via Rolling Stone . 

Nothing can excuse John Lennon's horrific behavior, but with the information we now have about his history, we can see just how much his own childhood influenced his later behavior, and his early years were far from stable or normal. 

John Lennon's Father Wasn't a Part of His Life

John Lennon's father, Alfred Lennon, married his mother, Julia Stanley, when they were quite young. The two had met as teenagers and were both casual musicians. The Independent noted that Julia's family was less than enthusiastic about the pair's relationship — they felt Alf Lennon was low class. Alf and Julia were married in 1938 — practically on a whim — in secret and without any family present. Julia's family was mortified by the union, but begrudgingly accepted it. However, Julia and Alf weren't together for long. World War II soon broke out, leading Alf to take off and become a merchant seaman. But before he left, he and Julia managed to conceive their only son, John Winston Lennon.

John didn't see much of his father during his childhood — Alf didn't return to Liverpool until 1944, after which he soon separated from John's mother. John was around 5 years old at the time and wouldn't see his father again until he became an adult and was making it big with The Beatles. In a 1966 interview featured in Anthology (via  Ultimate Classic Rock ), John Lennon explained that his father was never a part of his life growing up.

"I never knew my father. I saw him twice in my life till I was 22 when he turned up after I'd had a few hit records. I saw him and spoke to him, and decided I still didn't want to know him," he said.

John Lennon Was Taken From His Mother -- Who Later Died Young

Lennon's mother, Julia, was regarded as the wildcard of the Stanley family. As much as she enjoyed defying her family and marrying Alf, according to The Guardian , Julia truly wasn't ready to be a wife and mother. While Alf was away, Julia was restless; she continued to go to parties and meet men. Again, her family disapproved, but they were furious when Julia became pregnant by a passing Welsh soldier. Under extreme pressure from her embarrassed family, Julia gave her baby daughter up for adoption.

The last straw came when Julia decided to move in with a man named Bobby Dykins, as noted by The Independent. Julia's family was horrified that their daughter would take up with another man while still legally married. Even though Julia and Alf were separated, they never actually divorced. Julia's sister, Mimi Smith, was furious with her sister and reported her to social services. Mimi declared that Julia was unfit to care for her little boy and that she should be John's legal guardian. Under extreme pressure, Julia reluctantly gave John to Mimi. Despite this arrangement, Julia would remain a fixture in her son's life — and John himself adored his mother. Julia often visited her son and encouraged his interest in music — she even taught him to play the banjo. But tragedy came when Julia Lennon was struck and killed by a passing car at the age of 44. John was 16 when his mother died and was absolutely gutted by the loss.

John Lennon Wasn't The Nicest Kid

John Lennon grew up with some stability while living with his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George Smith, but he was not quite right emotionally. Between the upheaval in his early years, plus his mother's untimely death, Lennon was emotionally hardened, even downright nasty, as a youth. As noted by The Guardian , Lennon was known for shoplifting and bullying students and teachers alike. According to one of his former art school classmates, Thelma Pickles, Lennon took particular amusement in cruelly mocking the disabled.

"Anyone limping or crippled or hunchbacked, or deformed in any way, John laughed and ran up to them to make horrible faces," she said.

Besides his mother, Lennon would suffer the loss of other important people in his life while he was still young, including his uncle and father figure, George; his childhood best friend, who died of a brain hemorrhage; and his mentor and manager, Brian Epstein, who died of a barbiturate overdose. These traumatic losses seemed to add to Lennon's emotional hardness, which did not improve with age. Lennon's oldest son, Julian, has remained outspoken about how callous and absent his father behaved towards him and his first wife , Cynthia Powell. In a statement issued to  Rolling Stone in 2000, Julian Lennon expressed how hurt he had been by his father.

"I had a great deal of anger towards Dad because of his negligence and his attitude to peace and love. That peace and love never came home to me," he said.

John Winston Lennon (1940 - 1980)

John Winston Lennon was born Wednesday the 9th of October 1940 in Liverpool Maternity Hospital in Liverpool, England , to his parents, Alfred Lennon & Julia Stanley . [1] [2]

His father was a merchant seaman, and wasn't home at the time of his birth. While his father visited and sent regular paychecks for the first years of John's life, he stopped in February 1944, at which time he disappeared. When Alfred finally showed up months later in July, John's mother had already begun a new relationship with another man and was pregnant . She rejected Alfred's proposal to renew their relationship, but they never legally divorced.

Soon after this, Julia's sister, Mimi Smith , complained to Social Services that a small child was sleeping in the same bed as Julia and her lovers, and Julia turned John over to her to raise. While living with Aunt Mimi, John was visited by his father. In July 1946, Alfred took John intending to leave for New Zealand with him, but Julia and her latest boyfriend Bobby Dykins followed him and fought over his custody. John initially chose his father, but as a five year old he was torn between two parents and in the end chose to stay with his mother.

He returned to the home of George and Mimi Smith and continued to be raised by them. Uncle George and John's mother Julia helped to guide him in his love of music from an early age. His uncle died in 1955 when John was almost 15 and his mother continued after this to foster his musical talent. In 1956 she bought him his first guitar.

In 1958, on the way home from the Smith home, Julia was struck by a car and killed.

DASHED INTO CAR. Misadventure Verdict on Liverpool Woman. A verdict of misadventure was returned by the jury to-day on Mrs. Julia Lennon, aged 44, of 1 Bloomfield Road, Liverpool, who died after being struck by a motor car while she was crossing Menlove Avenue on July 15. A witness, the Coroner (Mr. J. A. Blackwood) told the jury, had said Mrs. Lennon had not appeared to look either way before she walked into the roadway. Then she saw the approaching car, made a dash to avoid it, and dashed into the car. Liverpool Echo - Friday 15 August 1958. Page 1 Accessed 21 Dec 2018 [3]

Through all of his personal changes, John began to branch out on his own. He formed a band at the age of 15 called The Quarrymen. In 1957, he asked Paul McCartney to join the band. George Harrison would later join the band as well. And in 1960, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Pete Best on drums, and bassist Stuart Sutcliffe became The Beatles. By 1962, Sutcliffe had been replaced with McCartney and Ringo Starr on drums, and the Fab Four were officially formed.

While all this was happening (around 1957), John began seeing Cynthia Powell . The two became an item, and in 1962 they discovered that Cynthia was pregnant. They were married in August of 1962, and were encouraged by The Beatle's manager to keep the marriage a secret. [4] Julian Lennon was born on 8 April 1963 while The Beatles were on tour and in the midst of "Beatlemania", and John didn't get to see his son until he was three days old.

