John Winston Ono Lennon profile,
John
Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an
English singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the
founding members of The Beatles and, with Paul McCartney, formed one of
the most successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.
Born
and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as
a teenager, his first band, The Quarrymen, evolving into The Beatles in
1960. As the group began to undergo the disintegration that led to
their break-up towards the end of that decade, Lennon launched a solo
career that would span the next, punctuated by critically acclaimed
albums, including John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and iconic
songs such as "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine".
Lennon
revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, his writing,
on film, and in interviews, and became controversial through his work
as a peace activist. He moved to New York City in 1971, where his
criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by Richard
Nixon's administration to deport him, while his songs were adapted as
anthems by the anti-war movement. Disengaging himself from the music
business in 1975 to devote time to his family, Lennon reemerged in 1980
with a comeback album, Double Fantasy, but was murdered three weeks
after its release.
Lennon's
solo album sales in the United States alone stand at 14 million units,
and as performer, writer, or co-writer he is responsible for 27 number
one singles on the US Hot 100 chart.a In 2002, a BBC poll on the 100
Greatest Britons voted him eighth, and in 2008, Rolling Stone ranked him
the fifth greatest singer of all time. He was posthumously inducted
into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame in 1994.
History
1940–57: Early years
Lennon
was born on 9 October 1940 in Liverpool Maternity Hospital, Oxford
Street, Liverpool, to Julia and Alfred Lennon. According to some
biographers, a German air raid was taking place, and Julia's sister,
Mary "Mimi" Smith, used the light cast by the explosions to see her way
as she ran through the blacked-out back roads to reach the hospital.
Smith said later, "I knew the moment I saw John in that hospital that I
was the one to be his mother, not Julia. Does that sound awful? It
isn't, really, because Julia accepted it as something perfectly natural.
She used to say, 'You're his real mother. All I did was give birth.'"
Lennon was named after his paternal grandfather, John "Jack" Lennon, and
Winston Churchill.
New York, New York, US | |
Genres | Rock, pop |
---|---|
Occupations | Musician, singer-songwriter, artist, peace activist, writer, record producer |
Instruments | Vocals, guitar, piano, harmonica,banjo, Mellotron, 6 string bass, percussion, recorder |
Years active | 1957–1975, 1980 |
Labels | Parlophone, Capitol, Apple, EMI,Geffen, Polydor |
Associated acts | The Quarrymen, The Beatles,Plastic Ono Band, The Dirty Mac,Yoko Ono |
Website | JohnLennon.com |
Notable instruments | |
Rickenbacker 325 |
Epiphone Casino |
Gibson J-160E |
Gibson Les Paul Junior |
Lennon's
father, a merchant seaman during World War II, was often away from home
and sent regular pay cheques to 9 Newcastle Road, Liverpool, where
Lennon lived with his mother. The cheques stopped when Alfred Lennon
went absent without leave in 1943. When he eventually came home in 1944,
he offered to look after the family, but his wife (who was pregnant
with another man's child) rejected the idea.Under considerable pressure,
she handed the care of Lennon over to her sister after the latter
registered a complaint with Liverpool's Social Services. In July 1946,
Lennon's father visited Smith and took his son to Blackpool, secretly
intending to emigrate to New Zealand with him. Lennon's mother followed
them, and, after a heated argument, his father forced the five-year-old
to choose between his parents. Lennon chose his father—twice. As his
mother walked away, Lennon began to cry and followed her. Lennon then
lost contact with his father for 20 years.
Mendips, the home of George and Mimi Smith, where Lennon lived for most of his childhood and adolescence
Throughout
the rest of his childhood and adolescence, Lennon lived with his aunt
and uncle, Mimi and George Smith, at Mendips, 251 Menlove Avenue,
Woolton. In September 1980 he would have this to say about his
childhood, his family and his rebellious nature:
Part
of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society and not be
this loudmouthed lunatic musician. But I cannot be what I am not.
Because of my attitude, all the other boys' parents ... instinctively
recognised what I was, which was a troublemaker, meaning I did not
conform and I would influence their kids, which I did. ... I did my best
to disrupt every friend's home ... Partly, maybe, it was out of envy
that I didn't have this so-called home. But I really did ... There were
five women who were my family. Five strong, intelligent women. Five
sisters. One happened to be my mother. ... She just couldn't deal with
life. She had a husband who ran away to sea and the war was on and she
couldn't cope with me, and when I was four and a half, I ended up living
with her elder sister ... those women were fantastic ... That was my
first feminist education ... that knowledge and the fact that I wasn't
with my parents made me see that parents are not gods.
The
couple had no children of their own. His aunt bought him volumes of
short stories, and his uncle, who was a dairyman at his family's farm,
bought him a mouth organ and engaged him in solving crossword puzzles.
Lennon's mother visited Mendips almost every day, and when he was 11 he
often visited her at 1 Blomfield Road, Liverpool. She played him Elvis
Presley records, and taught him to play the banjo. The first song he
learned to play was Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame".
Lennon
regularly visited his cousin Stanley Parkes in Fleetwood. Seven years
Lennon's senior, Parkes frequently took him on trips, and the pair
enjoyed films together at the local cinema. During the school holidays,
Parkes often visited Lennon with Leila, another cousin, and they would
all go to Blackpool on the tram two or three times a week to watch
shows. They would visit the Blackpool Tower Circus and see artists such
as Dickie Valentine, Arthur Askey, Max Bygraves and Joe Loss. Parkes
recalls that Lennon particularly liked George Formby. They regularly
passed Formby's house on the bus journey from Preston to Fleetwood,
often spotting the singer and his wife sitting in deck chairs in their
front garden and exchanging waves with them. Parkes and Lennon were keen
fans of the Fleetwood Flyers speedway club and Fleetwood Town FC. After
Parkes's family moved to Scotland, the three cousins often spent their
school holidays together there. Parkes recalled, "John, cousin Leila and
I were very close. From Edinburgh we would bundle into the car and head
up to the family croft at Durness. That went on from about the time
John was nine years old until he was about 16".
Lennon
was raised as an Anglican and attended Dovedale Primary School. From
September 1952 to 1957, after passing his Eleven-Plus exam, he attended
Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool, where he was known as a
"happy-go-lucky" pupil, drawing comical cartoons and mimicking his
teachers. At the end of his third year, his school report was damning:
"Hopeless. Rather a clown in class. A shocking report. He is wasting
other pupils' time." He was 14 when his uncle died in June 1955.
Guitars, including a Rickenbacker 325 and a Gibson J-160E, of the sort played by Lennon
Lennon's
mother bought him his first guitar in 1957, a cheap Gallotone Champion
acoustic "guaranteed not to split". She arranged for it to be delivered
to her own house, knowing that her sister, sceptical of Lennon's claim
that he would be famous one day, hoped he would grow bored with music,
often telling him, "The guitar's all very well, John, but you'll never
make a living out of it". On 15 July 1958, when Lennon was 17, his
mother, out walking near the Smiths' house, was struck by a car and
killed.
Lennon
failed all his GCE O-level examinations, and was only accepted into the
Liverpool College of Art after his aunt and headmaster intervened. Once
at the college, he wore Teddy Boy clothes and acquired a reputation for
disrupting classes and ridiculing teachers. As a result, he was
excluded from first the painting class and then the graphic arts course.
