John Lennon

John Winston Lennon (Liverpool, October 9, 1940 - New York, December 8, 1980) was a British artist, musician, singer-songwriter, activist, composer, producer, writer and pacifist. Known for being the leader and founder of the rock band The Beatles and considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

He was born in Liverpool, where as a teenager he was immersed in the British skiffle boom; he formed the band The Quarrymen in 1956, which would later become The Beatles in 1960. When the group disbanded, Lennon launched a solo career, releasing several albums including John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and iconic songs like "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine"; most of them express his socialist and pacifist ideas. After marrying Yoko Ono in 1969 he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. He temporarily withdrew from the music scene in 1975 to raise his young son Sean, but resurfaced with Ono in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy . He was assassinated that same year.

He displayed a rebellious character and trenchant wit in his music, film, literature, and drawing, as well as in his statements at press conferences and interviews. In addition, the controversy followed him due to his constant political activism together with Ono. In 1971 he moved to Manhattan, where his opposition to the Vietnam War and his ability to mobilize people led to numerous attempts by the Nixon administration to imprison him and expel him from the country; meanwhile, his songs were adopted as hymns of the counterculture and various dissidences.

As of 2012, Lennon's solo sales in the United States exceeded fourteen million units, and as a performer, author, or co-writer, he is responsible for twenty-five number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2002, he was placed eighth in a BBC poll of the "100 Greatest Britons", while in 2008 he was ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as the fifth greatest singer of all time. In addition, he is listed as the third best composer of all time from the same publication, only surpassed by Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan. After his death, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock Hall of Fame in 1994.

Biography

1940-1957: early years

John Winston Lennon was born during World War II on October 9, 1940 in Liverpool Maternity Hospital, the son of Julia and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman of Irish descent, who was absent during the birth of their son. Due to his duty as a soldier and sailor in the middle of the war. His parents named him John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John "Jack" Lennon, and then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill. His father was often away from home, but regularly sent paychecks to the 9 Newcastle Road, Liverpool, where Lennon lived with his mother; however, the checks stopped coming when he was arrested in February 1944 for being "absentee without leave". Six months later he returned home and offered to look after his family, but Julia—by then pregnant with another man—rejected the idea. Under considerable pressure, Julia turned over Lennon's care to her sister, Mimi Smith, after Mimi Smith denounced the family situation. on several occasions to Liverpool social services. In July 1946, Lennon's father visited Smith and secretly took his son to Blackpool, intending to take him to New Zealand with him. Julia followed them. —along with his current partner, «Bo bby »Dykins- and, after a heated argument between the two, Alfred forced the boy, only five years old, to choose who he would stay with. Lennon chose her father twice, but as her mother walked away from her, he began to cry and followed her.From that moment it would take twenty years for Lennon to see her father again.

Mendips, the house of George and Mimi Smith, where Lennon lived most of his childhood and adolescence.

For the rest of his childhood and adolescence he lived with his childless uncles Mimi and George Smith in a house they owned called Mendips, located at 251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton. His aunt used to buy him volumes of stories, while that his uncle, a rancher on a family farm, bought him a harmonica and had him solve crossword puzzles. His mother visited Mendips almost every day and when Lennon was 11 years old he was often the one who visited her. Jovial and liberal in character, he represented a very different figure from the conservative and often prejudiced personality of Aunt Mimi.

In the nearby Mendips neighborhood, John made his first lifelong friendships as a child. Around the corner from his house on Vale Road lived Pete Shotton, Ivan Vaughan and Nigel Walley; all three would be original members of The Quarry Men. Above all, he would establish an intimate relationship with Shotton, with whom he shared a rebellious spirit and a sense of humor that more than once earned them be punished and humiliated with blows at school (practice promoted by English education at the time), being known by teachers as "Shennon and Lotton", or "Lotton and Shennon". One of the favorite places of Lennon and his friends during childhood, was a wooded garden that belonged to to a Salvation Army orphanage, called Strawberry Field, located less than 500 meters from his home.

In September 1980, he spoke about his childhood, his family, and his rebellious character:

A part of me wanted to be accepted by all the facets of society and not be the musician mouth and lunatic that I am. But I can't become something I'm not. Given my attitude, the parents of the other children [...] instinctively recognized what I was, that is, a troublemaker. They knew that he was not going to be a conformist and that he would influence their children, which is what then really happened. I did my best to cause problems at the friends' house that I had, partly because of envy, because I didn't have that which they call home. Although he actually had it [...] There were five women who were my family. Five smart and strong women. Five sisters. Those women were fantastic [...] That was my first feminist education [...] One of them turned out to be my mother [...] I didn't know how to face life. I had a husband who escaped to the sea in the middle of a war and couldn't with me. By then I was four and a half years old. I ended up living with her older sister. That knowledge and the one I wasn't with my parents made me see that parents are not gods.

He regularly visited his cousin, Stanley Parkes, who lived in Fleetwood. Seven years his senior, Stanley took him out on walks and to local cinemas. During his school holidays, Parkes often visited him with Leila Harvey, another cousin, and they all went to Blackpool two or three times a week to see shows. They would visit Blackpool Tower, where they would see the likes of Dickie Valentine, Arthur Askey, Max Bygraves and Joe Loss. Parkes noted that Lennon was particularly fond of George Formby. After the Parkes family moved to Scotland, the three cousins used to spend their school holidays together there. Parkes recalls: “John, Cousin Leila and I were very close. As we drove from Edinburgh to Durness, we used to have a lot of fun. This was from when John was nine until he was sixteen." Lennon was 14 years old when his uncle George died, aged 52, of hepatic hemorrhage on June 5, 1955.

Lennon was raised Anglican and attended Dovedale Grammar School, as did Shotton and Vaughan. In 1952 he passed the entrance examination for the first part of his secondary education at Quarry Bank High School, which he attended. he attended until 1957. According to Harvey, at that time he was "a happy-go-lucky, good-tempered, docile, and merry boy". He often drew comic strips, which he compiled in a school notebook he called The Daily Howl, but despite his artistic talent, his school reports were negative: "Definitely down the road to failure... hopeless... more of a clown in class... doing waste the time of the rest of the students".

In 1955 rock and roll broke out and in 1956 the so-called "skiffle craze" (skiffle craze), becoming passionate like the millions of British teenagers who made up the generation born during the horror of the last war. John then established a deep bond with his mother, going to her home in Blomfield Road, Liverpool, where she played him Elvis Presley records and taught him to play the banjo, demonstrating how to play "Ain't That a Shame" from Fats Domino

His mother bought him his first guitar in 1956, a Gallotone acoustic for the modest sum of five pounds ten shillings, money Julia "loaned" John on the condition that the guitar would remain in her house, and not of Mimi, knowing full well that her sister was not supportive of her son's musical aspirations. Mimi, skeptical that Lennon would one day be famous, assumed that he would become bored with music, often telling him, "The guitar is gone." very good, John, but you will never be able to make a living from it." On July 15, 1958, when Lennon was 17 years old, his mother, who was returning home from visiting the Smiths, died after being struck by a car. police officer who was driving drunk.