The Beatles were a big hit, and created album after album, touring between them for several years from 1962 to 1966. Their popularity soared and John and Cynthia seemed to enjoy the time together.

But in 1965–1966, John met Yoko Ono and she began to come between them. After 1967, The Beatles stopped touring and focused on producing albums. Yoko seemed to bring out the activist in Lennon, as the two of them were often seen together in Vietnam War protests after they met (between 1968–1970). On 8 November 1968, John and Cynthia's relationship ended in divorce.

On November 21, 1968 Yoko had a miscarriage. They named the boy John Ono Lennon II and buried him in a secret location. [5]

John and Yoko were married on March 20, 1969 in Gibraltar. [6] Lennon decided to leave The Beatles in September 1969, but agreed to keep his departure a secret. By April 1970, Paul had released his first solo album, making the whole breakup of The Beatles public and the secret was out. John began his own solo career, and released his own first solo record with Yoko accompanying him on the tracks. He also did some concert tours, although the majority of these ended around 1972.

John and Yoko began to drift apart, and he started a relationship with May Pang for a short time in 1973, known as the "Lost Weekend". [7] After a while, Yoko stepped back into his life, and they resumed their marriage (late 1974), although Yoko agreed to allow May to remain as John's mistress.

Yoko became pregnant, and on 9 October 1975 Sean Lennon was born. At the same time, John continued his solo career, having a number of hit songs. But by 1977, he formally announced his retirement, wanting to spend more time with his family. [7]

After a few years, he began making music again and in October 1980, he had a new hit record. He began plans for a new album and then tragedy struck. Lennon was shot four times in the back by Mark David Chapman on 8 December 1980 at age 40, as he and Yoko were returning to their apartment in New York. [1]

He was rushed to the emergency room but pronounced dead on arrival. His body was cremated and the ashes spread over Central Park. [1] That area of the park is now known as "Strawberry Fields". [1] His memory lives on in the music he made as well as the impact he left of people who continue to buy merchandise inscribed with his words and images. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]

Much of his continued posthumous fame is due to the efforts of his widow. [7]

• ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Find A Grave, database and images (accessed 07 October 2019), memorial page for John Lennon (9 Oct 1940–8 Dec 1980), Find A Grave: Memorial #618 , ; Maintained by Find A Grave Cremated, Ashes scattered, who reports Ashes scattered in New York City's Central Park, in the area now known as Strawberry Fields.
• ↑ "England and Wales Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008" John W Lennon, 1940; from "England & Wales Births, 1837-2006" citing Birth Registration, Liverpool South, Lancashire, England, citing General Register Office, Southport, England. familysearch.org
• ↑ British Newspaper Archive
• ↑ "England and Wales Marriage Registration Index, 1837-2005" John T Lennon and null, 1962; from “England & Wales Marriages, 1837-2005,” citing 1962, quarter 3, vol. 10D, p. 1209, Liverpool South, Lancashire, England, General Register Office, Southport, England. familysearch.org
• ↑ The Beatles Bible. beatlesbible.com
• ↑ "Beatle Lennon, Yoko Ono Are Married in Gibraltar." Fresno Bee , 20 March 1969, p. 2-A.
• ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) 07 December 1990, obit for Lennon's Legacy "Imagine no possessions, "I wonder if you can," "No need for greed or hunger, "A brotherhood of man." - John Lennon, "Imagine", GenealogyBank.com (accessed 7 October 2019) genealogybank.com
• ↑ "United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014" John Lennon, Columbia, South Carolina, United States, 08 Dec 1990; from "Recent Newspaper Obituaries (1977 - Today)" GenealogyBank.com citing, born-digital text. familysearch.org
• ↑ "United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014" John Lennon, California, United States, 18 Nov 1990; from "Recent Newspaper Obituaries (1977 - Today)" GenealogyBank.com citing San Francisco Chronicle, born-digital text. fammilysearch.org
• ↑ "United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014" familysearch.org Mr John Lennon, Georgia, United States, 07 Dec 1990; from "Recent Newspaper Obituaries (1977 - Today)" citing Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The, born-digital text.
• ↑ "United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014" John Lennon, Texas, United States, 08 Dec 2012; from "Recent Newspaper Obituaries (1977 - Today)" citing Dallas Morning News, The: Blogs, born-digital text. familysearch.org
• Wikipedia contributors, "John Lennon," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikipedia:John Lennon (accessed July 23, 2014).

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https://www.facebook.com/EricAlperPR/photos/a.274547715906023/4796728163687933/

"Sean Taro Ono Lennon (Japanese: ?? ?? Hepburn: Ono Tar?, born October 9, 1975) is a British American musician, songwriter, producer and guitarist. He is the son of Yoko Ono and John Lennon."

Cynthia and John's only son was Julian.

Meltzer, Brad, Heroes for my son, pgs 24-25, Harper Collins Publishing

John is 23 degrees from Maria Mitchell , 32 degrees from Carl Sagan , 28 degrees from Tycho Brahe , 36 degrees from Nicholaus Copernicus , 32 degrees from Eise Eisinga , 23 degrees from Caroline Lucretia Herschel , 28 degrees from Thomas Maclear , 19 degrees from Simon Newcomb , 26 degrees from Isaac Newton , 35 degrees from Pierre Henri Puiseux , 27 degrees from Beatrice Tinsley and 25 degrees from Edith Woodward on our single family tree . Login to find your connection.

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John Lennon Biography

John Lennon, a legendary musician and songwriter, was one of the founding members of the rock band, The Beatles. Hailing from Liverpool, England, Lennon achieved great fame and success not just in his native country, but throughout the world. The Beatles, with Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, became the greatest and most influential band of the rock era, and also the most commercially successful one. Lennon’s childhood, marred by domestic instabilities, fueled his dream of becoming a famous musician. His poignant and evocative lyrics, influenced by his painful experiences, have entertained generations of music lovers. After the disbanding of The Beatles, Lennon enjoyed a thriving solo career and was actively involved in political and peace activism. Tragically, his life was cut short when he was shot to death at the age of 40.