He was threatened with expulsion for his behaviour, which included
sitting on a nude model's lap during a life drawing class. He failed an
annual exam, despite help from fellow student and future wife Cynthia
Powell, and dropped out of college before his final year.
1957–70: From the Quarrymen to the Beatles
Further information: The Quarrymen, Lennon/McCartney, The Beatles, Beatlemania, British Invasion, and More popular than Jesus
1957–65: Formation, commercial breakout, and touring years
Lennon, left, and the rest of the Beatles arriving in the US in 1964
Lennon
formed the Beatles with members of his first band, the Quarrymen. Named
after Quarry Bank High School, the skiffle group was established by
Lennon in March 1957 when he was 16. He first met Paul McCartney at
their second concert, held in Woolton on 6 July at the St. Peter's
Church garden fête, after which McCartney joined the band. McCartney's
father said Lennon would get him "into a lot of trouble", but later
allowed the band to rehearse in the front room at 20 Forthlin Road,
where Lennon and McCartney began writing songs together. Lennon was 18
when he wrote his first ("Hello Little Girl", a UK top 10 hit for the
Fourmost nearly five years later).George Harrison joined the band as
lead guitarist, and Stuart Sutcliffe, Lennon's friend from art school,
joined as bassist. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Sutcliffe became "The
Beatles" after the other members left. McCartney said later that Lennon
was always considered the leader: "We all looked up to John. He was
older ... the quickest wit and the smartest".
In
August 1960 the Beatles, engaged for a 48-night tour in Hamburg,
Germany, added drummer Pete Best to their number. Lennon was now 19; his
aunt, horrified when he told her about the trip, pleaded with him to
continue his art studies instead.After the first Hamburg stint, the band
accepted another in April 1961, and a third in April 1962. Like the
other band members, Lennon was introduced to Preludin while in Hamburg,
and regularly took the drug, as well as amphetamines, as a stimulant
during their long, overnight performances.
Brian
Epstein, the Beatles' manager from 1962, had no prior experience of
artist management, but nevertheless had a strong influence on their
early dress code and attitude on stage. Lennon initially resisted
Epstein's attempts to encourage the band to present a professional
appearance, but eventually complied, saying, "I'll wear a bloody balloon
if somebody's going to pay me". McCartney took over on bass after
Sutcliffe's death the same year, and drummer Ringo Starr replaced Best,
completing the four-piece line-up that would endure until the group's
break-up in 1970. Lennon married Cynthia in August. The band's first
single, "Love Me Do", was released in October and reached number 17 on
the British charts. They recorded their debut album, Please Please Me,
in under 10 hours on 11 February 1963—a day when Lennon was suffering
the effects of a cold. The Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership
yielded eight of its fourteen tracks. With few exceptions—one being the
album title itself—Lennon in 1963 had yet to bring his love of wordplay
to bear on his song lyrics: "the words were almost irrelevant".
The
Beatles achieved mainstream success in the UK around the start of 1963.
Lennon was away from home, touring with the band, when his first son,
Julian, was born in April. During their Royal Variety Show performance,
attended by the Queen Mother and other British royalty, Lennon poked fun
at his audience: "For our next song, I'd like to ask for your help. For
the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands... and the rest of
you, if you'll just rattle your jewellery." After a year of Beatlemania
in the UK, the group's historic February 1964 US debut appearance on The
Ed Sullivan Show marked their breakthrough to international stardom. A
two-year period of constant touring, moviemaking, and songwriting
followed, during which 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 appointed Members of the Order of the
British Empire in the 1965 Queen's Birthday Honours.
John Lennon 1966–70: Studio years, break-up and solo beginnings,
Lennon
grew concerned that fans attending Beatles concerts were unable to hear
the music for all the screaming, and that the band's musicianship was
beginning to suffer as a result. The repertoire was by now dominated by
Lennon/McCartney songs, whose lyrics were receiving greater attention
from the writers than in the partnership's early days. Lennon's "Help!"
expressed his own feelings in 1965: "I meant it ... It was me singing
'help'". He had put on weight (he would later refer to this as his "Fat
Elvis" period) and felt he was subconsciously crying out for help and
seeking change. The following January he was unknowingly introduced to
LSD when his dentist, hosting a dinner party attended by Lennon and
Harrison and their wives, spiked the guests' coffee with the drug. Told
what their host had done, and advised not to leave his house because of
the likely effects, they left anyway in disbelief, only to be
transported into a world of hallucination during their journey home,
where the buildings around them seemed to be on fire; "We were all
screaming ... hot and hysterical." Another catalyst for change occurred a
few months later in March. During an interview with Evening Standard
reporter Maureen Cleave, Lennon remarked, "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." Lennon's comment
went virtually unnoticed in England but created a controversy when
quoted by American teen magazine Datebook five months later. The uproar
that followed—burning of Beatles records, Ku Klux Klan activity, and
threats against Lennon—contributed to the band's decision to stop
touring.
Deprived
of the routine of live performances after their final commercial
concert in 1966, Lennon felt lost and considered leaving the band. Since
his involuntary introduction to LSD in January, he had made increasing
use of the drug, and was almost constantly under its influence for much
of the year. In the words of music historian Jonathan Gould, "More than
any of the other Beatles, John Lennon's involvement with LSD over the
course of 1966 had the aura of personal quest." Lennon "turned his
attention inward with the help of LSD, in the hope that this drastic
form of introspection might wean him from his dependence on the persona
of Beatle John", and spent "long hours in diffuse contemplation,
wandering the corridors of his mind." According to biographer Ian
MacDonald, Lennon's continuous experience with LSD during the year
brought him "close to erasing his identity". His use of the drug began
to profoundly affect his songwriting, both as a product of his
self-examination, and in what Gould calls the "hallucinatory imagery" he
captured in his lyrics. During 1967 he appeared in his only non–Beatles
film, the black comedy How I Won the War. The same year, the group's
landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band revealed Lennon
lyrics contrasting strongly with the simple love songs of the
Lennon/McCartney partnership's early years. Gould calls "Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds" "a song like no other love song John Lennon had ever
written, a chaste, ethereal fairy tale in which Boy meets Girl, Boy
loses Girl, and then keeps on meeting her and losing her again".
Evidencing Lennon's surrealistic lyricism in full force, "The dreamy
pursuit continues across a surreal landscape of gargantuan flowers, then
on via 'newspaper taxis' to ... a train in a station, and a final
fleeting glimpse of the girl with kaleidoscope eyes." In August,
introduced to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group attended a weekend of
personal instruction at his Transcendental Meditation seminar in
Bangor, Wales. They later travelled to his ashram in India for further
guidance, and while there composed most of the songs for The Beatles and
Abbey Road.
The
group were shattered by the sudden death of Epstein during the Bangor
seminar. "I knew we were in trouble then", Lennon said later. "I didn't
have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play
music, and I was scared".McCartney orchestrated the group's first
post-Epstein project, the film Magical Mystery Tour, which proved to be
their first critical flop. Its soundtrack album, Magical Mystery Tour,
was a commercial success, with lyrics once again infused with Lennon
surrealism. Describing "I am the Walrus", Gould writes, "For readers of
Lewis Carroll, the Walrus and the Eggman are unmistakable characters
from the pages of Through the Looking Glass. In "Strawberry Fields
Forever", Lennon used simple phrases to powerful effect: "'Strawberry
fields ... Nothing is real.' Sharing a rhythm and a rhyme, these two
phrases—the image and the ethos—are fused in meaning for the duration of
the song."