In 1957 Lennon failed all his O-level exams and was only accepted into Liverpool College of Art after his aunt intervened by speaking to the headmaster. Once at school, he began dressing as a Teddy boy and was known for disrupting classes and ridiculing teachers. As a result, he was excluded from the painting class and the graphic arts course, as well as being threatened with expulsion from the school for his behavior, which included sitting on the lap of a nude model during the anatomical drawing class. He failed the annual exam despite the help of some classmates and his future wife, Cynthia Powell, and was "kicked out of school before his last year".

1957-1970: from The Quarrymen to The Beatles

1957-1966: Formation, Fame and Merchandising, and Years of Touring

At the age of 15, Lennon formed the skiffle group The Quarrymen. Named after their school, Quarry Bank High School, the group was formed in September 1956. By the summer of 1957, The Quarrymen were already giving concerts combining skiffle and rock and roll. Lennon met Paul McCartney on July 6, 1957, during The Quarrymen's second concert, at a party held in the garden of St. Peter's Church in Woolton; shortly after McCartney joined the group.

McCartney has said that John's aunt "thought John's new friends were low class" and often patronized him when he came to visit his nephew. According to Paul's brother Mike, the McCartney's father also disapproved of their new friendships, saying that Lennon would bring his son "a lot of trouble"; however, he would later allow the band to rehearse at his home (at 20 Forthlin Road). During this time, at the age of eighteen, Lennon wrote his first song, "Hello Little Girl", which would reach the UK Top 10 when it was performed by The Fourmost almost five years later..

McCartney suggested that his friend George Harrison join as lead guitarist. Lennon thought the 14-year-old Harrison was too young to join the group. McCartney had to set up an audition where Harrison played "Raunchy" for Lennon to hear and accept. Later, Lennon's art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe joined as bassist. They became "The Beatles" in the early 1960s after the other members left the group. In August of that year, The Beatles were booked for forty-eight performances in Hamburg, Germany, and at the urgency of a drummer, they invited Pete Best to join them. Lennon was already 19 years old and his Aunt Mimi didn't like him at all. the idea of the trip, so he begged him to continue his studies. After their first tour in Hamburg, they agreed to another in April 1961 and a third in April 1962. Like the other members, Lennon began to regularly taking phenmetrazine in Hamburg, as well as amphetamines, which served as a stimulant during their long nightly performances.

Brian Epstein, the band's manager since 1962, had no artist-management experience, yet he was influential in the group's choice of clothing and performance onstage. At first, Lennon was opposed to the idea of wearing a suit and tie, but later accepted it, saying, "I'll wear a bloody balloon if someone's going to pay me." McCartney replaced Sutcliffe as bassist after Sutcliffe decided to stay in Hamburg, and drummer Ringo Starr replaced Best, thus completing the four-piece lineup that would last until the band's breakup in 1970. They released their first single "Love Me Do" on October 5, which reached number 17 on the charts. British hits. They recorded their first album, Please Please Me, in just ten hours on February 11, 1963, the day Lennon suffered the effects of a bad cold, very noticeable in his vocal performance. of the last recording of the day, "Twist and Shout". The Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership contributed 9 of the 14 songs. With a few exceptions—including the album's title track—Lennon had to leave out his taste for puns in songwriting, going so far as to say, "We were just writing songs... pop songs without much effort put into them other than what is necessary to create a sound; and the lyrics were almost irrelevant". Regarding the idea that Lennon was always considered the leader of the group, McCartney explained: "We all admired John. He was older [...] he was the most resourceful and intelligent ».

The Beatles achieved commercial success in the UK in early 1963. When their first child, Julian, was born in April, Lennon was away from home on tour. During his performance at the Royal Variety Show, which was attended by the Queen Mother and several other British royal figures, Lennon taunted the audience by commenting, "For our next song, I'd like to ask for your help. Those of you in the cheapest seats can clap [...] and the rest of you just jingle your jewels". on the television show The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964; the group then embarked on two years of touring internationally and filming movies, all the while writing hit songs. During that time Lennon wrote two books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works. The Beatles received recognition from the British establishment when they were made Members of the Order of the British Empire in the 1965 Queen's Honors.

Lennon (to the front) arriving in Madrid for the pair of concerts that The Beatles would give in Spain in July 1965.

Lennon's uneasiness grew as the screams of concert-going fans grew louder, making it impossible to hear the music, and the band's musical quality began to suffer. already dominated by the songs of Lennon-McCartney, whose lyrics received more attention from critics than in the early days of the partnership. The song "Help!" de Lennon expresses his own sentiments in 1965: "I meant it... It was me asking for 'help'." weight (he would later refer to it as his "Fat Elvis" period), and realized that he was subconsciously looking for a change. The following March he took LSD for the first time without knowing it, when his dentist he mixed it with coffee during a dinner he had arranged for Lennon, Harrison, and their wives. The dentist informed them of what he had done, and advised them not to leave his house because of the possible effects; however, the group members left, ignoring his warnings. Later, in a nightclub elevator, everyone hallucinated that it was on fire: "We were all screaming [...] hot and hysterical." In March 1966, during an interview with journalist Maureen Cleave of the Evening Standard, commented: "Christianity will go. It will fade and shrink in size [...] We are more popular than Jesus now — I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity." The comment went largely unnoticed in England., but five months later it created a great deal of controversy when it was published in the United States by the youth magazine Datebook. The consequences of the scandal—the burning of The Beatles records, the activity of the Ku Klux Klan, and the threats against Lennon—contributed to the band's decision to abandon touring.

1967-1970: years of study, separation and solo beginnings

Deprived of his routine of live performances after his last commercial concert in 1966, Lennon felt lost and wanted to leave the band. Since his inadvertent introduction to LSD, his addiction to drugs had increased, and he was almost always under its influence for much of 1967. According to Ian MacDonald, Lennon's continuing experience with LSD during that year brought him "close to losing his identity". 1967 was also the year of the release of "Strawberry Fields Forever", praised by Time magazine for its "astonishing ingenuity", and from the group's most acclaimed album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which revealed the stark contrast between Lennon's new lyrics and the simple love songs of the Lennon-McCartney duo's early years^{[citation needed]}

In August of that year, after being introduced to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group attended a weekend of personal instruction at his Transcendental Meditation seminar in Bangor, Wales, where they were informed of Epstein's sudden death.. "That's when I knew we were in trouble," Lennon would later say. "He wasn't wrong about our inability to do anything but play music, and he was afraid." Driven mainly by Harrison's and Lennon's interest in Eastern religion, the four Beatles would travel to an ashram. from the Maharishi in India for further guidance, where they composed most of the songs for The Beatles and Abbey Road.