Quick Facts

• British Celebrities Born In October
• Also Known As: John Winston Ono Lennon, John Winston Lennon
• Died At Age: 40
• Spouse/Ex-: Cynthia Lennon (m. 1962–1968), Yoko Ono (m. 1969–1980)
• Father: Freddie Lennon
• Mother: Julia Lennon
• Children: Julian
• Born Country: England
• Quotes By John Lennon
• Died on: December 8, 1980
• Place of death: The Dakota, New York, United States
• Ancestry: British American
• Notable Alumni: Liverpool College Of Art
• Cause of Death: Assassination
• City: Liverpool, England
• Education: Liverpool College Of Art

Childhood & Early Life

John Winston Lennon was born on 9 October 1940 in Liverpool, England. His parents were Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman of Irish descent, and Julia Stanley. When Lennon was five years old, his parents had a bitter separation, and he went to live with his aunt Mimi and uncle George. Despite his family problems, Lennon’s mother encouraged his musical interests, while his aunt Mimi was against them. Lennon attended Dovedale Primary School and later Quarry Bank High School.

Formation of The Beatles

At the age of 16, Lennon formed a band called the Quarry Men, inspired by Elvis Presley. In 1957, he met Paul McCartney and invited him to join the group. Tragically, Lennon’s mother was killed in a car accident in 1958 when he was only 17 years old, which deeply affected him and led to a fear of abandonment. Lennon was a troublemaker at school and failed all his exams. He was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art but was eventually thrown out.

The Beatles and Solo Career

Lennon, along with McCartney, recruited other musicians like George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe, and Paul Best to form the band known as The Beatles in 1960. They became popular in Britain with hits like “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You.” The Beatles achieved international fame and became superstars, surpassing the success of American rock bands. After the death of their manager in 1967, the Beatles disbanded, and Lennon launched his solo career. His debut solo album, “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band,” was released in 1970.

Legacy and Personal Life

Lennon is best remembered as the co-founder of The Beatles, the best-selling band in history. He married Cynthia Powell in 1962, but they divorced in 1968. Lennon then married Yoko Ono in 1969, who played a significant role in his career after the breakup of The Beatles. Tragically, Lennon was shot by Mark David Chapman on 8 December 1980 and died from his injuries. He left behind a lasting legacy in the music industry.

Awards and Achievements

Throughout his career, Lennon received numerous awards and accolades. He won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1967 for “Michelle” and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement award with The Beatles in 2014. The Beatles also won an Academy Award for Best Music for the film “Let It Be” in 1970. Lennon had 25 number one singles on the US Hot 100 chart as a performer, writer, or co-writer.

Personal Life & Legacy

Lennon married Cynthia Powell in 1962, but they divorced in 1968. He then married Yoko Ono in 1969, and they had one son together. Lennon’s life was tragically cut short when he was shot by Mark David Chapman in 1980. He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in New York’s Central Park. Lennon’s influence and legacy continue to resonate in the music industry.

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Who Is Yoko Ono?

Multimedia artist and performer Yoko Ono was born into an aristocratic family on February 18, 1933, in Tokyo, Japan, the eldest of Isoko and Eisuke Ono's three children. Eisuke, who worked for the Yokohama Specie Bank, was transferred to San Francisco, California, two weeks before she was born. The rest of the family soon followed. Her father was transferred back to Japan in 1937, and Ono subsequently enrolled at the elite Peers School (formerly known as the Gakushuin School) in Tokyo. The family moved to New York in 1940 and then back to Japan in 1941 when her father was transferred to Hanoi on the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Ono remained in Tokyo through World War II, enduring the great firebombing of 1945. At the age of 18, Ono moved with her parents to Scarsdale, New York. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College but left to elope with her first husband, Toshi Ichiyanagi.

Gaining Notice as an Artist

Settling in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, Ono developed an interest in art and began writing poetry. Considered too radical by many, her work was not well received, but she gained recognition after working with American jazz musician/film producer Anthony Cox, who later became her second husband. Cox financed and helped coordinate her "interactive conceptual events" in the early 1960s. The couple had one child together, daughter Kyoko, in 1963. Ono's art often demanded the viewers' participation and forced them to get involved. One of her most famous works was the "cut piece" staged in 1964 when members of the audience were invited to cut off pieces of her clothing until she was naked, an abstract commentary on discarding materialism.

Marriage to John Lennon

Ono first met Lennon of the Beatles on November 9, 1966, when he visited a preview of her exhibition at the Indica Gallery in London, England. Lennon was taken with the positive, interactive nature of her work. He specifically cited a ladder leading up to a black canvas with a spyglass on a chain, which revealed the word "yes" written on the ceiling. The two began an affair approximately 18 months later. Lennon divorced his first wife, Cynthia (with whom he had a son, Julian, born in 1963), and married Ono on March 20, 1969.

The couple collaborated on art, film and musical projects, and became famous for their series of "conceptual events" to promote world peace, including the "bed-in" held in an Amsterdam hotel room during their honeymoon in 1969. After her marriage to Lennon, Ono struggled with her ex-husband over custody of Kyoko. She recorded the song "Don't Worry Kyoko" as an effort to reach out to her child. In 1971, her ex-husband disappeared with Kyoko, and Ono did not learn for years what had happened to her daughter. Apparently, Kyoko spent more than a decade living with a religious cult called the Walk with her father.

Life After Lennon's Death

Ono and Lennon became parents in 1975 with the arrival of their son, Sean . Lennon quit the music business to raise Sean, and when the famed musician returned to the spotlight in 1980, he was shot by a deranged fan, Mark David Chapman, only a few feet from Ono.

Since Lennon's death, Ono has continued her career, recording albums, performing concert tours and composing off-Broadway musicals. She has exhibited her art internationally, and the first U.S. retrospective of her work opened in New York City in 2002. Involved in an array of social endeavors, she co-founded Artists Against Fracking with son Sean in 2012 to lobby against drilling for natural gas in New York State.

Ono has also continued to honor Lennon's memory with a number of different projects. On October 9, 2002, she inaugurated the LennonOno Grant for Peace award to commemorate what would have been Lennon's 62nd birthday. On Lennon's birthday in 2007, she unveiled the Imagine Peace Tower on Videy, an island in Iceland. This outdoor artwork, created by Ono, represented her and Lennon's commitment to world peace.

Recent Projects

Ono made music history in 2011, becoming the oldest artist to have a number-one hit on the dance charts. She was 78 years old when "Move on Fast" made it to the top spot. Ono has also enjoyed renewed interest in her artwork with a special exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2015. This show featured more than 100 works by Ono from 1960 to 1971.