With
Epstein gone, the band members were becoming increasingly involved in
business activities, and in February 1968 they formed Apple Corps, a
multimedia corporation comprising Apple Records and several other
subsidiary companies. Lennon described the venture as an attempt to "see
if we can get artistic freedom within a business structure". However,
Lennon's increased drug experimentation, his growing preoccupation with
Yoko Ono, and McCartney's own marriage plans left Apple in need of
professional management. Lennon asked Lord Beeching to take on the role,
but he declined, advising Lennon to get back to making records. Lennon
approached Allen Klein, who had managed The Rolling Stones and other
bands during the British Invasion. Klein was appointed against
McCartney's wishes.
"Give Peace a Chance"
Sample
of "Give Peace a Chance", recorded in 1969 during Lennon and Ono's
second Bed-In for Peace. As described by biographer Bill Harry, Lennon
wanted to "write a peace anthem that would take over from the song 'We
Shall Overcome'—and he succeeded ... it became the main anti-Vietnam
protest song."
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At
the end of 1968, Lennon featured in the film The Rolling Stones Rock
and Roll Circus (not released until 1996) in the role of a Dirty Mac
band member. The supergroup, comprising Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith
Richards and Mitch Mitchell, also backed a vocal performance by Ono in
the film. Lennon and Ono were married on 20 March 1969, and soon
released a series of 14 lithographs called "Bag One" depicting scenes
from their honeymoon eight of which were deemed indecent and most of
which were banned and confiscated Lennon's creative focus continued to
move beyond the Beatles and between 1968 and 1969 he and Ono recorded
three albums of experimental music together: Unfinished Music No.1: Two
Virgins (known more for its cover than for its music), Unfinished Music
No.2: Life with the Lions and Wedding Album. In 1969 they formed The
Plastic Ono Band, releasing Live Peace in Toronto 1969. In protest at
Britain's involvement in the Vietnam War, Lennon returned his MBE medal
to the Queen, though this had no effect on his MBE status, which could
not be renounced. Between 1969 and 1970 Lennon released the singles
"Give Peace a Chance" (widely adopted as an anti-Vietnam-War anthem in
1969), "Cold Turkey" (documenting his withdrawal symptoms after he
became addicted to heroin) and "Instant Karma!".
Lennon
left the Beatles in September 1969. He agreed not to inform the media
while the band renegotiated their recording contract, and was outraged
that McCartney publicised his own departure on releasing his debut solo
album in April 1970.Lennon's reaction was, "Jesus Christ! He gets all
the credit for it!" He later wrote, "I started the band. I disbanded it.
It's as simple as that." In late interviews with Rolling Stone, he
revealed his bitterness towards McCartney, saying, "I was a fool not to
do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record." He spoke too of
the hostility he perceived the other members had towards Ono, and of how
he, Harrison, and Starr "got fed up with being sidemen for Paul...
After Brian Epstein died we collapsed. Paul took over and supposedly led
us. But what is leading us when we went round in circles?",
John Lennon 1970–80: Solo career,
John Lennon 1970–73: First post-Beatles years,
Following
the Beatles' break-up in 1970, Lennon and Ono went through primal
therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov in Los Angeles, California. Designed to
release emotional pain from early childhood, the therapy entailed two
half-days a week with Janov for four months; he had wanted to treat the
couple for longer, but they felt no need to continue and returned to
London. Lennon's emotional debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono
Band (1970), included "Mother", in which he confronted his feelings of
childhood rejection, and "Working Class Hero", banned by BBC Radio for
its inclusion of the word "fucking". The 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 Oz magazine's prosecution for
alleged obscenity. Lennon denounced the proceedings as "disgusting
fascism", and he and Ono (as Elastic Oz Band) released the single "God
Save Us/Do the Oz" and joined marches in support of the magazine.
"Imagine"
Sample
of "Imagine", Lennon's "most famous post-Beatles track." Like "Give
Peace a Chance", the song became an anti-war anthem, but its lyrics
offended religious groups. Lennon's explanation was, "If you can imagine
a world at peace, with no denominations of religion—not without
religion, but without this 'my God is bigger than your God' thing—then
it can be true."
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Imagine
followed in 1971. Its title track would become an anthem for anti-war
movements, while another, "How Do You Sleep?", was a musical attack on
McCartney in response to lyrics from Ram that Lennon felt, and McCartney
later confirmed, were directed at him and Ono. Although Lennon softened
his stance in the mid-70s and said he had written "How Do You Sleep?"
about himself, he revealed in 1980, "I used my resentment against
Paul... to create a song... not a terrible vicious horrible vendetta... I
used my resentment and withdrawing from Paul and the Beatles, and the
relationship with Paul, to write 'How Do You Sleep'. I don't really go
'round with those thoughts in my head all the time". Lennon reflected on
his jealous nature in the track "Jealous Guy", later immortalized by
Roxy Music's chart-topping 1981 cover following Lennon's murder.
Lennon
and Ono moved to New York in August 1971, and in December released
"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)".To advertise the single, they paid for
billboards in 12 cities around the world which declared, in the national
language, "WAR IS OVER—IF YOU WANT IT". The new year saw the Nixon
Administration take what it called a "strategic counter-measure" against
Lennon's anti-war propaganda, embarking on what would be a four-year
attempt to deport him: embroiled in a continuing legal battle, he was
denied a green card until 1976.
Some
Time in New York City was released in 1972. Recorded with the New York
band Elephant's Memory, it contained songs about women's rights, race
relations, Britain's role in Northern Ireland, and Lennon's problems
obtaining a green card. "Woman Is the Nigger of the World", released as a
US single from the album the same year, was described by Lennon as "the
first women's liberation song that went out", and debuted on 11 May
when it was televised on The Dick Cavett Show. Many radio stations
refused to broadcast the song because of the word "nigger". Lennon gave
two benefit concerts with Elephant's Memory in New York in aid of
patients at the Willowbrook State School mental facility. Staged at
Madison Square Garden on 30 August 1972, they were his last full-length
concert appearances,.
John Lennon 1973–80: Lost and found,
While
Lennon was recording Mind Games (1973), he and Ono decided to separate.
The ensuing eighteen-month period apart, which he later called his
"lost weekend", was spent in Los Angeles and New York in the company of
May Pang. Mind Games, credited to "the Plastic U.F.Ono Band", was
released in November 1973. Its title track, "Mind Games", was a top 20
hit in the US and reached number 26 in the UK. Lennon contributed a
revamped version of "I'm the Greatest", a song he wrote two years
earlier, to Starr's album Ringo (1973), released the same month.
(Lennon's 1971 demo appears on John Lennon Anthology.) During 1974 he
produced Harry Nilsson's Pussy Cats and the Mick Jagger song "Too Many
Cooks (Spoil the Soup)". The latter was destined, for contractual
reasons, to remain unreleased for more than thirty years. Pang supplied
the recording for its eventual inclusion on The Very Best of Mick Jagger
(2007).
Walls
and Bridges (1974) yielded Lennon's only number one single in his
lifetime, "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", featuring Elton John on
backing vocals and piano. A second single from the album, "#9 Dream",
followed before the end of the year. Starr's Goodnight Vienna (1974)
again saw assistance from Lennon, who wrote the title track and played
piano. On 28 November, Lennon made a surprise guest appearance at Elton
John's Thanksgiving concert at Madison Square Garden, in fulfilment of
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".