The anti-war black comedy How I Won the War, featuring Lennon's only performance without the other Beatles in a feature film, hit theaters in October 1967 McCartney organized the band's first project after Epstein's death, the TV movie Magical Mystery Tour; written, produced and directed by the members of the band, and which was published in December of that year. It turned out to be his first work to receive negative reviews, but its soundtrack, which contains Lennon's acclaimed song "I Am the Walrus" (inspired by Lewis Carroll's literature), was a commercial success. Without Epstein, the members of the group were taking a more important role in the commercial activities of the same, and in February of 1968 they formed Apple Corps, a multimedia company that included Apple Records and other subsidiaries. Lennon described the venture as an attempt "to see if we could get artistic freedom within a business structure"; however, Lennon's experimentation with drugs, his excessive interest in Yoko Ono, and McCartney's marriage plans, they showed the need to put management professionals at the helm of Apple. Lennon invited Lord Beeching to take over, but he declined. Later, he contacted Allen Klein, who had managed The Rolling Stones and other bands during the British invasion. Klein was approved as a manager by Lennon, Harrison and Starr, but McCartney, dissatisfied with the idea, never signed the contract.

Lennon during his honeymoon with Yoko Ono in March 1969.

At the end of 1968 Lennon appeared in the film The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (which would be published until 1996) in the role of a member of the band Dirty Mac. Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell, also featured Ono's vocal collaboration in the film. Lennon and Ono were married on March 20, 1969, and later released a series of fourteen lithographs called Bag One depicting images of their honeymoon, eight of which were deemed indecent and the majority banned and confiscated. Lennon's creative approach continued beyond The Beatles, and between 1968 and 1969, Lennon and Ono they recorded three experimental albums together: Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins (better known for its cover artwork than its music), Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions and Wedding Album. In 1969 they formed The Plastic Ono Band, releasing the album Live Peace in Toronto 1969. Between 1969 and 1970 Lennon released the singles "Give Peace a Chance" (widely adopted as an anthem against the Vietnam War in 1969), "Cold Turkey" (documenting his heroin withdrawal), and "Instant Karma!". In protest of British intervention in the Nigerian Civil War, support for the United States in its "war against Vietnam", and (perhaps jokingly) the drop of "Cold Turkey" on the music charts, Lennon he returned his Membership of the Order of the British Empire medal to the Queen, although this had no effect on his membership of the order.

Lennon left The Beatles in September 1969, agreeing not to tell the media what happened while the band renegotiated their recording contract, but was outraged after McCartney released his own debut album as a soloist in April 1970. Lennon's reaction was: “Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it!" He would later write: "I started the band. I dissolved it. Simple as that". In subsequent interviews with Rolling Stone magazine, he revealed his resentment towards McCartney, saying: "I was a fool not to have done what Paul did, which was to use the situation to sell records. He also spoke of the hostility that the other members had towards Ono, and how he, Harrison and Starr "got fed up with being Paul's escorts [...] After Brian Epstein's death everything fell apart. Paul took over and supposedly directed us. But what was he running when we were just going in circles?

1970-1980: solo career

1970-1972: early solo success and activism

Advertising of the simple «Imagine» in the magazine Billboard, 18 September 1971 edition.

After The Beatles split in 1970, Lennon and Ono underwent primal therapy with psychotherapist Arthur Janov in Los Angeles, California. Designed to release the emotional pain of early childhood, the treatment consisted of attending two days a week for four months; Janov wanted to treat the couple longer, but they felt no need to continue and returned to London. Lennon's debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), was released. received with great acclaim. Critic Greil Marcus noted, "John's singing on the last verse of 'God' may be the finest in all rock". The album includes the song "Mother", which speaks about his feelings about being abandoned by his parents as a child, and the Dylan-esque song "Working Class Hero", an acid attack on the bourgeois social system that, due to the line "they keep fucking [fucking] the peasants", was banned by radio broadcasters. That same year, Tariq Ali's revolutionary political views, expressed when he interviewed Lennon, inspired the singer to write "Power to the People". Lennon also became involved with Ali during a protest against the Oz magazine lawsuit for alleged obscenity. Lennon called the proceeding "disgusting fascism", and together with Ono (as the Elastic Oz Band) they released the single "God Save Us/Do the Oz" and joined marches in support of the magazine.

With the next album, Imagine (1971), the critical response was more reserved. Rolling Stone reported that it "contains a large portion of good music", but warned of the possibility that "his stances will not only seem boring, but irrelevant". The album's title track would become an anthem for anti-war movements, while "How Do You Sleep?" it was a musical attack on McCartney in response to lyrics on the album Ram that Lennon felt, and which McCartney later confirmed, were directed at him and Ono. Although Lennon softened his position in the mid-'70s by saying that he had written "How Do You Sleep?" about himself. In 1980 he would reveal: "I used my resentment against Paul [...] to create a song [...] not a terrible or cruel revenge [...] I used my resentment and the separation with Paul and the other Beatles, plus my relationship with Paul, to write "How Do You Sleep." I didn't really go around with those thoughts in my head all the time."

Lennon and Ono moved to New York in August 1971, and in December released "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". Lennon against the war and against Nixon, embarking on a four-year drive to try to deport him. In 1972, Lennon and Ono attended a post-election soiree at the home of activist Jerry Rubin, after George McGovern lost the presidential election to Nixon. Embraced in an ongoing legal battle with immigration authorities, Lennon was denied permanent residence in the United States (a situation that would be resolved until 1976). Depressed, Lennon got drunk and had sex with one of the guests, leaving Ono baffled. Ono's song "Death of Samantha" was inspired by the incident.

Recorded in collaboration with Ono and backed by the New York band Elephant's Memory, Some Time in New York City was released in 1972. women, race relations, the role of the United Kingdom in Northern Ireland, and Lennon's troubles obtaining a Green Card, the album was received negatively—unlistenable—according to one critic. "Woman Is the Nigger of the World", released as a single from the album in the United States that same year, was televised on May 11 on The Dick Cavett Show. Many radio stations refused to broadcast the song because of the word nigger ("black" derogatory). Lennon and Ono gave two benefit concerts with Elephant's Memory and guests in New York for the Willowbrook School for the Mentally Ill. Presented at Madison Square Garden on August 30, 1972, they would be the last full-length concerts he would perform.

1973-1975: “the lost weekend”

John Lennon and driver Tom Snyder of the TV show Tomorrow1975. This was the last television interview Lennon gave before his death in 1980.

While Lennon was recording Mind Games (1973), he and Ono decided to part ways. The ensuing period, which lasted 18 months and which he later called his "lost weekend" (referring to Charles R. Jackson's novel of the same name), was spent in Los Angeles and New York in the company of May Pang. Mind Games, credited to “The Plastic U.F.O. no Band", was released in November 1973. Lennon also contributed a revamped version of "I'm the Greatest" to Starr's album Ringo (1973), released the same month (Lennon's 1971 version appears in the John Lennon Anthology).

In early 1974, Lennon was constantly intoxicated and his drunken binges with Harry Nilsson made headlines. Two widely publicized incidents occurred at The Troubadour club in March, the first when Lennon placed a sanitary napkin on his forehead and fought with a waitress, and the second, two weeks later, when Lennon and Nilsson were expelled from the same club after to interrupt the performance of the Smothers Brothers. Lennon decided to produce Nilsson's album Pussy Cats, so Pang rented a house on the beach in Los Angeles for all the musicians, but after a After a month of complete debauchery and recording sessions thrown into chaos, Lennon moved to New York with Pang to finish work on the album. In April, Lennon had produced the Mick Jagger song "Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)" which, for contractual reasons, remained unreleased for over 30 years. Pang would supply the recording for inclusion in The Very Best of Mick Jagger (2007).

