JOHN LENNON

JOHN LENNON

John Lennon was an English musician and songwriter, who along with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, was a member of the most popular band of all time, The Beatles. In particular, Lennon’s songwriting partnership is the most successful partnership in musical history. Throughout his life and after, Lennon has maintained a huge following all over the world.

John Lennon was born in 1940 during the Second World War, and in fact during a German air raid. When he was just four years old, his parents separated, and he went to live with his aunt as his father was a merchant seaman, and Lennon very rarely saw his father during his youth. However, he still saw his mother regularly, and she taught him how to play the piano and the banjo, as well as buying the young Lennon his first guitar. However, shortly before turning 18, his mother was struck and killed by a car, which was particularly traumatic for Lennon.

During his teens, Lennon was becoming more and more interested in music, and particularly in the music of Elvis Presley and the blossoming rock ‘n’ roll scene. He started his first band The Quarrymen, and after meeting Paul McCartney at a church fete in the Summer of 1957, asked him to join the group. McCartney then introduced Lennon to George Harrison the following year, and he too joined the group, as did Stuart Sutcliffe, before finding Pete Best to play the drums in 1960.

The Quarrymen changed their name to The Beatles and were discovered by Brian Epstein playing at the Cavern Club in 1961. Epstein became their manager and got the band their first recording contract with EMI. By this time Ringo Starr had replaced Pete Best on drums, and the band released their first single Love Me Do in 1962, which got to number 17 in the charts. After a string of more successful singles, The Beatles quickly established themselves as the most popular band in Britain.

Lennon married Cynthia Powell in August 1962 and they had a son Julian, who would later become a successful musician himself. During her marriage to Lennon, Powell was forced to keep a low profile as it was feared that being married would ruin Lennon’s heart throb reputation amongst the band’s teen followers, thus harming the band’s popularity and record sales. Lennon and Powell divorced in 1968, and Lennon married Yoko Ono the following year.

By 1964 the Beatles were perhaps at their most popular, as Beatlemania began to sweep not only Britain, but the world. The band went to the USA for some incredibly successful TV appearances before returning to the UK to make the film A Hard Day’s Night and prepare for their first world tour. The following year in 1965 the band made their second film Help!, the band were made MBEs (Members of the British Empire) and performed in front of more than 55,000 people at Shea Stadium in New York, which at the time was a record for a musical concert.

However by 1966 the band’s popularity was starting to slow a little, and Lennon’s quote that the band “were now bigger than Jesus” led to a lot of criticism and the band losing a lot of fans. The same year the band decided to stop touring and played their last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, however they continued to record more classic albums before finally breaking up in 1970. Tensions had arisen in the band, and one of the reasons was Lennon’s personal and artistic relationship with Yoko Ono.

Shortly after leaving the Beatles, Lennon started a solo career, and in 1971 released his most famous song Imagine, which was a pacifist anthem calling for more peace and love in the world. Rolling Stone magazine later named it the 3rd greatest song of all time.

After releasing various solo albums in the 1970s, with varying degrees of success, Lennon was tragically shot dead outside his apartment complex in New York by a deranged fan called Mark Chapman, and he died on December 8th 1980 at the age of just 40.

Lennon’s assassination was huge shock around the world, and it seemed particularly tragic that somebody so dedicated to peace and love should die in such a violent way. Millions of people around the world mourned his death, and continue to do so. However his legacy continues to live on, and worldwide Beatlemania has never truly gone away, as it seems every year there are new films and rereleases of albums, as well as the fact the music of The Beatles continues to inspire new bands to this day.