John Lennon Profile, Detailed Biography, Facts

John Winston Lennon, later John Ono Lennon, (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980), was best known as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist of The Beatles. His creative career also included the roles of solo musician, political activist, artist, actor and author. As half of the legendary Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, he heavily influenced the development of rock music, leading it towards more serious and political messages. He is recognized as one of the musical icons of the century, and his songs (such as "Imagine" and "Strawberry Fields Forever") are frequently ranked among the best songs of the 20th century. In 2002, the BBC conducted a vote to discover the 100 Greatest Britons of all time. The British public voted Lennon into 8th place.

John Lennon's Early years:

John Winston Lennon was born on the evening of 9 October, 1940. Both of his parents had musical background and experience, though neither pursued it seriously. Lennon lived with his parents in Liverpool until his father Fred Lennon, a merchant seaman, walked out on the family. His mother, Julia, then decided that she was unable to care for her son, and so gave him to her sister Mimi. Lennon lived with Mimi at Mendips throughout his childhood and adolescence. Like much of the population of Liverpool, Lennon had some Irish heritage, his grandfather, James Lennon, having been born in Dublin in 1858.

Around adolescence, Lennon developed severe myopia and was obliged to wear glasses in order to see clearly. During his early Beatle career, Lennon wore contacts or prescription sunglasses, but later donned his trademark, round "granny-glasses" in late 1966. Although John lived apart from his mother he still kept in contact with her through regular visits, and during this time Julia was responsible for introducing her son to a lifelong interest in music by teaching him how to play the banjo. On July 15th, 1958 - when Lennon was 17 - his mother was killed after she was struck by a car driven by a drunken off-duty police officer. This event influenced many of his later songs, and was also one of the factors that cemented his friendship with Paul McCartney, who had lost his own mother to breast cancer at the age of 14 in 1956. Later, in 1968, Lennon wrote songs entitled "Julia", "My Mummy's Dead" and "Mother" in honour of his mother as well as naming his firstborn son, Julian, after her.

His Aunt Mimi was able to get him accepted into the Liverpool College of Art by showing them some of his drawings, and it was there that he met his future wife, Cynthia Powell. However, Lennon steadily grew to hate the conformity of art school and, like many young men of his age, became increasingly interested in Rock 'n' Roll music and American singers like Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. Eventually, in the late 1950s, Lennon formed his own skiffle group called The Quarry Men, which later became Johnny and the Moondogs, followed by The Silver Beetles (a tribute to Buddy Holly's Crickets) and soon afterwards was shortened to The Beatles.

He married Powell in 1962 after she became pregnant.

Lennon had a profound influence on rock and roll, and in expanding the genre's boundaries during the 1960s. He is widely considered, along with fellow-writing partner Paul McCartney, as one of the most influential singer-songwriter-musicians of the 20th century. Of the two, Lennon is generally viewed as the better lyricist, while McCartney is seen as the more accomplished composer. Though overly simplistic, this assessment does have some merit. Many of the songs credited to Lennon-McCartney, but actually written by Lennon, are more developed, introspective pieces — often in the first person — and deal with more personal issues. Lennon's songs are also often the more lyrical, due to his love of word play, double meaning, and strange words. His most surreal pieces of songwriting, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am the Walrus", are fine examples of his unique style. Lennon's partnership in songwriting with McCartney many times involved him in complementing and counterbalancing McCartney's upbeat, positive outlook with the other side of the coin, as one of their songs, "Getting Better" demonstrates:

McCartney: I have to admit it's getting better, a little better all the time.

Lennon: It can't get no worse!

Lennon often spoke his mind freely and the press was used to querying him on a wide range of subjects. On March 4, 1966, in an interview for the London Evening Standard with Maureen Cleave, who was a friend of his, the subject of religion came up. Lennon made an off the cuff remark about how religion was becoming less of a factor in the lives of young people. The article was printed and nothing came of it, until five months later when a Teen magazine reprinted the words "I don't know what will go first—Rock and Roll or Christianity. We're more popular than Jesus now," right on the front cover, completely out of context.