Resettled in New York, Lennon recorded Walls and Bridges. Released in October 1974, it included "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", which featured Elton John on backing vocals and piano, and became Lennon's only solo number-one single that he was able to see in his lifetime. A second single from the album, "#9 Dream", followed before the end of the year. Starr's Goodnight Vienna (1974) again featured a contribution from Lennon, who wrote the title song and played piano. On November 28, he made a surprise appearance at the Thanksgiving concert. Thank you from Elton John at Madison Square Garden, thus fulfilling his promise to join the singer in a live show if "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", a song whose commercial potential Lennon had doubted, reached number one. Lennon performed the song along with "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Saw Her Standing There", which he introduced as "a song made by a distant old girlfriend of mine named Paul".

He co-wrote "Fame", David Bowie's first US number 1, where he played guitar and backing vocals during the recording in January 1975. That same month, Elton John topped the charts with his own version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", with Lennon on guitar and backing vocals (Lennon is credited on the single as "Dr. Winston O'Boogie"). Shortly after he would reconcile with Ono. He released Rock & # 39;n & # 39; Roll (1975), a covers album, in February. "Stand By Me", taken from the album and a hit in the US and UK, became her last single for five years. She made her last stage appearance during the ATV special A Salute to Lew Grade, recorded on April 18 and televised in June. Playing acoustic guitar, and accompanied by an eight-piece band, Lennon performed two songs from Rock 'n' Roll ("Slippin 'and Slidin'" and "Stand By Me"; the latter would be excluded from the television broadcast), followed by "Imagine". The band, known as Etc., wore masks on the back of their heads as if they had two faces, a hint at Grade, with whom Lennon and McCartney had been in conflict over control of The Beatles' publishing company (Dick James had sold most of his shares to Grade in 1969).

1975-1980: retirement and return

Following the birth of his second son Sean in October 1975, Lennon assumed the role of stay-at-home husband, beginning what would be a five-year retirement from the music industry during which he devoted his full attention to his family. That same month, he ended his contract with EMI/Capitol after the release of the compilation album Shaved Fish. all the time with him. He composed "Cookin'; (In the Kitchen of Love)" for Starr's album Ringo's Rotogravure (1976), collaborating on the recording of the track in June, in what would be their last recording session until 1980 She formally announced her retirement from musical activity in Tokyo in 1977, saying: "We've basically decided, without making any big decisions, to be with our baby as much as possible until we feel we can take time off to enjoy ourselves by working on things outside the family." During his time off he made several series of drawings, and produced a book containing a mix of autobiographical material and what Lennon called "crazy stuff"; would post later.^{[citation needed]}

He returned to the music scene in October 1980 with the single "(Just Like) Starting Over", followed the following month by the album Double Fantasy, containing songs written by Lennon while traveling which he had sailed to Bermuda the previous June, and which reflect the stability and success of his new family life. During the album sessions, Lennon and Ono recorded enough additional material for a planned future album, which would become Milk and Honey (released posthumously in 1984). Published by Lennon and Ono together, Double Fantasy was poorly received by critics, receiving comments such as that of Melody Maker, of which he said "reeks of indulgent sterility... a hideous yawn".

Murder and funeral

Entry into the Dakota building, where Lennon was killed.

At around 10:50 p.m. on December 8, 1980, shortly after Lennon and Ono returned to the Dakota, the New York apartment where they lived, Mark David Chapman, standing outside the building, shot Lennon in the back five times, of which four hit the back and left shoulder. He was taken to the emergency room of nearby Roosevelt Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival at 11:00 pm That same day, in the afternoon, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy to Chapman.

The next day, Ono issued a statement, saying, "There is no funeral for John," concluding with the words, "John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the same for him." His Body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in Central Park, where the Strawberry Fields memorial was later created. Chapman was convicted of second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 20 years. incarceration; he is currently still in jail, having been repeatedly denied parole.

Theories about CIA involvement in the assassination

Many theories have emerged, which contradict those that place Chapman as a person with psychiatric problems, that he had acted out of his right mind, or that he was an obsessed fan. Among them, the most commented and which have gained credibility over time, suggest that Chapman was actually an agent hired by the Central Intelligence Agency, to carry out the assassination of John Lennon, because the figure of Lennon was uncomfortable. for the Government of the United States as a result of their activism and their protests against the capitalist system, among other campaigns, which added supporters by thousands, thus shaking the stability of order and the image of the country.

Personal life

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Cynthia Lennon

Cynthia Lennon in 2010.

Lennon and Cynthia Powell (1939-2015) met in 1957 as fellow students at Liverpool College of Art. Although initially appalled by Lennon's attitude and appearance, she was drawn to him. After discovering that he was obsessed with Brigitte Bardot, she dyed her hair blonde. Lennon asked her out, but when she replied that she had a date, he told her, "Come on, I didn't ask you to marry me, did I?" or yes?" She often accompanied him to The Quarrymen concerts and traveled to Hamburg with McCartney's girlfriend at the time to spend time with him. Lennon, a jealous character, over time became possessive and continually terrorized at Powell with his anger and physical abuse. Lennon would later say that until he met Yoko Ono, he had never questioned his macho attitude towards women. The Beatles' song "Getting Better," he said, is his own story: "I used to be cruel to my wife—physically—and to any woman. I was a puncher. I couldn't express myself and resorted to hitting. I fought men and hit women. That's why I'm always with the peace thing."

When Lennon found out in 1962 that Cynthia was pregnant, he reacted by saying, "There's only one thing to this Cyn. We'll have to get married." The couple were married on 23 August at the Mount Pleasant Registrar's Office in Liverpool. Their marriage began just as Beatlemania was gripping the entire United Kingdom. He had a performance on his wedding night, and would continue to do so almost daily thereafter. Epstein, fearing that female fans would be turned off by the idea of a married Beatle, asked the Lennons to keep their marriage a secret. Julian was born on April 8, 1963; Lennon was on tour at the time and was unable to see his son for three days.

Cynthia credited LSD for the start of her marriage breakdown, which as a result made her feel that he was slowly losing interest in her. When the group traveled by train to Bangor, Wales, in 1967, for the Transcendental Meditation seminar with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a policeman did not recognize her and prevented her from boarding. She would later mention that this seemed to symbolize the end of her marriage.After arriving at her house in Kenwood, and surprising Lennon and Ono together, Cynthia left the house to stay with some friends. Alexis Mardas would later claim to have spent that night with her, and a few weeks later informed her that Lennon was seeking a divorce and custody of Julian on the grounds of his adultery. After negotiations, Cynthia gave in and agreed to divorce him for the same reasons. The case was settled out of court in November 1968, with Lennon obligated to give him £100,000 ($240,000 at the time) a month, a small annual payment, and custody of Julian.