Lennon
co-wrote "Fame", David Bowie's first US number one, and provided guitar
and backing vocals for the January 1975 recording. He and Ono were
reunited shortly afterwards.The same month, Elton John topped the charts
with his own cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", featuring Lennon
on guitar and back-up vocals. Lennon released Rock 'n' Roll (1975), an
album of cover songs, in February. Soon afterwards, "Stand By Me", taken
from the album and a US and UK hit, became his last single for five
years. He made what would be his final stage appearance in the ATV
special A Salute to Lew Grade, recorded on 18 April and televised in
June. Playing acoustic guitar, and backed by his eight-piece band BOMF
(introduced as "Etcetera"), Lennon performed two songs from Rock 'n'
Roll ("Slippin' and Slidin'" and "Stand By Me", the latter of which was
excluded from the television broadcast) followed by "Imagine". The band
wore masks on the backs of their heads, making them appear two-faced, a
dig at Grade, with whom Lennon and McCartney had been in conflict
because of his control of the Beatles' publishing company. (Dick James
had sold his majority share to Grade in 1969.) During "Imagine", Lennon
interjected the line "and no immigration too", a reference to his battle
to remain in the United States.
Lennon's
second son, Sean, was born in October 1975. Lennon now took on the role
of househusband, beginning what would be a five-year break from the
music industry during which he gave all his attention to his family.
Within the month, he fulfilled his contractual obligation to EMI/Capitol
for one more album by releasing Shaved Fish, a greatest hits
compilation. He devoted himself to Sean, rising at 6 am daily to plan
and prepare his meals and to spend time with him. He wrote "Cookin' (In
the Kitchen of Love)" for Starr's Ringo's Rotogravure (1976), performing
on the track in June in what would be his last recording session until
1980. He formally announced his break from music in Tokyo in 1977,
saying, "we have basically decided, without any great decision, to be
with our baby as much as we can until we feel we can take time off to
indulge ourselves in creating things outside of the family." During his
career break he created several series of drawings, and drafted a book
containing a mix of autobiographical material and what he termed "mad
stuff", all of which would be published posthumously.
He
emerged from retirement in October 1980 with the single "(Just Like)
Starting Over", followed the next month by the album that spawned it.
Released jointly with Ono, Double Fantasy contained songs written during
Lennon's journey to Bermuda on a 43-foot sloop the previous June, and
took its title from a species of freesia, seen in the Bermuda Botanical
Gardens, whose name he regarded as a perfect description of his marriage
to Ono. The new material, according to Schinder and Schwartz, found
Lennon "passionate and reenergized, having found fulfillment in the
stable family life that he'd been deprived of in his own youth."During
the Double Fantasy sessions, Lennon and Ono recorded sufficient
additional material for a planned follow-up album. Milk and Honey was
released posthumously in 1984.
December 1980: Murder
Death of John Lennon
The entrance to the Dakota, where Lennon was shot
At
around 10:50 pm on 8 December 1980, soon after Lennon and Ono returned
to the Dakota, the New York apartment building where they lived, Mark
David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times at the entrance to the
building. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double
Fantasy for Chapman. Lennon was taken to the emergency room of nearby
Roosevelt Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:07 pm.
Ono
issued a statement the next day, saying "There is no funeral for John,"
ending it with the words, "John loved and prayed for the human race.
Please pray the same for him." His body was cremated at Ferncliff
Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in New York's
Central Park, where the Strawberry Fields memorial was later
created.[95] Chapman pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was
sentenced to 20 years to life; he remains in prison, having been
repeatedly denied parole,.
John Lennon Personal relationships,
In
one of his last major interviews Lennon said that until he met Ono, he
had never questioned his chauvinistic attitude to women. The Beatles'
song "Getting Better", he said, told his own story: "All that 'I used to
be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things
that she loved' was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and
physically—any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I
hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about
peace".
Lennon
was distant from Julian, his first son, born as his commitments with
the Beatles intensified at the height of Beatlemania during his marriage
to Cynthia. Adopting the role of househusband in his relationship with
Ono, he became close to their son Sean,.
John Lennon and Cynthia Lennon,
Cynthia and John Lennon were inseparable during the early part of their relationship.
Lennon
and Cynthia Powell met in 1957 as fellow students at the Liverpool
College of Art. She recalls that although she found him frightening,
scruffy and disruptive in college, she was attracted to him. After
discovering that he was obsessed with Brigitte Bardot, she changed the
colour of her hair to blonde. They danced together at an end-of-term
event, and Lennon asked her out. When she replied that she was engaged,
he told her, "I didn't ask you to fucking marry me." Continuing to Ye
Cracke for a drink with his friends, they became partners. They quickly
became inseparable, spending long hours together in coffee bars and at
the cinema. She began to accompany him to Quarrymen gigs; later, upset
to be parted from him during the Beatles' Hamburg residencies, she
travelled to Germany to be with him. Lennon, jealous by nature,
eventually grew possessive and mistrustful in the relationship and often
terrified her with his anger and physical violence.
The couple began dating in 1957 after going for a drink in the Ye Cracke pub on Rice Street, Liverpool.
Recalling
his reaction in 1962 on learning that Cynthia was pregnant, Lennon
said, "I was a bit shocked when she told me but I said, 'Yes, we'll have
to get married.' I didn't fight it." His relatives, counselling him not
to feel obligated, were told, "I am going to marry Cynthia." The couple
were married on 23 August at the Mount Pleasant Register Office in
Liverpool, with Beatles manager Brian Epstein as best man. Lennon's
relatives declined to attend. His marriage began just as his commitments
with the Beatles escalated: the group's popularity was rocketing as
Beatlemania took hold across the UK. He performed with the band the same
evening, and would continue to do so almost daily from then on.
Epstein, fearing that fans would be alienated by the idea of a married
Beatle, asked the Lennons keep their marriage secret. Cynthia complied
by telling anyone who asked that her name was Phyllis McKenzie and she
had never heard of Lennon. Julian was born on 8 April 1963; Lennon was
on tour at the time and did not see his son for three days.
Cynthia
attributes the start of the marriage breakdown to LSD. After his
involuntary first ingestion of the drug when his dentist spiked his
coffee, Lennon made increasing use of it. As a result, Cynthia felt, he
lost interest in her. When the group travelled by train to Bangor, Wales
in 1967 for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation
seminar, she became separated from him on the platform as they were
leaving. A policeman, who did not recognise her, kept her from boarding
and the train left without her. She recalls how, though she knew she
could easily travel to the seminar by other means, the incident was one
of profound sadness for her as it seemed to symbolize the relationship.
On
learning of Lennon's affair with Ono, Cynthia had her own one-night
affair with Alexis Mardas. A few weeks later Mardas told her Lennon was
seeking a divorce and custody of Julian on grounds of her adultery, to
which Mardas would bear witness. After negotiation, Lennon capitulated
and agreed to her divorcing him on the same grounds. The case was
settled out of court, Lennon giving her £100,000, roughly one month's
earnings for him at the time, along with £2,400 annually, custody of
Julian, and ownership of their home,.