In February 2016, Ono made headlines after she was admitted to a New York hospital. She sought treatment after experiencing flu-like symptoms. Her illness delayed her from traveling to France for a career retrospective showing of her art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon. That same year, Ono participated in a group exhibition at the Istanbul Modern with the installation work entitled "Ex It," which features trees growing out of coffins. She also promoted the unveiling of a peace collection called Skylanding in Chicago.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Yoko Ono
• Birth Year: 1933
• Birth date: February 18, 1933
• Birth City: Tokyo
• Birth Country: Japan
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Yoko Ono is a multimedia artist who became known worldwide in the 1960s when she married Beatles frontman, John Lennon.
• Theater and Dance
• Astrological Sign: Aquarius
• Sarah Lawrence College
• The Peers School (The Gakushuin School)
• Nacionalities
• Cultural Associations
• Asian American

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Yoko Ono Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/celebrities/yoko-ono
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: January 12, 2022
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• What can you do to create a peaceful world? Just be what you really are—a person who is kind.
• Walk barefoot on the grass and dance in the wind. Do it in your mind.

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John Lennon: The Troubled Beatle

He had a boyish smile, a rebellious hairstyle, and a lilting Liverpudlian accent. His genius extended beyond music, to wordplay and visual arts. While he excited and inspired teens, he frightened parents and pastors, and was a target of the Nixon-era FBI. Who was this British phenom? Well, that would be the inimitable John Lennon.

With bombs falling around the hospital, John Lennon was born on October 9th, 1940, in the midst of World War II. His mother Julia gave him the middle name ‘Winston’ in honor of Britain’s leader at the time. His father, Alfred, was a merchant marine and was absent at John’s birth, as he would be for much of John’s childhood.

Lennon’s childhood was unsettled, with an absent father and a mother who simply couldn’t handle motherhood… After the age of four, Lennon didn’t even live with his mother, instead living with his childless Uncle George and Aunt Mimi. The two were a stern, but loving influence on Lennon throughout his childhood, though Mimi did what she could to discourage Lennon’s love of music. It was she who famously told him “The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it.”

Lennon’s mother was more supportive of his musical interest, in fact, it was Julia who bought the guitar for him. Though Lennon didn’t live with his mother, he remained close to her, regularly visiting her house where the two would listen to Elvis records and pluck chords on the banjo, ukelele, and guitar.

Julia was also a frequent visitor at her sister’s house, where she spent mornings drinking tea with Mimi and chatting with her son. After one of these tranquil visits, tragedy struck. As Julia crossed the street to head home one day, she was struck and killed by a passing car. John was sixteen years old when his mother died, and he carried the weight of the tragedy with him for the rest of his life…

At the time Julia died, Lennon was already having trouble in school. He was smart, no doubt about that, but his wit and attitude got him into trouble with teachers. He created comics of teachers and fellow students in a work he titled “The Daily Howl,” and detention sheets from Quarry Bank High School show that Lennon once received three detentions in one day, with offenses over the years ranging from fighting in class, to sabotage, to “just no interest whatsoever.”

While he was goofing off in school, Lennon was paying close attention to his music. He was playing in a band called the Quarry Men – it was one of this band’s gigs that would ultimately lead to the formation of The Beatles.. On July 6th, 1957, the Quarry Men played the Woolton village fete and one of Lennon’s bandmates decided Lennon should be introduced to a friend of his. And who was that friend? Well, you might have heard of him – that would be Paul McCartney. That day, McCartney, who was two years John’s junior, taught Lennon how to tune a guitar and impressed him with a rendition of the song Twenty Flight Rock. The atmosphere of the day stuck with Paul, even if the exact year didn’t:

“At Woolton village fete I met him. I was a fat schoolboy and, as he leaned an arm on my shoulder, I realised he was drunk. We were twelve then, but, in spite of his sideboards [sideburns], we went on to become teenage pals.”

It was only two weeks before Paul was asked to join the Quarrymen, and he agreed. Shortly thereafter, Paul introduced John and the other band members to his friend George Harrison. It was 1958, and three of the four Beatles had found each other.

But music couldn’t be John’s only focus. Though he had failed his exams upon leaving high school, Lennon’s aunt and former headmaster pulled strings and persuaded the Liverpool College of Art to accept the rambunctious teen who did show incredible promise in the arts. Lennon started attending the Liverpool College of Art in the fall of 1957. He didn’t fare much better at the art school than he had in a traditional school, though he did meet his first wife Cynthia Powell. Lennon never had the right equipment for his classes, and was always borrowing Powell’s tools. It was also up to Powell to help Lennon on his exams, though he ultimately failed them anyway…

For all the help she gave him, Lennon was not a kind and loving boyfriend to Powell. In fact, he could be downright abusive, even acknowledging as much by later, saying: “I was in sort of a blind rage for two years. I was either drunk or fighting. It had been the same with other girlfriends I’d had. There was something the matter with me.”

The relationship lasted, though, and in 1962 Powell discovered she was pregnant with Lennon’s child. In keeping with the expectations of the time, the two were married in a simple civil ceremony in Liverpool. Lennon’s music career had already taken priority over all else, and they skipped a honeymoon so he could play a gig the night of their wedding.

Cynthia gave birth to Julian Lennon in 1963, and with the Beatles’ star on the rise in Liverpool, John didn’t pay much attention to his son. In fact, his relationship with his son was no better than it was with his wife, something Julian publicly and angrily spoke about as an adult.

“Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him: his wife and son. How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces—no communication, adultery, divorce?”

John was the only married member of the Beatles, and the only one with a child, and the group’s manager tried to keep this information about Lennon under wraps as he marketed the group. Girls wanted their pop stars to be single and cute – not married.

Beatles Years

The Beatles’ rise to fame began at the Cavern Club, but it was interspersed with performances in Germany. Along with Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison, bandmates Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best made up the band’s lineup for their infamous stays in Hamburg, Germany at the Kaiserkellar club. The boys, no more than 22, and George only 17, lived in horrid conditions and survived on pills and alcohol during their stay. But the audiences loved them, especially Lennon’s onstage antics. One night he was supposed to be onstage, but instead was fooling around with a woman and the two only broke up when the club’s bouncer dumped cold water on them. Instead of getting dressed to go onstage, Lennon grabbed his guitar and joined his bandmates only wearing underwear and a toilet seat around his neck.

“You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.”

When the Beatles returned to Liverpool and resumed playing at the Cavern Club, they caught the attention of a young record store owner in the area. Familiar with the group from their visits to his store, Brian Epstein went to one of their performances, saw their potential, and signed on as their manager. He got them a record contract and was by their side until his death in 1967. Epstein was gay, and homosexuality was still illegal in England during the 1960s. Over the years, rumors have persisted that Lennon and Epstein had an affair, largely stemming from a vacation the two took together to Spain in 1963 – mere weeks after his son was born. Lennon denied the rumors, saying: “I was on holiday with Brian Epstein in Spain, where the rumours went around that he and I were having a love affair. Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But it was a pretty intense relationship.”

