John Winston Lennon (1940–80) was an English rock legend, guitarist, and songwriter. He was the founding member of the Beatles, the most influential music band of the rock era. He wrote most of the Beatles songs in association with Paul McCartney.
A native of Liverpool, Lennon did not show much musical inclination as a child. He was smart but often got into trouble for his angry streak, petty crimes, and rebellious attitude.
At age 16, Lennon listened to Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and other rock-and-roll legends whose records were brought over by American sailors docking at the Liverpool port. Fascinated by rock and roll music, Lennon formed his band with several friends and called it the Quarrymen.
Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church party in the summer of 1957. They became fast friends after Lennon learned that McCartney could not only tune and play the guitar but also recall the lyrics of the latest rock and roll songs. The two formed a legendary songwriting partnership that composed 180 songs. After McCartney’s friend George Harrison joined them in 1958, they formed the Beatals, which they later renamed Silver Beetles and finally the Beatles. Drummer Pete Best enlisted in 1960.
The Beatles played at various clubs around England and in Hamburg, Germany. They then returned to England and played at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, where businessman Brian Epstein discovered them. After signing up as their manager, Epstein signed the Beatles with EMI records in 1962 and had drummer Pete Best replaced by Ringo Starr. By 1963, the Beatles were the most famous rock and roll band in England. The following year, they took America by storm with their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. ‘Beatlemania’ swept across Europe and America.; the Beatles’ every movement was sure to be accompanied by crowds of screaming young girls and enthusiastic admirers.
Lennon was the Beatles’ most controversial member. His 1966 statement, “The Beatles are bigger than Jesus Christ,” instigated a religious counterattack in the United States. During the later 1960s, he used his celebrity to draw attention to various political causes and feminism. His vehement denunciation of the Vietnam War resulted in a protracted—but unsuccessful—effort by the Nixon administration to deport him from his adopted hometown of New York. His single “Give Peace a Chance” became the anti-Vietnam-War anthem in 1969.
Lennon married Japanese-American artist Yoko Ono in 1969. When the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Lennon embarked on a successful solo career. After the birth of their son Sean Ono Lennon in 1975, Lennon retired from public life and stayed home with family.
In 1980, Lennon was assassinated by a mentally disturbed fan who had asked Lennon for his autograph only hours earlier. A few days later, Ono organized over 100,000 people gathered in New York’s Central Park and thousands of others around the world to observe a 10-minute silence to honor him. A section of Central Park is designated “Strawberry Fields” in his memory.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Lennon
Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war—for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I’d say we deserve ours more.
—John Lennon
Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.
—John Lennon
Topics: Goals, Luck, Nature, Busy, Planning, Living, Life
You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.
—John Lennon
Topics: Getting Ahead, Ambition
Everything is clearer when you’re in love.
—John Lennon
Topics: Love
Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.
—John Lennon
Topics: Love, Feelings
Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.
—John Lennon
Topics: Christianity, Religion
The more I see the less I know for sure.
—John Lennon
Topics: Certainty
When I hold you in my arms and I feel my finger on your trigger I know no one can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun.
—John Lennon
Topics: War
Nobody controls me. I’m uncontrollable. The only one who can control me is me, and that’s just barely possible. And that’s the lesson I’m learning. If someone’s going to impress me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Yoko, then there comes a point where the emperor has no clothes ’cause I’m naive, but I’m not stupid. For all you folks out there who think I’m having the wool pulled over my eyes, well, that’s an insult to me. But if you think you know me, or you have some part of me because of the music, and then you think I’m being controlled like a dog on a leash because I do things with her, then screw you, brother or sister, you don’t know what’s happening. I’m not here for you, I’m here for me and her, and now the baby.
—John Lennon
Topics: Control
A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
—John Lennon
Topics: Dreams
I resent performing for frisking idiots who don’t know anything.
—John Lennon
Topics: Music
My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.
—John Lennon
Topics: The Artist
The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?
—John Lennon
Topics: Drugs
There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
—John Lennon
Topics: Truth
Work is life, you know, and without it, there’s nothing but fear and insecurity.
—John Lennon
Topics: Work
If The Beatles or the 60’s had a message, it was ‘Learn to swim. And once you’ve learned – swim!’
—John Lennon
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
—John Lennon
And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let’s stop all the fight.
—John Lennon
Topics: Race, Racism
The pressures of being a parent are equal to any pressure on earth. To be a conscious parent, and really look to that little being’s mental and physical health is a responsibility which most of us, including me, avoid most of the time, because it’s too hard…To put it loosely, the reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility of bringing them up…
—John Lennon
Topics: Parents, Parenting
People think the Beatles know what’s going on. We don’t. We’re just doing it.
—John Lennon
Topics: Ignorance
I’d never met a woman I considered as intelligent as me. That sounds bigheaded, but every woman I met was either a dolly-chick, or a sort of screwed-up intellectual chick. And of course, in the field I was in, I didn’t meet many intellectual people anyway. I always had this dream of meeting an artist, an artist girl who would be like me. And I thought it was a myth, but then I met Yoko and that was it.
—John Lennon
Topics: Women
For a long time I wasn’t listening to music, to the rock and roll stuff on the radio, because it would cause me to get sweaty—it would bring back memories I didn’t want to know about, or I would get that feeling that I’m not alive ’cause I’m not making it. And if it was good, I hated it ’cause I wasn’t doing it. And if it was bad, I was furious ’cause I could’ve done it better…
—John Lennon
Topics: Music
The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.
—John Lennon
Topics: Twentieth Century
The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it’s unknown, and it’s plain sailing.
—John Lennon
Topics: Uncertainty, Fear, Doubt, Acceptance
It just was a gradual development over the years. I mean last year was ‘all you need is Love.’ This year, it’s ‘all you need is Love and peace, baby.’ Give peace a chance, and remember Love. The only hope for us is peace. Violence begets violence. You can have peace as soon as you like if we all pull together. You’re all geniuses, and you’re all beautiful. You don’t need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace, think peace, and live peace and breathe peace, and you’ll get it as soon as you like.
—John Lennon
Topics: Peace
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock and roll or Christianity.
—John Lennon
Topics: Christians, Religion, Christianity
I realized that kids everywhere go for the same stuff; and seeing as we’d done it in England, there’s no reason why we couldn’t do it in America too.
—John Lennon
My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn’t know how to cry. Simple.
—John Lennon
Topics: Fear
When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
—John Lennon
Topics: Meaning, Purpose
Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.
—John Lennon
Topics: Marriage
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