John Lennon and Brian Epstein,
Lennon
met Brian Epstein when the Beatles were performing at Liverpool's
Cavern Club in 1962. A Jewish record store manager, Epstein was
homosexual, at a time of strong and widespread social prejudice against
homosexuality. He soon became the band's manager, a role in which he
remained until his death in 1967. According to biographer Philip Norman,
one of his reasons for doing so was that he was physically attracted to
Lennon. Biographer Bill Harry disagrees, saying the band "were not the
type of sexual partners Brian was interested in".
Almost
as soon as Julian was born, Lennon went on holiday to Spain with
Epstein, leading to speculation about their relationship. Questioned
about it later, Lennon said, "Well, it was almost a love affair, but not
quite. It was never consummated. But it was a pretty intense
relationship. It was my first experience with a homosexual that I was
conscious was homosexual. We used to sit in a cafe in Torremolinos
looking at all the boys and I'd say, 'Do you like that one? Do you like
this one?' I was rather enjoying the experience, thinking like a writer
all the time: I am experiencing this." Soon after their return from
Spain, at McCartney's twenty-first birthday party in June 1963, Lennon
physically attacked Cavern Club MC Bob Wooler for saying "How was your
honeymoon, John?" The MC, known for his wordplay and affectionate but
cutting remarks, was making a joke; but ten months had passed since
Lennon's marriage, and the honeymoon, deferred, was still two months in
the future.To Lennon, drunk, the matter was simple: "He called me a
queer so I battered his bloody ribs in". In 1991, a fictionalized
account of the Lennon/Epstein holiday was made into the independent
movie The Hours And Times.
Lennon
delighted in mocking Epstein for his homosexuality and for the fact
that he was Jewish, often ridiculing him with sarcastic remarks. When
Epstein invited suggestions for his autobiography title, Lennon offered
Queer Jew. On learning of the eventual title, A Cellarful of Noise, he
said to a friend, "More like A Cellarful of Boys". He demanded of a
visitor to Epstein's flat, "Have you come to blackmail him? If not,
you're the only bugger in London who hasn't." And he taunted Epstein
with twisted Beatles lyrics, changing "baby, you're a rich man too" to
"baby, you're a rich fag Jew",.
John Lennon and Julian Lennon,
Lennon
was touring with the Beatles when Julian was born on 8 April 1963.
Julian's birth, like his mother Cynthia's marriage to Lennon, was kept
secret because Epstein was convinced public knowledge of such things
would threaten the Beatles' commercial success. Julian recalls how some
four years later, as a small child in Weybridge, "I was trundled home
from school and came walking up with one of my watercolour paintings. It
was just a bunch of stars and this blonde girl I knew at school. And
Dad said, 'What's this?' I said, 'It's Lucy in the sky with diamonds.'"
Lennon used it as the title of a Beatles' song, though it was later
reported to have derived from the initials LSD. Lennon was distant from
Julian, who felt closer to McCartney than to his father. During a car
journey to visit Cynthia and Julian during Lennon's divorce, McCartney
composed a song, "Hey Jules", to comfort him. It would evolve into the
Beatles song "Hey Jude". Lennon later said, "That's his best song. It
started off as a song about my son Julian ... he turned it into 'Hey
Jude'. I always thought it was about me and Yoko but he said it wasn't."
Lennon's
relationship with his first son was always strained. After Lennon and
Ono's 1971 move to New York, Julian would not see his father until 1973.
With Pang's encouragement, it was arranged for him (and his mother) to
visit Lennon in Los Angeles, where they went to Disneyland. Julian
started to see his father regularly, and Lennon gave him a drumming part
on a Walls and Bridges track. He bought Julian a Gibson Les Paul guitar
and other instruments, and encouraged his interest in music by
demonstrating guitar chord techniques. Julian recalls that he and his
father "got on a great deal better" during the time he spent in New
York: "We had a lot of fun, laughed a lot and had a great time in
general".
Lennon
told Playboy in 1980, "Sean was a planned child, and therein lies the
difference. I don't love Julian any less as a child. He's still my son,
whether he came from a bottle of whiskey or because they didn't have
pills in those days. He's here, he belongs to me, and he always will."
In an interview shortly before his death Lennon said he was trying to
re-establish a connection with the then 17-year-old, and confidently
predicted that "Julian and I will have a relationship in the future."
After his death it was revealed that he had left Julian very little in
his will.
Yoko Ono
Further information: Yoko Ono
There
are two versions of how Lennon met Ono during his marriage to Cynthia.
According to the first, on 9 November 1966 Lennon went to the Indica
gallery in London, where Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibit,
and they were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar. Lennon was
intrigued by Ono's "Hammer A Nail": patrons hammered a nail into a
wooden board, creating the art piece. Although the exhibition had not
yet begun, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono
stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a
millionaire! He might buy it." Ono had not heard of the Beatles, but
relented on condition that Lennon pay her five shillings. Lennon
replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an
imaginary nail in."The second version, told by McCartney, is that in
late 1965, Ono was in London compiling original musical scores for a
book John Cage was working on. McCartney declined to give her any of his
own manuscripts for the book, but suggested Lennon might oblige. When
asked, Lennon gave Ono the original handwritten lyrics to "The Word".
(The latter are reproduced in Cage's book, Notations.)
Lennon
changed his name to John Ono Lennon in a brief ceremony on the roof of
the Apple Corps building, site of the Beatles' Let It Be rooftop concert
three months earlier.
Ono
began telephoning and calling at Lennon's home. When his wife asked for
an explanation, he told her Ono was a mad person trying to obtain money
for her "avant-garde bullshit". While his wife was on holiday in
Greece, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording what
would become the Two Virgins album, after which, they said, they made
love at dawn. When Lennon's wife returned home she found Ono wearing her
bathrobe, drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, "Oh, hi." Ono
miscarried John Ono Lennon II on 21 November 1968.
From
the beginning, the relationship was bizarre. In a 1981 interview, Ono
light-heartedly remarked, "I used to say to [Lennon], 'I think you’re a
closet fag, you know.' Because after we started to live together, John
would say to me, 'Do you know why I like you? Because you look like a
bloke in drag.'" According to author Albert Goldman, Ono was regarded by
Lennon as a "magical being" who could solve all his problems, but this
was a "grand illusion", and she openly cheated on him with gigolos;
eventually "both he and Yoko were burnt out from years of hard drugs,
overwork, emotional breakdowns, quack cures, and bizarre diets, to say
nothing of the effects of living constantly in the glare of the mass
media." After their separation, "no longer collaborating as a team, they
remained in constant communication. ... No longer able to live
together, they found that they couldn’t live apart either."
During
Lennon's last two years in the Beatles, he and Ono began public
protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on 20
March 1969, and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam campaigning with a
week-long Bed-In for peace. They planned another Bed-In in the United
States, but were denied entry, so held one instead at the Queen
Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance".
They often combined advocacy with performance art, as in their "Bagism",
first introduced during a Vienna press conference. Lennon detailed this
period in the Beatles' song "The Ballad of John and Yoko". Lennon
changed his name by deed poll on 22 April 1969, adding "Ono" as a middle
name. The brief ceremony took place on the roof of the Apple Corps
building, made famous three months earlier by the Beatles' Let It Be
rooftop concert. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon thereafter,
official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon, since he
was not permitted to revoke a name given at birth. After Ono was injured
in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-sized bed to be brought
to the recording studio as he worked on the Beatles' last album, Abbey
Road. To escape the acrimony of the band's break-up, Ono suggested they
move permanently to New York, which they did on 31 August 1971. They
first lived in the St. Regis Hotel on 5th Avenue, East 55th Street, then
moved to a street-level flat at 105 Bank Street, Greenwich Village, on
16 October 1971. After a robbery, they relocated to the more secure
Dakota at 1 West 72nd Street, in May 1973,.