A firestorm of protest swelled from the southern Bible Belt area, as conservative groups publicly burning Beatles records and memorabilia. Radio stations banned beatles music and concert venues cancelled performances. Even The Vatican got involved with a public denouncement of Lennon's comments. On August 11, 1966, the Beatles held a press conference in Chicago in order to address the growing furor.

Lennon: "I suppose if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I would have gotten away with it, but I just happened to be talking to a friend and I used the words "Beatles" as a remote thing, not as what I think - as Beatles, as those other Beatles like other people see us. I just said "they" are having more influence on kids and things than anything else, including Jesus. But I said it in that way which is the wrong way."

Reporter: "Some teenagers have repeated your statements - "I like the Beatles more than Jesus Christ." What do you think about that?"

Lennon: "Well, originally I pointed out that fact in reference to England. That we meant more to kids than Jesus did, or religion at that time. I wasn't knocking it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact and it's true more for England than here. I'm not saying that we're better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this."

Reporter: "But are you prepared to apologize?"

Lennon (thinking that he just had): "I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry."

The Vatican accepted his apology and the furor eventually died down, but constant Beatlemania, mobs, crazed teenagers, and now a press ready to tear them to pieces over any out-of-context quote was too much to handle. The Beatles soon decided to stop touring, and indeed, never performed a scheduled concert again. From this point onward the Beatles were a studio band (perhaps the first ever). Freed from the problem of having to compose music they could recreate live on stage, they could explore the technological limits of music and create unique and original sounds.

On November 9, 1966, after their final tour ended and right after he had wrapped up filming a minor role in the film How I Won The War, Lennon visited an art exhibit of Yoko Ono's at the Indica art gallery in London. Lennon began his love affair with Ono in 1968 after returning from India and leaving his estranged wife Cynthia, who filed for divorce later that year. Lennon and Ono were from then on inseparable in public and private, as well as during Beatles recording sessions. The press was extremely unkind to Ono, posting a series of unflattering articles about her, one even going so far as to call her "ugly." This infuriated Lennon, who rallied around his new partner and said publicly that there was no John and Yoko, but that they were one person, JohnAndYoko. These developments led to friction with the other members of the group, and heightened the tension during the 1968 White Album sessions.

At the end of 1968, Lennon and Ono performed as Dirty Mac on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.

During his last two years as a member of The Beatles, Lennon spent much of his time with Ono on public displays protesting the Vietnam War. He sent back the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) he received from Queen Elizabeth II During the height of Beatlemania "in protest against Britain's involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing and support of America in Vietnam," adding as a joke, "as well as 'Cold Turkey' slipping down the charts." On March 20 1969, Lennon and Ono were married in Gibraltar, and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam in a "Bed-In" for peace. They followed up their honeymoon with another "Bed-In" for peace this time held in Montreal. During the second "Bed-In" the couple recorded "Give Peace a Chance" which would go on to became an international anthem for the peace movement. They were mainly patronized as a couple of eccentrics by the media, yet they did a great deal for the peace movement, as well as for other pet causes, such as women's liberation and racial harmony. As with the "Bed-In" campaign, Lennon and Ono usually advocated their causes with whimsical demonstrations, such as Bagism, first introduced during a Vienna press conference. Shortly after, Lennon changed his middle name from Winston to Ono to show his "oneness" with his new wife. Lennon wrote "The Ballad of John and Yoko" about his marriage and the subsequent press it generated.

The failed Get Back/Let It Be recording/filming sessions did nothing to improve relations within the band. After both Lennon and Ono were injured in the summer of 1969 in a car accident in Scotland, Lennon arranged for Ono to be constantly with him in the studio (including having a full-sized bed rolled in) as he worked on The Beatles' last album, Abbey Road. While the group managed to hang together to produce one last superior musical work, soon thereafter business issues related to Apple Corps came between them.

Lennon decided to quit the Beatles but was talked out of saying anything publically. Phil Spector's involvement in trying to revive the Let It Be material then drove a further wedge between Lennon (who supported Spector) and McCartney (who opposed him.) Though the split would only become legal some time later, Lennon and McCartney's partnership had come to a bitter and definite end. McCartney soon made a press announcement, declaring he had quit the Beatles, and promoting his new solo record.

John Lennon's Solo Career