Brian Epstein

The Beatles met Brian Epstein after a lunchtime performance at Liverpool's Cavern Club in November 1961. Of Jewish origin, Epstein was gay at a time of strong societal prejudice against homosexuality. According to biographer Philip Norman, one of the reasons he wanted to manage the group was his physical attraction to Lennon. Almost as soon as Julian was born, Lennon went on vacation to Spain with Epstein, leading to speculation about their relationship. Questioned about it later, Lennon said: "Well, it was almost a love story, but not quite. It was never consumed. But it was a very intense relationship. It was my first experience with a homosexual being aware of his condition. We used to sit in a cafe in Torremolinos looking at all the guys and I'd say, 'Do you like that one? Do you like this?' I was rather enjoying the experience, thinking like a writer all the time: I'm experiencing this." Shortly after his return from Spain, at McCartney's twenty-first birthday party in June 1963, Lennon physically assaulted the MC of the Cavern Club Bob Wooler for saying, "How was your honeymoon, John?" The MC, known for his puns and sarcastic comments, was playing a joke on him, as ten months had passed since Lennon's marriage, and the honeymoon still took two months. For Lennon, drunk for the incident, the issue was simple: "He called me queer, so I punched his fucking ribs."

Lennon loved to mock Epstein for his homosexuality and Jewish background. When Epstein asked for suggestions for a title for his autobiography, Lennon offered Queer Jew, and upon learning of the final title, A Cellarful of Noise, he parodied, "More like A Cellarful of Boys." On one occasion, when a visitor arrived at Epstein's house, Lennon, who was present, commented: "Have you come to blackmail him? If not, you're the only sodomite in London who hasn't." He also used to mock Epstein by changing some lyrics in his songs, such as changing "baby, you're a rich man too" [ "baby, you're a rich man"] to "baby, you're a rich fag Jew".

Julian Lennon

Julian Lennon during the inauguration of the John Lennon Memorial to Peace in Liverpool, October 2010.

Lennon's first child, Julian, was born as his commitments to The Beatles intensified due to the rise of Beatlemania during his marriage to Cynthia. Lennon was on tour with The Beatles when Julian was born on April 8, 1963. The birth, like his mother Cynthia's marriage to John, was kept secret because Epstein was convinced that if it became public such things would put jeopardize the commercial success of The Beatles. Julian remembers that at the age of four, when he was a little boy from Weybridge, “I was on my way home from school and I came walking in with one of my watercolor paintings. It was just a bunch of stars and that blonde girl I met at school. And dad said, "What's this?" I said, 'It's Lucy in the sky with diamonds' [Lucy in the sky with diamonds]". Lennon used it as the title for a Beatles song, and although it was later speculated that it was derived from of the initials LSD, Lennon insisted that "it's not a song about acid". McCartney has corroborated Lennon's explanation of the innocent origin of the song. Julian was estranged from his father, even closer to him. McCartney than Lennon. On a drive to visit Cynthia and Julian during Lennon's divorce, McCartney wrote a song, "Hey Jude," to comfort him. This would become The Beatles' song "Hey Jude". Lennon would later say, "That's his best song. It started out as a song for my son Julian [...] he turned it into 'Hey Jude'. I always thought it was about me and Yoko, but he denied it."

Lennon's relationship with his first son was always fractured, and after Lennon and Ono moved to New York in 1971, Julian would not see his father again until 1973. With Pang's encouragement, it was planned a reunion between him (along with his mother) and Lennon in Los Angeles, where they visited Disneyland. Julian began to see his father regularly, and Lennon arranged for him to play drums on a track by Walls and Bridges. He bought him a Gibson Les Paul guitar and other instruments, and encouraged his interest in music by teaching him guitar chord techniques. Julian recalls that he and his father "got along much better" during the time they were together. happened in New York: "We had a lot of fun, laughed a lot and had a great time overall."

In an interview with David Sheff of Playboy shortly before his death, Lennon commented: "Sean was a planned child, and that's where the difference lies. It's not that he doesn't love Julian. He is still my son, no matter if he came from a whiskey bottle or because there were no pills then. He is here, he belongs to me, and he will always be like this ». She also said that she was trying to reconnect with her then seventeen-year-old son, confidently predicting that "in the future, Julian and I will have much better bonds". very little in his will.

Yoko Ono

Lennon and Ono photographed by Jack Mitchell in 1980.

There are two versions of how Lennon and Ono met. According to the first, told by the couple, on November 9, 1966 Lennon visited the Indica Gallery in London, where Ono was preparing his conceptual art exhibition, and they were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar. Lennon was intrigued by Ono's work "Drive a nail", which consisted of visitors driving a nail into a wooden board, thus creating the work of art. Although the exhibition had not yet started, Lennon wanted to drive the nail into the board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked him, "Don't you know who he is? He is a millionaire! He could afford this." Supposedly Ono had not heard of The Beatles, but relented on the condition that Lennon pay his five shillings to which Lennon replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and I'll nail it down with an imaginary hammer." by McCartney, is that in late 1965, Ono was in London collecting original musical scores for a book John Cage was working on, Notations, but McCartney refused to give him any manuscripts for the book., although he suggested that Lennon could do it. When he asked, Lennon gave Ono the original script for "The Word" lyrics.

Ono began visiting and phoning Lennon's home, and when his wife asked for an explanation, Lennon told her that Ono was just trying to get money for his "avant-garde bullshit". In May 1968, while his wife wife was on vacation in Greece, Lennon invited Ono to his home. They spent the night recording what would become the album Two Virgins, after which, he said, "they made love at dawn". When Lennon's wife returned home she found Ono dressed in her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, "Oh, hi." Ono became pregnant in 1968, but lost the child, who was registered as John Ono Lennon II on November 21, 1968, a few weeks later. of getting divorced from Cynthia.

During his last two years with The Beatles, he and Ono began holding public protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969, and spent their honeymoon at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel protesting for a week with a bedridden for peace. They planned another bed-in in the United States, but were denied entry, so it was held at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance". They often combined activism and art, such is the case of bagism, presented for the first time during a press conference in Vienna. Lennon detailed this period in The Beatles' song "The Ballad of John and Yoko."Lennon officially changed his name on April 22, 1969, adding "Ono" as his middle name. The brief ceremony took place on the rooftop of the Apple Corps building, made popular three months earlier by The Beatles' rooftop concert. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon from then on, official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon, since he was not allowed to revoke his birth name. The couple went to live at Tittenhurst Park in Sunninghill, Berkshire. After Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon ordered a king-size bed to be brought into the recording studio while he worked on The Beatles' latest album., Abbey Road. To escape the turbulent situation that followed the band's breakup, Ono suggested they move permanently to New York, which they did on August 31, 1971.

They first lived at the St. Regis Hotel on 5th Avenue, east of 55th Street, then moved to 105 Bank Street, Greenwich Village, on October 16, 1971. After a robbery, they they moved to a more secure location in the Dakota Building at 1 72nd Street in May 1973.

May Pang

May Pang in 2002.