ABKCO
Industries, formed in 1968 by Allen Klein as an umbrella company to
ABKCO Records, recruited May Pang as a receptionist in 1969. Through
involvement in a project with ABKCO, Lennon and Ono met her the
following year. She became their personal assistant. After she had been
working with the couple for three years, Ono confided that she and
Lennon were becoming estranged from one another. She went on to suggest
that Pang should begin a physical relationship with Lennon, telling her,
"He likes you a lot." Pang, 22, astounded by Ono's proposition,
eventually agreed to become Lennon's companion. The pair soon moved to
California, beginning an eighteen-month period he later called his "lost
weekend". In Los Angeles, Pang encouraged Lennon to develop regular
contact with Julian, whom he had not seen for two years. He also
rekindled friendships with Starr, McCartney, Beatles roadie Mal Evans,
and Harry Nilsson.
When
Lennon decided to produce Nilsson's album Pussy Cats, Pang rented a
beach house for all the musicians. Together, Lennon and Nilsson soon
began to indulge in alcoholic excesses, and their drunken antics became
fodder for the tabloids. Two widely publicised incidents occurred at The
Troubadour club in March 1974, the first when Lennon placed a Kotex on
his forehead and scuffled with a waitress, and the second, two weeks
later, when Lennon and Nilsson were ejected from the same club after
heckling the Smothers Brothers. On another occasion, after
misunderstanding something Pang said, Lennon attempted to strangle her,
only relenting when physically restrained by Nilsson.
In
1975, Lennon told Bob Harris on The Old Grey Whistle Test, "We had a
lot of fun. It was Keith Moon, Harry, me, Ringo all living together in a
house, and we had some moments folks... but it got a little near the
knuckle. I hit the bottle like I was 18 or 19 and I was acting like I
was still at college. It was the first night I drank Brandy
Alexanders... I was with Harry Nilsson, who didn't quite get as much
coverage as me."
Lennon
returned to New York with Pang in June 1974 to finish work on Pussy
Cats and record his own Walls and Bridges. They reserved a room in their
newly rented apartment for Julian to visit. Lennon, hitherto inhibited
by Ono in this regard, began to reestablish contact with other relatives
and friends. By December he and Pang were considering a house purchase,
and he was refusing to accept Ono's telephone calls. In January 1975,
he agreed to meet Ono—who said she had found a cure for smoking—and
after the meeting failed to return home or call Pang. When Pang
telephoned the next day, Ono told her Lennon was unavailable, exhausted
after a hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared at a
joint dental appointment, stupified and confused to such an extent that
Pang believed he had been brainwashed. He told her his separation from
Ono was now over,.
John Lennon and Sean Lennon,
When
Lennon and Ono were reunited, she became pregnant, but having
previously suffered three miscarriages in her attempt to have a child
with Lennon, she said she wanted an abortion. She agreed to allow the
pregnancy to continue on condition that Lennon adopt the role of
househusband; this he agreed to do. Sean was born on 9 October 1975,
Lennon's 35th birthday, delivered by Caesarean section. Lennon's
subsequent career break would span five years. He became utterly devoted
to his son. He had a photographer take pictures of Sean every day of
his first year, and created numerous drawings for him, posthumously
published as Real Love: The Drawings for Sean. Lennon later proudly
declared, "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."
Former Beatles
Further information: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr
Lennon (top left) remained close to Ringo Starr (bottom right), but his relationship with the others varied.
Although
his friendship with Ringo Starr remained consistently warm during the
years following the Beatles' break-up in 1970, Lennon's relationship
with his other fellow ex-Beatles varied. He was close to Harrison
initially, but the two drifted apart after Lennon moved to America. When
Harrison was in New York for his December 1974 Dark Horse tour, Lennon
agreed to join him on stage, but failed to appear after an argument over
Lennon's refusal to sign an agreement that would finally dissolve the
Beatles' legal partnership. (Lennon eventually signed the papers in Walt
Disney World in Florida, while on holiday there with Pang and Julian.)
Harrison incensed Lennon in 1980 when he published an autobiography that
made very little mention of him. Lennon told Playboy, "I was hurt by
it. By glaring omission ... my influence on his life is absolutely zilch
and nil ... he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met
in subsequent years. I'm not in the book."
Lennon's
most intense feelings were reserved for McCartney. In addition to
attacking him through the lyrics of "How Do You Sleep?", Lennon argued
with him through the press for three years after the group split. The
two later began to reestablish something of the close friendship they
had once known, and in 1974 even played music together again for what
would be the one and only time (see A Toot and a Snore in '74), before
growing apart once more. Lennon said that during McCartney's final
visit, in April 1976, they watched the episode of Saturday Night Live in
which Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 cash offer to get the Beatles to
reunite on the show. The pair considered going to the studio to make a
joke appearance, attempting to claim their share of the money, but were
too tired. The event was fictionalised in the 2000 television film, Two
of Us.
Despite
his estrangement from McCartney, Lennon always felt a musical
competitiveness with him and kept an ear on his music. During his
five-year career break he was content to sit back so long as McCartney
was producing what Lennon saw as garbage. When McCartney released
"Coming Up" in 1980, the year Lennon returned to the studio and the last
year of his life, he took notice. Asked the same year whether the group
were dreaded enemies or the best of friends, he replied that they were
neither, and that he had not seen any of them in a long time. But he
also said, "I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John,
Paul, George and Ringo go on,."
John Lennon Political activism,
John Lennon Anti-war and civil rights activities,
Recording "Give Peace a Chance" during the Bed-In for Peace at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal
Lennon
and Ono used their honeymoon as a Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam
Hilton. The March 1969 event attracted worldwide media coverage, as did a
second Bed-In three months later at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in
Montreal. Recorded during the second Bed-In, and quickly taken up as an
anti-war anthem, "Give Peace a Chance" was sung by a quarter of a
million anti-Vietnam-War demonstrators in Washington, DC on 15 October,
the second Vietnam Moratorium Day.
When
Lennon and Ono moved to New York City in August 1971, they befriended
two of the Chicago Seven, Yippie anti-war activists Jerry Rubin and
Abbie Hoffman. Another anti-war activist, John Sinclair, poet and
co-founder of the White Panther Party, was serving ten years in the
state prison for selling two joints of marijuana after a series of
previous convictions for possession of the drug. At the "Free John
Sinclair" concert in Ann Arbor, Michigan on 10 December 1971, Lennon and
Ono appeared on stage with David Peel, Phil Ochs, Stevie Wonder, Bob
Seger and other musicians, as well as Rubin and Bobby Seale of the Black
Panther Party. Lennon, through his newly written song "John Sinclair",
called on the authorities to "Let him be, set him free, let him be like
you and me." Some 20,000 people were present at the rally, and three
days later the State of Michigan released Sinclair from prison. The
performance was recorded, and later appeared on John Lennon Anthology
(1998) and Acoustic (2004).