By early 1964, the Beatles were hitting the airwaves in America. Then, on February 7, 1964, their plane touched down at the newly renamed Kennedy Airport in New York City. Crowds of teenagers greeted them, hanging over railings, screaming, and waving signs. When they made their way through the crowds to speak to the press , Lennon treated the American media to a dose of his classic wit. When a reporter asked why people loved the Beatles so much, Lennon replied, “If we knew we’d form another group and be managers.”

Two days later, the lads from Liverpool made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. As the studio audience screamed and 73 million Americans watched from home, the Beatles performed five songs. During the show, each Beatles name appeared on the screen. Lennon’s name had an addendum, though – it read “Sorry girls, he’s married.” Keeping Cynthia and Julia’s existence quiet was not possible for a man about to become one of the most recognizable in the world.

1964 saw the release of both the movie and album, A Hard Day’s Night, marking all four Beatles’ foray into the film industry. Lennon would later appear in a satirical film called “How I Won The War.” Not to be constrained by only two artistic mediums, Lennon also published a book in 1964 entitled “In His Own Write,” which he later followed up with a volume entitled “A Spaniard In The Works.”

As the sixties continued on, the Beatles stayed at the top of the pop culture world, and that high profile meant Lennon’s mouth could get him and the band into trouble very easily. In 1966, he famously told a reporter that the “Beatles were more popular than Jesus.” When the remark was published, it caused an uproar. So-called ‘Beatle Burnings’ were held around the United States, during which teens and their parents burned albums, photos, and other Beatles memorabilia.

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.”

In 1967, the Beatles took rock n’ roll to new heights with the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a psychedelic concept album that featured a collage of historic figures and celebrities on its cover. Initially, Jesus was supposed to be among those pictured in the artwork, but after Lennon’s 1966 remarks he was removed from the array.

One of the songs on Sgt. Pepper, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, has long been thought to be drug-related as the major words in the title create the acronym ‘LSD.’ However, Lennon said that his inspiration for the song’s imagery came from one of his favorite works of literature, Alice in Wonderland, with the overall idea stemming from one of Julian’s childhood drawings of a school friend named Lucy.

During this time period, Lennon had begun moving in avant garde artistic circles, primarily due to his new relationship with artist Yoko Ono. He had met Ono at one of her gallery shows, and at the time their meeting consisted solely of her handing him a card that said nothing but ‘breathe’ on it. Though Lennon was still married to Cynthia, he and Ono began spending time together, even recording an album called “Two Virgins” that featured both of them standing fully nude on the cover. Lennon and Cynthia did not officially divorce until 1968, though the relationship between Ono and Lennon was well known, with Ono spending time in the recording studio as the Beatles worked, and even lent her voice on the White Album song “Bungalow Bill.”

In 1969, Lennon and Ono married in a ceremony at the Rock of Gibraltar, an event that was famously chronicled in the song “The Ballad of John and Yoko”: “Finally made the plane into Paris, honeymooning down by the Seine. Peter Brown called to say, you can make it okay; you can get married in Gibraltar near Spain.”

While their wedding was a relatively isolated affair, they welcomed the world to their honeymoon. Lennon and Ono set up camp in a bed at the Amsterdam Hilton to promote world peace, lying in bed fully clothed for a week. They repeated the stunt two weeks later in Montreal, and it was at the Montreal bed-in that they recorded “Give Peace A Chance,” surrounded by members of the press and other friends and followers.

By this time, Lennon was fully dedicated to his life with Ono, and each of the Beatles had started to move in their own directions. Ono’s presence in the recording studio and her input on their music irked the other Beatles, and they had all also begun exploring different artistic worlds. The disintegration of the world’s most famous band had begun. Lennon was the first to tell the others he was leaving the group, and did so in September 1969. But it was Paul McCartney who broke the news to the world publicly that he was leaving, and the Beatles officially split on April 10th, 1970.

After the Beatles

Though he had left the Beatles behind, Lennon did not abandon music. His first post-Beatles album was released in 1970, with many of the songs inspired by primal scream therapy he had begun practicing as a method of dealing with the trauma he experienced in his childhood. The song that perhaps most demonstrates the influence of primal scream is “Mother,” which includes the lyrics, “Mother, you had me but I never had you, I wanted you, you didn’t want me, So I, I just gotta tell you, Goodbye, goodbye.”

By the time Lennon released his next solo album, he and Ono were living in the United States, settling into the luxurious Dakota apartment building in New York City. It was here that he wrote the most iconic of his solo work – Imagine. The song and the album were huge hits, and nearly 40 years after Lennon’s death the song remains an international anthem of peace and love.

Lennon and Ono enjoyed living in New York City, but the U.S. government did not enjoy having the counterculture icons in the midst of the largest American metropolis. In 1972, eighteen year olds would have the right to vote for the first time – and 18 year olds listened to John Lennon when he sang and spoke about the evils of war and the actions of the government. That made him a threat to Richard Nixon’s re-election, and in 1972, the government revoked Lennon’s visa based on these fears. They threatened deportation, and not wanting to be separated from Ono, Lennon essentially stopped his involvement with countercultural activities, but as threats of deportation continued, Lennon was forced to hire attorneys and continuously appeal to stay in the country. In 1976, only after the Nixon presidency fell apart under the pressure of Watergate, Lennon received his green card and was safe to stay in the United States.

During the struggle to obtain his green card, Lennon was also struggling with his relationship with Ono. The two essentially separated for over a year, and Lennon even moved out to California to live with a former secretary, May Pang, with whom Ono had encouraged him to begin a relationship. Lennon later referred to this period of his life as the “Lost Weekend,” as it was fueled by alcohol and drugs and marked by aggressive behavior from Lennon. He once tried to strangle Pang, and got thrown out of a club for drunkenly heckling the Smothers Brothers.

By Lennon’s absence, Ono realized that she needed him in her life. She ultimately came to blame society’s pressures, and not him, telling Playboy: “John was a fine person. It was society that had become too much…I’m thankful to John’s intelligence, that he was intelligent enough to know this was the only way that we could save our marriage, not because we didn’t love each other but because it was getting too much for me.”

“I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.”

When the two reunited, Ono quickly became pregnant. She gave birth to Sean Lennon on John’s 35th birthday, October 9th, 1975. With the birth of Sean came a sea change in Lennon’s life. Where he had been an absent father to Julian, he was a doting father to Sean, giving up music and instead spending his time as a house husband. Lennon also began spending time with Julian again during the 1970s; Julian visited New York and Lennon taught his first son guitar techniques.