ABKCO Industries, a company formed in 1968 by Allen Klein to group ABKCO Records, hired May Pang as a receptionist in 1969. Through participation in a project with ABKCO, Lennon and Ono met her a year later, and more later he would become his personal assistant. After working with the couple for three years, Ono confessed that she and Lennon were estranged from each other, so she even suggested that she should start a relationship with Lennon, saying: "He likes you too much." 22-year-old Pang, surprised by Ono's proposition, finally agreed to become Lennon's partner. The couple soon moved to California, beginning an eighteen-month period that Lennon would call his "lost weekend". In Los Angeles, Pang encouraged Lennon to make contact with Julian, whom he had not seen for two years. years. He also rekindled his friendship with Starr, McCartney, Beatles roadie Mal Evans, and Harry Nilsson. During a drinking binge with Nilsson, after misunderstanding something Pang had commented on, Lennon attempted to strangle her, only releasing her until she was stopped by Nilsson.

After returning to New York, they set up a room in their new apartment for Julian to visit. Lennon, hitherto hampered by his relationship with Ono, began to reconnect with other family and friends. By December, he and Pang were considering buying a house, and he refused to accept Ono's phone calls. In January 1975, he agreed to meet with Ono, who assured him that he had found a cure to quit smoking. But after the meeting, he did not return to his house or call Pang. When Pang phoned the next day, Ono told him that Lennon wasn't available, as he was exhausted after a hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared dazed and confused to such an extent that Pang believed he had been brainwashed. He told her that her separation with Ono was over, although she would accept her relationship with Pang to continue as her lover.

Sean Lennon

When Lennon and Ono got back together, Ono became pregnant, but having suffered three miscarriages in her attempt to have Lennon's child, she said she didn't want to have him. She agreed to allow the pregnancy to continue on the condition that Lennon adopt the role of homemaker, to which he agreed.Sean was born by caesarean section on October 9, 1975, Lennon's 35th birthday. Lennon would interrupt his musical career for five years to fulfill his duties at home. He had a personal photographer who took pictures of Sean every day during his first year, and created numerous drawings for him, later published in Real Love: The Drawings for Sean. Lennon later proudly declared: "He didn't come out of my womb, but, by God, I made his bones, because I tended to all his eating, and the way he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish."

Ex-Beatles

John Lennon (first left) with the other Beatles in 1965.

Although his friendship with Ringo Starr remained constantly active in the years following the breakup of The Beatles in 1970, his relationship with McCartney and Harrison was ambivalent. At first he was somewhat close to Harrison, the latter collaborating extensively on the album Imagine in 1971. Three years later, when Harrison was in New York for his Dark Horse tour >, Lennon agreed to meet him onstage, but changed his mind after an argument over refusing to sign an agreement that would dissolve The Beatles as a legal partnership (Lennon would later sign while vacationing in Florida with Pang and Julian). Shortly before his death, Lennon resented Harrison, when he made very little mention of him in his autobiography (published in 1980). In this regard, Lennon told Playboy: "He hurt me. Due to the obvious omission [...] My influence on him was absolutely nil, zero [...] He remembers absolutely all the saxophones and guitars he has known, but he does not mention me even once».

Lennon's harshest feelings were reserved for McCartney. In addition to attacking him in the lyrics of "How Do You Sleep?", she argued with him through the press for three years after the group's breakup. The next two years began to re-establish the close friendship they had once had, and even played together again in 1974 (see A Toot and a Snore in '74), later lose contact once again. Lennon said that during McCartney's last visit, in April 1976, they watched the Saturday Night Live episode in which Lorne Michaels made a cash offer of $3,000 to reunite The Beatles on the show. The couple had considered going to the studio to play a prank on them, trying to claim their share of the money, but they were very tired. Three days before his death, in an interview, Lennon would say of McCartney: "Throughout my career I have chosen only two people to work with: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono [...] I'm not bad at choosing."

Along with his falling out with McCartney, Lennon always felt a musical competitiveness against him and always kept an eye on his music. During his self-imposed five-year break he was happy to sit back while McCartney produced what in Lennon's eyes was rubbish. When McCartney released "Coming Up" in 1980, the year Lennon returned to the studio and the last year of his life He had some consideration for him. "It's driving me crazy!" he would jokingly say about the song, because he couldn't get the tune out of his head. That same year he was asked if the group members saw each other as enemies or best friends, to which he replied that they were neither one nor the other, and that he had not seen any of them for a long time. But he also said: “I still love the boys. The Beatles are done, but John, Paul, George and Ringo carry on."

Political activism

Recording of "Give Peace a Chance" during the Peace Lace at Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal.

Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon to have a "bed in for peace" at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam; held in March 1969. The event was covered and ridiculed by the world's media. A second Bed-In for Peace was held three months later at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where Lennon wrote and recorded "Give Peace a Chance." Released as a single, it was quickly adopted as an anti-war anthem and was sung by a quarter million anti-Vietnam War protesters in Washington, D.C., on November 15, during the second anti-war protest organized by activist Jerome Grossman. In December the couple would finance the erection of large billboards in ten cities around the world, which read in the local language: "The war is over! If you want it."

Later that year, Lennon and Ono supported the efforts of the family of James Hanratty, hanged for murder in 1962, to prove his innocence. Those who had convicted Hanratty were, according to Lennon, "the same people who is running arms into South Africa and killing black people in the streets [...] the same fuckers who have absolute power, the same people who run everything, it's all this bullshit bourgeois scene." In London, Lennon and Ono held a "Britain Murdered Hanratty" march and a "silent protest for James Hanratty", and produced a forty-minute documentary on the case. At an appeal hearing years later, Hanratty's guilt was upheld after evidence in the form of traces of DNA was found, and his family continued to appeal in 2010.

In mid-1971, when workers at the UCS shipbuilder in Clydeside decided to work without pay to prevent the company from closing down, Lennon and Ono showed their solidarity by sending them an arrangement of red roses and £5,000. the couple moved to New York in August 1971, they befriended two of the Chicago Seven: yippies and antiwar activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Another antiwar activist John Sinclair, poet and co-founder of the White Panther Party, was serving ten years in prison for selling two joints of marijuana after a series of prior drug possession convictions. In December 1971 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 15,000 people attended the "Free John Sinclair Rally", a protest concert attended by Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, among others. Lennon and Ono, accompanied by David Peel and R. ubin, performed acoustically four songs that would appear on their upcoming album Some Time in New York City , including "John Sinclair," whose lyrics demanded his release. One day before the rally, the Michigan Senate passed a bill significantly reducing the penalty for marijuana possession, and four days later Sinclair was released on appeal bond. The performance was recorded, and two of the songs would later appear. in John Lennon Anthology (1998).

Following the Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland in 1972, where fourteen unarmed protesters were killed by the British army, Lennon said that given a choice between the army and the IRA (which was not involved in the incident), he would be on the side of the latter. Lennon and Ono would write two protest songs for their album Some Time in New York City for the British intervention in Ireland: "Luck of the Irish" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday". In 2000, David Shayler, a former member of Britain's MI5 national security service, claimed that Lennon had given money to the IRA, though this claim was quickly denied by Ono. Biographer Bill Harry recounts that after Bloody Sunday, Lennon and Ono financially supported the production of the film The Irish Tapes, a political documentary with a Republican leaning.

According to FBI reports (and confirmed by Tariq Ali in 2006), Lennon was sympathetic to the International Marxist Group, a Trotskyist party formed in Britain in 1968. However, the FBI considered Lennon to have limited effectiveness as a revolutionary because he was "constantly under the influence of narcotics".