Following
the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972, in which 27 civil rights protestors
were shot by the British Army during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights
Association march, Lennon said that given the choice between the army
and the IRA he would side with the latter, and in 2000, Britain's
domestic security service MI5 said that Lennon had given money to the
IRA. Biographer Bill Harry records that following Bloody Sunday, Lennon
and Ono financially supported the production of the film The Irish
Tapes, a political documentary with a pro-IRA slant. According to FBI
surveillance reports, Lennon was sympathetic to Tariq Ali's
International Marxist Group; Ali, writing for The Guardian in 2006,
called this "accurate". Lennon and Ono showed their solidarity with the
Clydeside UCS workers' work-in of 1971 by sending a bouquet of red roses
and a cheque for £5,000,.
John Lennon Deportation attempt,
Richard Nixon feared Lennon could cost him his re-election.
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 rumours of Lennon's involvement in a concert to
be held in San Diego at the same time as the Republican National
Convention, tried to have him deported. Nixon believed that Lennon's
anti-war activities could cost him his re-election; Republican Senator
Strom Thurmond suggested in a February 1972 memo that "deportation would
be a strategic counter-measure" against Lennon. The next month the
Immigration and Naturalization Service began deportation proceedings,
arguing that his 1968 misdemeanor conviction for cannabis possession in
London had made him ineligible for admission to the United States.
Lennon spent the next four years in deportation hearings. While the
legal battle continued, Lennon attended rallies and made television
appearances. Lennon and Ono co-hosted the Mike Douglas Show for a week
in February 1972, introducing guests such as Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale
to mid-America.
On
23 March 1973, Lennon was ordered to leave the US within 60 days. Ono,
meanwhile, was granted permanent residence. In response, Lennon and Ono
held a press conference on 1 April 1973 at the New York chapter of the
American Bar Association, where they announced the formation of the
state of Nutopia; a place with "no land, no boundaries, no passports,
only people". Waving the white flag of Nutopia (two handkerchiefs), they
asked for political asylum in the US. The press conference was filmed,
and would later appear in the 2006 documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon.
Lennon's Mind Games (1973) included the track "Nutopian International
Anthem" (three seconds of silence). Soon after the press conference,
Nixon's involvement in a political scandal came to light, and in June
the Watergate hearings began in Washington, DC. They led to the
president's resignation 14 months later. Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford,
showed little interest in continuing the battle against Lennon, and the
deportation order was overturned in 1975. The following year, his US
immigration status finally resolved, Lennon received his green card, and
when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president in January 1977, Lennon
and Ono attended the Inaugural Ball
.
John Lennon FBI surveillance and de-classified documents,
After
Lennon's death, historian Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information Act
request for FBI files documenting the Bureau's role in the deportation
attempt. The FBI admitted it had 281 pages of files on Lennon, but
refused to release most of them on the grounds that they contained
national security information. In 1983, Wiener sued the FBI with the
help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. It
took 14 years of litigation to force the FBI to release the withheld
pages. The ACLU, representing Wiener, won a favourable decision in their
suit against the FBI in the Ninth Circuit in 1991. The Justice
Department appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in April 1992, but
the court declined to review the case.In 1997, respecting President
Bill Clinton's newly instigated rule that documents should be withheld
only if releasing them would involve "foreseeable harm", the Justice
Department settled most of the outstanding issues outside court by
releasing all but 10 of the contested documents.Wiener published the
results of his 14-year campaign in January 2000. Gimme Some Truth: The
John Lennon FBI Files contained facsimiles of the documents, including
"lengthy reports by confidential informants detailing the daily lives of
anti-war activists, memos to the White House, transcripts of TV shows
on which Lennon appeared, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by
local police on drug charges". The story is told in the documentary The
U.S. vs. John Lennon. The final 10 documents in Lennon's FBI file, which
reported on his ties with London anti-war activists in 1971 and had
been withheld as containing "national security information provided by a
foreign government under an explicit promise of confidentiality", were
released in December 2006. They contained no indication that the British
government had regarded Lennon as a serious threat; one example of the
released material was a report that two prominent British leftists had
hoped Lennon would finance a left-wing bookshop and reading room,.
John Lennon Writing and art,
Lennon's
biographer Bill Harry writes that Lennon began drawing and writing
creatively at an early age with the encouragement of his uncle. He
collected his stories, poetry, cartoons, and caricatures in a Quarry
Bank High School exercise book that he called the Daily Howl. The
drawings were often of crippled people, and the writings satirical, and
throughout the book was an abundance of wordplay. According to classmate
Bill Turner, Lennon created the Daily Howl to amuse his best friend and
later Quarrymen band mate, Pete Shotton, to whom he would show his work
before he let anyone else see it. Turner said that Lennon "had an
obsession for Wigan Pier. It kept cropping up", and in Lennon's story A
Carrot In A Potato Mine, "the mine was at the end of Wigan Pier." Turner
described how one of Lennon's cartoons depicted a bus stop sign
annotated with the question, "Why?". Above was a flying pancake, and
below, "a blind man wearing glasses leading along a blind dog—also
wearing glasses".
Lennon's
love of wordplay and nonsense with a twist found a wider audience when
he was 24. Harry writes that In His Own Write (1964) was published after
"Some journalist who was hanging around the Beatles came to me and I
ended up showing him the stuff. They said, 'Write a book' and that's how
the first one came about". Like the Daily Howl it contained a mix of
formats including short stories, poetry, plays and drawings. One story,
"Good Dog Nigel", tells the tale of "a happy dog, urinating on a
lamppost, barking, wagging his tail—until he suddenly hears a message
that he will be killed at three o'clock." The Times Literary Supplement
considered the poems and stories "remarkable ... also very funny ... the
nonsense runs on, words and images prompting one another in a chain of
pure fantasy". The review concluded, "It is worth the attention of
anyone who fears for the impoverishment of the English language and
British imagination ... humorists have done more to preserve and enrich
these assets than most serious critics allow. Theirs is arguably our
liveliest stream of 'experimental writing' ... Lennon shows himself well
equipped to take it farther." Book Week reported, "This is nonsense
writing, but one has only to review the literature of nonsense to see
how well Lennon has brought it off. While some of his homonyms are
gratuitous word play, many others have not only double meaning but a
double edge." Lennon was surprised by the positive reception: "To my
amazement the reviewers liked it ... I didn't think the book would even
get reviewed ... I didn't think people would accept the book like they
did. To tell you the truth they took the book more seriously than I did
myself. It just began as a laugh for me."
In
combination with A Spaniard in the Works (1965), In His Own Write
formed the basis of the stage play The John Lennon Play: In His Own
Write, co-adapted by Victor Spinetti and Adrienne Kennedy. After
negotiations between Lennon, Spinetti and the artistic director of the
National Theatre, Sir Laurence Olivier, the play opened at the Old Vic
in 1968. Lennon attended the performance on the opening night, one of
his earliest public appearances with Ono.After Lennon's death, further
works were published, including Skywriting by Word of Mouth (1986); Ai:
Japan Through John Lennon's Eyes: A Personal Sketchbook (1992), with
Lennon's illustrations of the definitions of Japanese words; and Real
Love: The Drawings for Sean (1999). The Beatles Anthology (2000) also
presented examples of his writings and drawings,.