For five years, Lennon focused on domestic life, but by 1980 he felt the tug of the artistic muse again. He began writing songs, recorded an album, and officially re-entered the music scene with the release of Double Fantasy in the fall of 1980. John Lennon was back.

John Lennon’s Death

But his return was not to last. Two months after Double Fantasy was released, Lennon and Ono headed to the recording studio to work on new songs he had written. On their way to the studio, Lennon stopped to sign a copy of Double Fantasy for Mark David Chapman, a fan who was waiting outside the Dakota. On their return shortly before 11:00 PM, Chapman was still waiting outside the Dakota. As Lennon and Ono walked by, Chapman pulled a gun and fired five shots at Lennon. An hysterical Ono called for help, and the NYPD arrived, officers loaded the wounded Lennon into the back of a cruiser, and drove him to Roosevelt Hospital. But their efforts were fruitless, John Lennon was declared dead on arrival at 11:00 PM, December 8th, 1980. The United States heard the news via a Monday Night Football broadcast, and the news quickly made it to the rest of the world.

Crowds began to show up at the Dakota, singing Lennon’s songs and carrying signs in his memory. No funeral was held; instead Ono had his body cremated and scattered his ashes in Central Park. The location is now “Strawberry Fields,” a memorial dedicated to Lennon that is visited by legions of fans each year.

John Lennon’s public life was dedicated to art and to the promotion of peace. While his private life was quite a bit more complicated and dramatic, there is no doubt that he holds a special place in the lives of those who grew up with him and his music, as well as the children and grandchildren of those baby boomers who have come to love his music and his legacy. A groundbreaking musician, an experimental artist, Lennon turned his private pain into beauty for the world. His legacy has lived on for decades after his death, and surely will continue to live on long after we’re all gone.

John Lennon Video Biography

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/the-beatles/10439755/John-Lennon-school-detention-slips-reveal-his-naughty-side.html
• https://www.beatlesbible.com/1957/07/06/john-lennon-meets-paul-mccartney/
• http://www.brianepstein.com/
• https://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045
• https://www.beatlesbible.com/1966/11/07/john-lennon-meets-yoko-ono/
• https://www.vogue.com/article/john-lennon-yoko-ono-relationship
• http://ultimateclassicrock.com/john-lennon-yoko-ono-bed-in/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break-up_of_the_Beatles
• http://ultimateclassicrock.com/john-lennon-fbi-history/
• http://ultimateclassicrock.com/john-lennon-lost-weekend/

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Bios, band histories for the greatest in rock.

John Lennon Bio: The Man Who Shaped The Music Industry As We Know It

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Quick Facts

Professional career, instruments played, vocal style, songwriting partnership with paul mccartney, top concerts, best records with the beatles, best solo and plastic ono band records, controversies and scandals, career earnings, famous quotes.

• With The Beatles:
• With Yoko Ono:

Bottom Line

Research citations:.

John Lennon is one of the most notorious musicians in the world. Even though his life was cut short at age 40 , his legacy has inspired a generation of bands and musicians . John Lennon is best known for his role as one of the main songwriters, guitar players, and singers for The Beatles . But he has achieved worldwide fame for his own solo material as well as his peace activism. So, who was John Lennon ? Read this John Lennon bio to learn more about the iconic musician.

• Full name : John Winston Ono Lennon
• Birthdate : October 9, 1940
• Birthplace : Liverpool, England
• Nickname : “The smart Beatle”
• Nationality : English
• Zodiac sign : Libra
• Siblings : Julia Baird (half-sister)
• Children : Julian and Sean Lennon
• Partners : Cynthia Powell (1962-1968) and Yoko Ono (1969)
• Most successful songs with The Beatles : “Come Together,” “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” “Norwegian Wood,” “I Am the Walrus,” “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “Rain,” and “In My Life.”
• Most successful albums with The Beatles :  Revolver, Sgt. Peppers, The Beatles, Rubber Soul, and  Abbey Road
• Most successful songs (solo and with Plastic Ono Band): “Jealous Guy,” “Watching the Wheels,” “Mind Games,” “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” “Mother,” “Give Peace a Chance,” “Imagine,” and “Instant Karma.”
• Most successful albums (solo and with Plastic Ono Band):  Imagine, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Double Fantasy, Mind Games, Some Time in New York City, Walls and Bridges, Rock n Roll,  and  Milk and Honey
• Net worth : $200 million at the time of his death in 1980 (nearly $700 million today)
• Awards : Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Grammy for Album of the Year ( Mind Games ), NME Award for British Vocal Personality, Grammay for Best Score Soundtrack ( Let It Be ), Grammy for Song of the Year (“Michelle”), NME Award for Most Missed, NME Awards for Best Album ( Imagine  and  Electric Warrior ), and more .

John Lennon was born in Liverpool, England. Liverpool is a town in Northwest England and is the fifth-largest metropolitan in the country and is 286 kilometres (178 miles) from London.

As of 2022, the population is 912,000, though it was around 800,000 when Lennon was born. The Beatles were said to make Liverpool famous ; they often played at The Cavern Club and were the most popular of the 200 bands in the local area.

John Lennon was born to Julia and Alfred Lennon.

John didn’t have much of a relationship with his parents. His father was often away from home and even immigrated to New Zealand in secret (it’s said that his father intended to take Lennon with him but these accusations are mixed).

His mother met a new man and they started a family together. John’s aunt, Mimi, ended up getting custody of him. He lived with her and her husband for the majority of his childhood and adolescence.

While John Lennon lived with his aunt and uncle, his uncle bought him a mouth organ. His mom would come to visit on a regular basis. She played him records and taught him how to play the banjo.

Music was a big part of Lennon’s life, but as he got older, he became more rebellious. Lennon admitted that he’s a loudmouth and a troublemaker. Looking back, he realized he never truly had a home and would stir trouble in his friends’ lives.

John Lennon first played with Paul McCartney in Lennon’s old band, The Quarrymen. But with the addition of George Harrison, drummer Pete Best, and Lennon’s friend Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, the band then became The Beatles.

They got their manager, Brian Epstein, in 1962, who inspired them to adopt their signature clean-shaven and pretty boy appearance. After McCartney switched to bass and Ringo Starr replaced Best on drums, the band became the famous lineup we all know today.

Only one year later, The Beatles reached mainstream success in the UK with their debut album,  Please Please Me . Another year later, they did their iconic performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in the US. In 1965, all members were appointed as Members of the Order of the British Empire.