In 1973, Lennon contributed a limerick called "Why Make It Sad To Be Gay?" to the book The Gay Liberation Book by Len Richmond.

Lennon's last action as a political activist was a statement in support of the sanitation workers' strike in San Francisco on December 5, 1980. He and Ono planned to join the workers' protest on December 14. However, by this time, Lennon had moved away from the counterculture scene that he had so staunchly supported during the 1960s and 1970s, and was more aligned with conservatism, although it has been debated whether actually came to be in this line of thought.

This would end up being a factor of conflict and discomfort for the United States government. Theories that suggest that his subsequent assassination in 1980 would have been planned and executed by the North American Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, and that Mark Chapman, indicated as the material author, would have actually been an agent of said organization, have taken on really over the years.^{[citation needed]}

Deportation attempts

Following the impact of "Give Peace a Chance" and "Happy Xmas (War is Over)," both strongly associated with the anti-Vietnam War movement, the Nixon administration, hearing rumors of Lennon's involvement at a concert to be held in San Diego during the Republican National Convention, she tried to have him deported. Nixon believed that Lennon's anti-war activities could cost him re-election; Republican Senator Strom Thurmond asserted in a February 1972 memo that "deportation would be a strategic counter-offensive" against Lennon. The following month the Immigration Service and Naturalization (INS) initiated deportation proceedings, arguing that his misdemeanor possession of cannabis in London in 1968 made his admission to the United States impossible. Lennon spent the next three and a half years in and out of deportation hearings until October 8, 1975, when an appeals court blocked the attempted deportation, declaring "[...] the courts do not condone selective deportation based on secret political motives". As the legal battle raged, he attended rallies and made television appearances. Lennon and Ono appeared as hosts on The Mike Douglas Show for a week in February 1972, introducing guests such as Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale to half the United States. In 1972, Bob Dylan wrote a letter to the INS in defense of Lennon:

John and Yoko joined as a great voice and lead to the so-called country's artistic institution. They inspire and transcend and encourage to do so, only by helping others see pure light and by doing this, they put an end to this awkward taste for commercialism that is passed through art in the overwhelming media. Long live John and Yoko! The country takes place and space. Let John and Yoko stay!

On March 23, 1973, he was ordered to leave the United States within sixty days. Ono, for his part, was granted permanent residence. In response, Lennon and Ono held a press conference on April 1, 1973 at the New York City Bar Association, where they announced the formation of the state of Nutopia, a place "without countries, without borders, passports, nothing, just people." Waving the white flag of Nutopia (two handkerchiefs), they asked for political asylum in the United States. The press conference was filmed, and would later appear in the 2006 documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon. His album Mind Games (1973) included the song "Nutopian International Anthem", which consists of only three seconds of silence. Shortly after the press conference, Nixon's involvement in a political scandal came to light, and in June the Watergate hearings began in Washington, D.C. This led to the president's resignation fourteen months later. Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, showed little interest in continuing the battle against Lennon, and the removal order was overturned in 1975. The following year, his US immigration status was finally resolved, he received his Green Card , and when Jimmy Carter became president in January 1977, Lennon and Ono attended the inaugural event.

FBI surveillance and withheld documents

J. Edgar Hoover's confidential letter (here declassified and censored) about FBI surveillance to John Lennon.

After Lennon's death, historian Jon Wiener submitted a request to the federal government to access FBI files and inquire into deportation attempts, using the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI admitted there were 281 pages of files on Lennon, but refused to release most of them in full because they contained national security information. In 1983, Wiener sued the FBI with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU of Southern California. It took fourteen years of litigation to compel the FBI to release the withheld files. The ACLU, representing Wiener, won a favorable decision in its lawsuit against the FBI in the Ninth Circuit in 1991. The Justice Department appealed the decision. of the Supreme Court in April 1992, but the court refused to review the case. In 1997, honoring President Bill Clinton's newly promoted rule that documents should only be withheld if their release would lead to "foreseeable harm", the Department of Justice resolved most of the pending issues out of court for the release of all but ten of the controversial documents.

Wiener published his results of fourteen years of work in January 2000. Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files contained facsimiles of the documents, including the "lengthy reports of confidential spies who detailing the daily lives of anti-war activists, memos to the White House, transcripts of television shows featuring Lennon, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police for drug offences." story is told in the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon. The last ten documents in the FBI files on Lennon, which reported on his links to London activists in 1971 and which had been withheld for containing "national security information supplied by a foreign government under an explicit promise of confidentiality", were released. in December 2006. They contained no indication that the British government had considered Lennon a serious threat; an example of the published material was a report from two British leftists who hoped that Lennon would finance a left-wing bookshop and reading room.

Writing and art

Biographer Bill Harry notes that Lennon began drawing and writing creatively at an early age with the encouragement of his uncle. He compiled his short stories, poetry, comic strips and caricatures in a Quarry Bank High School notebook which he called Daily Howl . The drawings and texts were mostly satirical, and puns abounded throughout the notebook. According to his partner Bill Turner, Lennon created Daily Howl to amuse his best friend and later fellow Quarrymen Pete Shotton, to whom he would show his work before anyone else. another person. After recalling the contents of the notebook, Turner commented that Lennon "had an obsession with Wigan Pier", which "came up suddenly", and in one of the stories, A Carrot In A Potato Mine [A carrot in a potato mine], "the mine was at the end of Wigan Pier". Turner also described one of the cartoons, which depicted a bus stop sign with the question "Why?" ["Why?"]. Above her was a flying pancake, and below, "a blind man with glasses walking with a dog for the blind—also with glasses".

Lennon's penchant for puns and nonsense found a wider audience when he was 24 years old. Harry comments that In His Own Write (1964) was published after, in Lennon's words, “a journalist who was very close to The Beatles came with me and I ended up showing him the material. They said, 'Write a book,' and that's how the first one was published." Like Daily Howl, it contained a mix of different formats including comic strips, poetry, dramas, and cartoons. One of the stories, Good Dog Nigel, tells the story of "a happy dog, urinating on a light pole, barking, tail wagging, until suddenly he hears a message that he is going to be killed at three. The Times Literary Supplement found the poems and stories "extraordinary... very funny... the nonsense is well done, the words and images link together in a chain of pure fantasy." ». Book Week reported: “This is nonsense writing, but one only has to examine what nonsense is to see how well Lennon puts it. While some of its content is cheap pun, many others have not just double entendres, but double-edged edges. Lennon was surprised not only by the book's good reception, but by the fact that it was reviewed by critics, commenting that readers "took the book more seriously than I did. It started just as a joke to myself."

In combination with A Spaniard in the Works (1965), In His Own Write formed the basis for the play The John Lennon Play: In His Own Write, co-adapted by Victor Spinetti and Adrienne Kennedy. After negotiations between Lennon, Spinetti and the National Theatre's artistic director Laurence Olivier, the play opened at the Old Vic in 1968. Lennon and Ono attended the opening night performance, their second public appearance together. 1969, Lennon wrote "Four in Hand"—a skit based on his teenage experiences with group masturbation—for the play Oh! Calcutta! by Kenneth Tynan. After Lennon's death, more works were published, including Skywriting by Word of Mouth (1986); Ai: Japan Through John Lennon's Eyes: A Personal Sketchbook (1992), with illustrations by Lennon on the definitions of Japanese words; and Real Love: The Drawings for Sean (1999). The Beatles Anthology (2000) also featured examples of his writings and drawings.^{[citation needed]}

Musicality

Instruments played by John Lennon

Les Paul Jr. Guitars used by Lennon.