John Lennon Musicianship,
John Lennon Instruments played,
John Lennon's musical instruments and List of The Beatles' instruments
Lennon
played a number of instruments, including percussion instruments and
the flute. His first instrument as a child was the banjo. His mother
taught him how to play, then bought him an acoustic guitar. His playing
on the mouth organ during a bus journey to visit his cousin in Scotland
caught the driver's ear. Impressed, the driver told Lennon of a
harmonica he could have if he came to Edinburgh the following day, where
one had been stored in the bus depot since a passenger left it on a
bus. The professional instrument quickly replaced Lennon's toy. He would
continue to play harmonica, often using the instrument during the
Beatles' Hamburg years, and it became a signature sound in the group's
early recordings.
At
16, he played acoustic guitar with the Quarrymen. As his career
progressed through the 1960s and 1970s, he played a variety of electric
guitars, predominantly the Rickenbacker 325, Epiphone Casino and Gibson
J-160E, and, from the start of his solo career, the Gibson Les Paul
Junior. His other instrument of choice was the piano, on which he
composed many songs, including "Imagine", described as his best-known
solo work.His jamming on a piano with McCartney in 1963 led to the
creation of the Beatles' first US number one, "I Want to Hold Your
Hand". Occasionally he played a six-string bass guitar, the Fender Bass
VI, providing bass during Beatles numbers that occupied McCartney with
another instrument,.
John Lennon Vocal style,
From
his earliest days with the Beatles, Lennon's singing voice was
recognized as distinctive, versatile, and variable. Recording "Twist and
Shout", the final track during the mammoth one-day session that
captured the band's 1963 debut album Please Please Me, his voice,
already compromised by a cold, came close to giving out. Lennon said, "I
couldn't sing the damn thing, I was just screaming." In the words of
biographer Barry Miles, "Lennon simply shredded his vocal cords in the
interests of rock 'n' roll."The Beatles' producer, George Martin, tells
how Lennon "had an inborn dislike of his own voice which I could never
understand. He was always saying to me: 'DO something with my voice! ...
put something on it ... Make it different.'" Martin obliged, often
using double-tracking and other techniques. Music critic Robert
Christgau says that Lennon's "greatest vocal performance ... from scream
to whine, is modulated electronically ... echoed, filtered, and double
tracked."
As
his Beatles era segued into his solo career, his singing voice found a
widening range of expression. Biographer Chris Gregory writes that
Lennon was "tentatively beginning to expose his insecurities in a number
of acoustic-led 'confessional' ballads, so beginning the process of
'public therapy' that will eventually culminate in the primal screams of
'Cold Turkey' and the cathartic John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band." David
Stuart Ryan notes Lennon's ability to range from "extreme vulnerability,
sensitivity and even naivety" in his vocal delivery to a hard,
"rasping" style.Wiener too describes contrasts, saying the singer's
voice can be "at first subdued; soon it almost cracks with despair" In
all the singing styles he employed, Lennon communicated emotion. Music
historian Ben Urish recalls hearing the Beatles' Ed Sullivan Show
performance of "This Boy" played on the radio a few days after Lennon's
murder: "As Lennon's vocals reached their peak ... it hurt too much to
hear him scream with such anguish and emotion. But it was my emotions I
heard in his voice. Just like I always had,."
John Lennon Legacy,
Lennon's
impact on popular music culture was far-reaching. Music historians
Schinder and Schwartz, writing of the transformation in popular music
styles that took place between the 1950s and the 1960s, say that the
Beatles' influence cannot be overstated: having "revolutionized the
sound, style, and attitude of popular music and opened rock and roll's
doors to a tidal wave of British rock acts", the group then "spent the
rest of the 1960s expanding rock's stylistic frontiers".Liam Gallagher,
his group Oasis among the many who acknowledge the band's influence,
identifies Lennon as a hero; in 1999 he named his first child Lennon
Gallagher in tribute. Lennon's iconic songs came to inspire and
symbolize the ideals of the masses. On National Poetry Day in 1999,
after conducting an extensive poll to identify the UK's favourite song
lyric, the BBC announced "Imagine" the winner
In a 2006 Guardian article, Jon Wiener wrote:
In
some ways Lennon was naive. When he moved to New York, he thought he
was coming to the land of the free. He had little idea of the power of
the state to come down on those it regarded as enemies. His claim that
the FBI had him under surveillance was rejected as the fantasy of an
egomaniac, but 300 pages of FBI files, released under freedom of
information after his murder, show he was right...For young people in
1972, it was thrilling to see Lennon's courage in standing up to Nixon.
That willingness to take risks with his career, and his life, is one
reason why people still admire him today.
Lennon's
life was one of searching, confronted with the paradoxical
juxtaposition of his ideals and his own human temperament. According to
music historians Urish and Bielen, "What remains the most intriguing and
ultimately significant effort are the self-portraits Lennon left in his
songs. In holding the mirror up to himself and detailing what he saw
for the public, Lennon went beyond himself, both inwardly and outwardly.
That was the gift given to him as an artist, and that is the gift he
gave to the public." Expressing both his experiences and his ideals
through his lyrics, they write that Lennon was able to "transform the
intensely personal into the deeply universal (as well as the reverse),
often with humor and pointed insight. His songs spoke to, for, and
about, the human condition."
John Lennon Awards and sales,
John Lennon awards and nominations received by The Beatles
Statue in John Lennon Park, Havana, Cuba
Liverpool John Lennon Airport
The
Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership is acknowledged as one of the
most influential and successful of the 20th century. As performer,
writer or co-writer Lennon is responsible for 27 number one singles on
the US Hot 100 chart.a His album sales in the US alone stand at 14
million units. Double Fantasy, released shortly before his death, and
his best-selling studio album at three million shipments in the US, won
the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The following year, the
BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music went to Lennon.
Participants in a 2002 BBC poll voted him eighth of "100 Greatest
Britons".Between 2003 and 2008, Rolling Stone recognized Lennon in
several reviews of artists and music, ranking him fifth of "100 Greatest
Singers of All Time" and 38th of "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest
Artists of All Time", and his albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and
Imagine, 22nd and 76th respectively of "The RS 500 Greatest Albums of
All Time". He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire
(MBE) with the other Beatles in 1965. He was posthumously inducted into
the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame in 1994,.
John Lennon Monuments,
Statue in Liverpool
1981 Los Angeles, USA, City Hall–East, by Brett-Livingstone Strong
1985 "Imagine Monument", Strawberry Fields, Central Park, New York City
2000 Piazzale John Lennon, in Palermo, Italy (inaugurated Oct. 10th)
2000 John Lennon Park, Havana, Cuba, by José Villa Soberón (inaugurated Dec. 8th)
2002 John Lennon Airport, Liverpool, England, by Tom Murphy
2005 A Coruña, Spain, by Jose Luis Ribas
2006 Almería, Spain, by Carmen Mudarra
2007 Imagine Peace Tower, Reykjavík, Iceland by Ono
2007 Parque Mirador Bertolotto, San Miguel, Lima, Peru
2010 Bust, Sopron Music School, Sopron, Hungary, by László Szlávics, Jr.
2010 Statue to commemorate Lennon's 70th birthday, called "Peace and Harmony", Liverpool, England
Liverpool, Hard Day's Night Hotel
Liverpool, Cavern Pub
Read Hard Rock Cafe, Washington, US
Plaça De John Lennon, on Travessera de Grácia in Barcelona, Spain
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