The three other Beatles members idolized Lennon. Lennon was the oldest of all of them. He was not only smart but had a quick wit and a snarky sense of humor that would come out in Beatles music, most notably the song “I Am the Walrus.”

Lennon also made many of the creative decisions for the band. For example, after  Help , Lennon was ready for a change. That’s around the time when The Beatles only became a studio band. Lennon, Harrison, and their wives were unknowingly given the psychedelic LSD after a dinner guest spiked their coffee with the drug. This drug would then influence a new era for The Beatles, creating more inventive music as opposed to chart-topping hits.

Lennon and McCartney became more involved with The Beatles’ business affairs, even forming Apple Corps. While Lennon said the decision to form a business was for artistic freedom, he was inept at managing the business.

Lennon left The Beatles in 1969. He focused on his solo albums, with his album,  Imagine , reaching commercial success. Some of his songs, such as the title track, became an anthem for anti-war and peace.

Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, also released music together with Plastic Ono Band. The most famous song they released was “Happy Xmas (War Is Over”.

Musicianship

John Lennon not only wrote songs that would become the most popular in music history. Lennon was a passionate musician and songwriter. He wrote music that did more than entertainment — he inspired the world with his music.

John Lennon was best known as the rhythm guitarist for The Beatles, but he could play more than guitar. Lennon first started playing the mouth organ, harmonica, and banjo as a kid. He then moved to acoustic guitar before picking up an electric. He also played bass, but only did so sparingly.

Even though he played multiple string instruments, he mainly composed his songs on the piano. His work on the piano also became more noticeable in his solo work. However, he did play piano and keyword for some Beatles songs. Lennon most noticeably played the Mellotron Keyboard on the song “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

John Lennon hated his own singing voice but critics to this day say he has one of the best singing voices, specifically in rock and pop music.

Unlike McCartney, Lennon had a fierce voice that inspired a generation of rock singers. During performances, he would outdo himself and nearly rupture his vocal cords.

In some songs, such as “Twist and Shout,” Lennon couldn’t sing the words so he would scream (he also had a cold during the recording of that song and he wasn’t able to sing properly).

Even though Lennon hated his voice, this insecurity led to more vocal exploration. During The Beatles’ recordings, producer George Martin often double-tracked Lennon’s vocals at his request.

When he sang ballads, Lennon was often cathartic and emotional. This is why many critics say Lennon gave one of the best vocal performances.

The songwriting partnership between Lennon and McCartney is the most successful of its kind in music history. This collaboration is what truly led The Beatles to fame and fortune.

What made this partnership was the unique situation they were in. Most bands have one person in charge of writing music and/or lyrics. In other bands, every member brings a little something to the table. But Lennon and McCartney collaborated on all aspects of the songwriting process: compositions, lyrics, music, and they even brought this magic to the studio during the production phase.

Their connection was truly magical. Lennon described he and McCartney as seeing “eyeball to eyeball”. However, this partnership only lasted during the first half of The Beatles’ career. During the final years of the band, McCartney and Lennon would have minimal collaboration and sometimes none at all (even though, legally, the two had to be credited with the songs they wrote together).

Career Highlights

John Lennon had one of the most successful music careers in history. But there are still highlights from his career, both with The Beatles and with his solo work.

The top concerts that Lennon performed with The Beatles include:

• Candlestick Park – San Francisco (1966)
• Sam Houston Coliseum – Houston (1965)
• Festival Hall – Melbourne (1964)
• Concert Hall – Philadelphia (1964)
• Washington Coliseum – Washington D.C. (1964)
• Empire Theatre – Liverpool (1963)
• Palais de Sports – Paris (1965)
• Circus-Krone-Bau – Munich (1966)
• Karlaplansstudion – Stockholm (1963)
• Apple Rooftop – London (1969)

Top concerts that Lennon performed without The Beatles include:

• With Elton John : Madison Square Garden – New York City (1974)
• With Stevie Wonder : Madison Square Garden – New York City (1972)
• With Frank Zappa and Yoko Ono : Filmore East – New York (1971)

Revolver, Sgt. Peppers, The Beatles, Rubber Soul, and  Abbey Road.

Imagine, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Double Fantasy, Mind Games, Some Time in New York City, Walls and Bridges, Rock n Roll, and  Milk and Honey.

John Lennon didn’t have the strongest family unit. Even though he had good relations with his biological mother, his Aunt Mimi raised him as her son. However, he didn’t have a good relationship with her father and didn’t speak to him for 20 years at one point. This impacted his own mental health as well as how he acted as a husband and father.

Cynthia Powell/Lennon . John Lennon met his first wife, Cynthia Powell (who would later become Cynthia Lennon) in 1957 while both attended art school. However, Cynthia was engaged at the time and Lennon wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

Cynthia was a more tame person while Lennon was intimidating. She would often change herself for him; for example, she dyed her hair blonde after discovering Lennon’s obsession with the bombshell actress, Brigitte Bardot.

Lennon wrote the songs “Jealous Guy” and “Getting Better” about his marriage with Cynthia. He was possessive and would erupt in rage. He would strike her if he got jealous; in his memoir John , Cynthia states that Lennon hit her after she danced with former Beatles member Sutcliffe. Because of his temper, the two had an on-and-off and overall rocky relationship.

The two married in 1962, but only because Cynthia got pregnant with Julian. This was problematic because this was right before Beatlemania. Lennon’s good looks were a big hit for fans and he had to keep his marriage a secret.

Cynthia said their marriage started declining when Lennon began using LSD. Because of his drug use, he lost interest in her. Cynthia left Lennon after she discovered he was having an affair with Yoko Ono. The two were then divorced and Cynthia gained custody of their son.

Yoko Ono . Lennon met Yoko Ono in 1966 at London’s Indica Gallery, where Ono had an art exhibit. Lennon was intrigued by Ono’s art. They were introduced by the gallery’s owner and Ono started telephoning Lennon.

Lennon was still married to Cynthia at the time and Cynthia asked about Ono. However, she and Lennon hadn’t had any relations at this time.

This changed when Cynthia went on vacation and Lennon invited Ono over to make music. The two ended up making love and Cynthia caught them when she came home.

Lennon and Ono got married in 1969. During their marriage, they recorded a number of songs together and participated in anti-war protests.

Julian . John Lennon’s first son, Julian, was born in 1963. His birth was unexpected and Lennon had major Beatles commitments at the time. He didn’t even meet his son until three days after he was born. Again, the birth of his son was kept a secret. Fans had crushes on Lennon and their management feared his status as a family man would hurt their success.