During a trip to visit his cousin in Scotland, Lennon surprised the bus driver by the skillful way he played a small harmonica. Impressed, he told Lennon that he could get a professional harmonica if he went to Edinburgh the next day, where one had been stored at the bus station after a passenger forgot it on one of the drives. The instrument quickly became popular. Lennon's favorite toy. Later, he would continue to play the harmonica, often using it during the years with The Beatles in Hamburg, and it became a signature sound during the group's early recordings. His mother taught him to play the banjo, and later she bought him an acoustic guitar. At sixteen he was playing rhythm guitar with The Quarrymen.

As his artistic career progressed, he played a variety of electric guitars, predominantly the Rickenbacker 325 and the Gibson J-160E, as well as, from the beginning of his solo career, the Gibson Les Paul Junior. The producer of Double Fantasy Jack Douglas claims that since his days as a Beatle, Lennon tuned his fourth string slightly flat so his Aunt Mimi could tell what his guitar was on recordings. In 1965 he played a Vox Continental Organ on the song "I'm Down", in that same year he played a Harmonium on the song "We Can Work It Out". Occasionally he played a six-string bass, the Fender Bass VI, which provided the bass sound on tracks where McCartney played another instrument ("Back in the U.S.S.R.", "The Long and Winding Road," "Helter Skelter" and "Let It Be"). Another instrument he held in high esteem was the piano, on which he composed many songs, including "Imagine", recognized as his most popular song. His improvisation on the piano during a session with McCartney in 1963 led to the creation of The Beatles' first US number one, "I Want to Hold Your Hand". In 1964, he became one of the first British musicians to own a mellotron, although it was not heard. on some Beatles recordings until its use on "Strawberry Fields Forever" in 1967.

Vocal Style

When The Beatles recorded "Twist and Shout," the last track of the band's 1963 one-day session for their debut album Please Please Me, Lennon's voice, already affected because of a cold, it was about to end. Lennon said, "He couldn't sing the damn thing, he was screaming." In the words of biographer Barry Miles, "Lennon just shredded his vocal cords in the interest of rock and roll." The producer of The Beatles, George Martin, recounts that Lennon "had an innate aversion to his own voice that I could never understand. He would always tell me: “Do something with my voice! [...] put something in it [...] Make it different”'. Obliged, Martin often used double-track recording and other studio techniques.^{[citation required]}

In his time with The Beatles, as well as in his solo career, his voice became increasingly expressive. Biographer Chris Gregory wrote that Lennon was "tentatively beginning to expose his insecurities in a series of acoustic 'confessional' ballads, thus beginning the process of his 'public therapy' that would ultimately culminate in the primal screams of 'Cold Turkey' and the cathartic John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band". Music critic Robert Christgau considers that on this album Lennon gives "his best vocal performance [...] from the angry scream to the sad groan, it is electronically modulated [...] echoed, filtered, and superimposed". David Stuart Ryan notes that Lennon ranges from "extreme vulnerability, sensitivity and even naiveté" in his vocal style to a harsh "raspy" style. Wiener also depicts contrasts, he says that his voice may be “at first soft; then he almost broke down in despair." After hearing a performance of "This Boy" on The Ed Sullivan Show on the radio a few days after Lennon's assassination, music historian Ben Urish commented: " As Lennon's voice reached its highest point [...] it hurts so much to hear him scream with such anguish and emotion. But it was my emotions that I heard in his voice. The ones I always had."

Legacy

Strawberry Fields in Central Park.

Statue of John Lennon in the Jardin Méndez Núñez, La Coruña, Galicia, Spain.

Music historians Schinder and Schwartz wrote of the transformation in popular music between the 1950s and 1960s, noting that the influence of The Beatles cannot be overstated, having "revolutionized the sound, style and the attitude of popular music and opened the doors of rock and roll to a wave of British groups", thereafter the group "spent the rest of the 1960s pushing the stylistic boundaries of rock ». Liam Gallagher and his group Oasis are among many who acknowledge the influence of the band, identifying Lennon as a hero; in 1999 he named his first son Lennon Gallagher after him. "Imagine" as the winner.

In a 2006 Guardian article, Jon Wiener wrote: “For the youth in 1972, it was thrilling to see Lennon's courage in his defense against Nixon. That willingness to take risks in his career and his life is one of the reasons why people still look up to him today." According to music historians Urish and Bielen, Lennon's most significant contribution was "the self-portraits [...] in his songs [in which] he speaks to, for and about the human condition".

Lennon continues to be remembered around the world and has been the subject of numerous memorials and tributes. In 2002, the airport in Lennon's hometown was renamed Liverpool John Lennon Airport. In 2010, on what would have been Lennon's 70th birthday, the John Lennon Peace Memorial was unveiled in Chavasse Park, Liverpool., by Cynthia and Julian Lennon. The sculpture entitled "Peace & Harmony" ("Peace and Harmony") displays symbols of peace and is inscribed "Peace on earth for the preservation of life In honor of John Lennon 1940-1980". In Havana, Cuba, the John Lennon Park was inaugurated for concerts and cultural activities. A life-size statue of Lennon was placed, seated on a bench.

In November 2013, the International Astronomical Union named one of Mercury's craters "Lennon" after him.

Acknowledgments and sales

John Lennon Star at Hollywood Fame Walk.

Image of street art of Lennon on the wall of John Lennon in Prague.

The work of songwriting duo Lennon-McCartney is considered some of the most influential and far-reaching of the xx century. As a performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon is responsible for 25 number one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100. His album sales in the United States reach 14 million units. Double Fantasy was his best-selling studio album, with three million copies sold in the United States; published a few weeks before he died, it won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1981. The following year, he was awarded the BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.

In a 2002 poll conducted by the BBC, Lennon was ranked eighth on the "100 Greatest Britons" list. Between 2003 and 2008, Rolling Stone recognized Lennon on different musical valuation lists, placing him 5th on the list of "The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time", 38th on "The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and 55th in "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time"; in addition, his albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, were placed 22nd and 76th place respectively on the list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". He was named a Member of the British Empire (MBE) along with the other Beatles in 1965 (returning his medal in 1969). inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock Hall of Fame in 1994.

Discography

• Two Virgins (with Yoko Ono) (1968)
• Life with the Lions (with Yoko Ono) (1969)
• Wedding Album (with Yoko Ono) (1969)
• John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970)
• Imagine (1971)
• Some Time in New York City (with Yoko Ono) (1972)
• Mind Games (1973)
• Walls and Bridges (1974)
• Rock 'n' Roll (1975)
• Double Fantasy (with Yoko Ono) (1980)
• Heart Play: Unfinished Dialogue (with Yoko Ono) (1983)
• Milk and Honey (with Yoko Ono) (1984)

Filmography

Television

Bibliography