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The Beatles | George
Harrison | John Lennon | Paul McCartney
| Ringo Starr
BIOGRAPHY
John
Winston Lennon was born at 6:30 p.m. in the Oxford Street Maternity
home in Liverpool on October 9, 1940, during the height of WWII with
his father, Fred Lennon, off at sea. His father didn't turn up again
until five years later, when Julia refused to restart her life with
him. He then sailed away for good. Julia met another man and left her
son in the care of her sister Mary, or "Mimi" as she was called,
and her brother-in-law George in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton.
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Growing
up in "Mendips," a house at 251 Menlove Avenue in Woolton,
John would play and cause all 
sorts
of trouble. John attended Dovedale Primary School, then went on to Quarry
Bank Grammar School, where he would get into even more trouble with
his friend Pete Shotton. When John was in his first year at Quarry Bank
when his Uncle, George Smith, died of a hemorrhage. This was traumatic
to everyone, especially John. Now Mimi was stuck trying to cope with
the extremely rebellious Lennon alone.
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John
and Pete would cut class a lot and go visit Julia. She really didn't
care if the two were playing hooky; in fact she encouraged it. She would
always fool around with the boys and tell them not to worry about school
or homework. John was devastated when a car hit her on the evening of
July 15, 1958.
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Aunt
Mimi ran a very strict household. John very quickly became bored at
school, preferring drawing and writing about his classmates and teachers
rather than his studies. Rebellious at an early age, he had a very rough
school history, sagging off from school (going AWOL from classes) and
petty stealing. His future looked bleak until Mimi got the headmaster
of the Quarry Bank school to write a letter of recommendation for John
to the Liverpool Art College, because of his drawings.
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It
was at Liverpool Art College, in 1956, that a friend played him Elvis'
Heartbreak Hotel, and John's musical interest was piqued. He then became
part of the new Skiffle craze by begging his Aunt Mimi until she broke
down and bought him a guitar, although she forever told him he would
never get anywhere with it. He had already learned to play the harmonica
during his childhood, and he taught himself the guitar by applying banjo
chords that his mother had taught him.
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In
1955 he started his own band, the Quarry Men, named after the Quarry
Bank High School, with his 
long
time pal and fellow troublemaker Pete Shotton, singing all the popular
songs, sometimes making up the words when he couldn't get them all off
the radio. Also in the Quarry Men were Nigel Walley and Ivan Vaughan,
the rest of John's gang. It was Ivan Vaughan who introduced John to
his friend, Paul McCartney, in 1957.
John
met Paul and didn't invite him in with the Quarry Men at first. Paul
was almost too good. He also could do something John couldn't ... tune
a guitar. After Paul came George, and then Ringo. The Quarry Men, rather
the Beatles by this point, became a huge success worldwide until their
break up in 1970.
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John
married his girlfriend of four years, Cynthia Powell, in 1962. She was
pregnant with their son Julian at the time, who was born in April, 1963.
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After
John left the Beatles, he started straight away in making albums. His
first album was a collaboration with Yoko Ono called Two Virgins. The
album caused considerable controversy, both because of its content and
its cover art, which featured a nude photograph of Lennon and Ono. The
shops that sold it had to cover it up in a paper bag.
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John
and Yoko married in Gibraltar in March 20,
1969. For their honeymoon, the pair staged the first of many political
demonstrations with their "Bed-In for Peace" at the Amsterdam
Hilton. Several months later, the avant garde records Unfinished Music,
No. 2: Life with the Lions and The Wedding Album were released, as was
the single "Give Peace a Chance," which was recorded during
the Bed-In. Lennon and Ono continued with their campaign for peace,
spreading billboards with the slogan "War Is Over! (If You Want
It)" in 12 separate cities.
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The
underlying concept of John and Yoko's "bagism" idea is interactivity
among people without 
prejudice.
The Internet is a great place to achieve that ideal because you are
judged only by your words -- not by your looks, age, gender, ethnicity,
etc.
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John
went on to produce many albums with Yoko. His first proper album was
called John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band. The songs expressed personal expressions
of fear, rage and pain. But his next album was his breakthrough. This
was Imagine. It was enormously successful with hard rocking numbers
and beautiful melodies. Since then he had recorded more albums like
Mind Games, Walls and Bridges and Rock and Roll, though the latter of
these he recorded during his 'lost weekend', this was when he left Yoko
and had a good time with his friends drinking and partying.
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By
the time Imagine became a hit album, Lennon and Ono had returned to
political activism, publicly supporting American radicals like Abbie
Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and John Sinclair. Their increased political involvement
resulted in the double-album Sometime in New York City, which was released
in the summer of 1972. Recorded with the New York hippie band Elephant's
Memory, Sometime in New York City consisted entirely of political songs,
many of which were criticized for their simplicity. Consequently, the
album sold poorly and tarnished Lennon's reputation.
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Sometime
in New York City was the beginning of a three-year downward spiral for
Lennon. Shortly before the album's release, he began his long, involved
battle with US Immigration, who refused to give him a green card due
to a conviction for marijuana possession in 1968. In 1973, he was ordered
to leave America by Immigration, and he launched a full-scale battle
against the department, frequently attacking them in public.
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Rock
& Roll, a collection of rock oldies recorded during the lost weekend,
was released in the spring of 1975. A few months before its official
release, a bootleg of the album called Roots was released by Morris
Levy, who Lennon later sued successfully. Lennon's immigration battle
neared its completion on October 7, 1975, when the US court of appeals
overturned his deportation order; in the summer of 1976, he was finally
granted his green card. After he appeared on David Bowie's Young Americans,
co-writing the hit song "Fame," Lennon quietly retired from
music, choosing to become a house-husband following the October birth
of his son, Sean Lennon.
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After
taking time out to be a father to Julian, his son from a previous marriage,
he went back to the recording studio and once he started, songwriting
came back naturally. He released Double Fantasy with Yoko again. On
December 8, 1980, while returning from a recording studio in NY City,
John Lennon was shot and killed by Mark Chapman.
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