Lennon had a difficult relationship with his son, Julian. They were distant and Julian felt he was closer with McCartney than his own father. McCartney even wrote the song, “Hey Jude,” to comfort Julian (the song was originally called “Hey Jules”).

Lennon and Julian became even more distant after Lennon married Yoko Ono. When they moved to New York City in 1971, Julian didn’t see his father for a couple of years. The two reconnected when Julian turned 17; unfortunately, Lennon died shortly after.

Like his father, Julian had an interest in music. He can play guitar, drums, and he can sing. He released a few albums that became successful.

Sean . John Lennon has one son with Yoko Ono, Sean. He was born in 1975. Previously, Yoko Ono suffered three miscarriages before Sean’s birth. Lennon was more hands-on with Sean than Julian and he argues that Sean was born as a product of love and not a “whiskey bottle.” In addition, Sean was born when Lennon took a hiatus from his music career, so he was a devoted father and house-husband.

Sean followed in his father’s footsteps. Today, Sean is a very successful musician. He has various projects, such as Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, Cibo Matto, Claypool Lennon Delirium, Mystical Weapons, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, and his solo material.

John Lennon’s biggest controversies are ones we already covered, specifically the treatment of his former wife, Cynthia, and the myriad of affairs he had. He was not only abusive to his wife but also to his son, Julian. According to their housekeeper, Lennon would lash out at Julian for small things such as bad table manners.

While he wasn’t said to be physically abusive to Yoko Ono, he was still controlling. He would come off as loving to her; in reality, he was obsessive.

Many even report he was so co-dependent on her that he would take her to Beatles writing and recording sessions (they had a strict no girlfriends/wives/partners rule). Lennon even had an affair with the couple’s assistant, May Pang. Ono even said that was a relief because Lennon was so jealous.

Lennon’s drug use was also a big controversy. He would frequently indulge in drugs, specifically LSD and marijuana. He was also an avid drinker. He would also do these drugs around his home in the presence of small children.

While it’s not confirmed, many assume that Lennon was struggling with multiple mental health problems, specifically depression. He even said he wrote the song “Help” as a “cry for help” and even said that he “would like to jump out the window.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Lennon had a massive ego. The moment that proved his arrogance was when he was The Beatles were more popular than Jesus .

At the time of his death in 1980, John Lennon was worth $200 million. That is nearly $700 million today (2022).

John Lennon lived in England up until 1971 when he and Yoko immigrated to the United States. They lived at The Dakota, a historic home that has been owned by various actors, artists, and other musicians.

On December 8, 1980, John Lennon autographed a copy of his album Double Fantasy  for Mark David Chapman while outside of his home, The Dakota, with Yoko Ono.

When the couple returned home at 10:50 p.m., Chapman shot Lennon at the entryway of their own home. He shot him twice in the back of the head and twice in the shoulder. He was pronounced dead at 11:15 p.m. Lennon was cremated and Ono scattered his ashes in Central Park. The Strawberry Fields Memorial was set up in that same spot.

Initially, Chapman said he murdered Lennon because of his “Beatles are more popular than Jesus” quote (Chapman was a deeply religious man). However, in 2020, Chapman admitted he killed Lennon for self-glory and was young and disillusioned at the time. Today, he calls his act despicable and he’s deeply sorry.

Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. His sentence was 20-years-to-life. He’s still serving his life sentence.

John Lennon revolutionized popular music. Rock music was very different in the 1950s. The Beatles made rock music popular and also normalized the “band” as a music group.

John Lennon and the rest of The Beatles troupe also created the style and attitude of rock n’ roll, specifically British rock n’ roll. Not only that, but Lennon expanded rock’s stylistic qualities, introducing concepts to the genre that were never thought of before.

Even after The Beatles, Lennon became a prominent figure. He advocated for peace and created music that spread a wider message. He was brave and took risks with his career and music. To this day, there are constant Lennon tributes and memorials. Even Liverpool Airport changed its name to Liverpool John Lennon Airport.

• “Life is what happens to you, While you’re busy making other plans.”
• “I’ve always been politically minded and against the status quo.”
• “The only way to deal with critics is to go over their heads direct to the public.”
• “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”
• “I was a working-class macho guy who was used to being served and Yoko didn’t buy that.”
• “The Beatles music died then, as musicians. That’s why we never improved as musicians; we killed ourselves then to make it. And that was the end of it.”
• “Part of me suspects that I’m a loser and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.”
• “It just seemed natural for us, if we made an album together, for both of us to be naked.”
• “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink.”
• “It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.”
• “I no longer believe in myth, and Beatles is another myth. The dream is over.”
• “I like rock and roll, man, I don’t like much else.”
• “A genius is a form of madness, and we’re all that way, you know.”
• “There’s no other time but the present. Anything else is a waste of time.”
• “The Beatles gave everything they had to give, and more. Going back to the Beatles would be like going back to school.”
• “THEY, whoever they are, don’t stand a chance because they can’t beat love.”
• “If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
• “Art is only a way of expressing pain.”
• About his son, Sean: “He didn’t come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish.”

Discography (Studio Albums)

With the beatles :.

• Please Please Me
• With The Beatles
• Introducing…The Beatles
• Meet The Beatles!
• Twist and Shout
• The Beatles’ Second Album
• The Beatles’ Long Tall Sally
• A Hard Day’s Night
• Something New
• Beatles for Sale
• Beatles ’65
• Rubber Soul
• Yesterday and Today
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band
• Magical Mystery Tour
• The Beatles (White Album)
• Yellow Submarine
• John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
• Walls and Bridges
• Rock ‘n’ Roll 

With Yoko Ono :

• Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins
• Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions
• Wedding Album
• Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band
• Some Time in New York City
• Double Fantasy

Answer : Apparently, Lennon’s last words to McCartney were “Think of me every now and then, old friend.”

Answer : Okay, this is something I didn’t know. Every Beatle member was a vegetarian…except for Lennon. However, he did experiment with vegetarianism

Answer : Here are some that I found online: • He was in several bands before forming The Beatles • He was legally blind (which is why he wore those round glasses in the last few years of his life) • He was a terrible driver • He claimed to have seen a UFO in the 70s

John Lennon was a notorious musician. While he’s most famous for being the founding Beatles member and major songwriting contributor, he is also famous for his solo work and his material with his wife Yoko Ono.

John Lennon was born in Liverpool, England in 1940 and was murdered in 1980 by a fan right in front of his New York home.

• Wikipedia , 1 , 2
• British Heritage
• Cheat Sheet
• Danny Dutch
• Roadie Music

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