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
We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.
—John Lennon
Topics: Feelings, Love
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
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
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
You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
—John Lennon
Topics: Peace
A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
—John Lennon
Topics: Dreams
I don’t intend to be a performing flea anymore. I was the dreamweaver, but although I’ll be around I don’t intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don’t want to die at 40.
—John Lennon
Work is life, you know, and without it, there’s nothing but fear and insecurity.
—John Lennon
Topics: Work
We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.
—John Lennon
Topics: Twentieth Century
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
We’ve been on our peace gig, as we call it, for a year solid. And people say, ‘Do you think it’s having any effect?’ I can’t answer that. It’s like asking me in the Cavern, ‘Are you gonna make it?’ In the back of my mind I thought, I’m gonna make it, but I couldn’t lay it on the line. And I think that peace is more tangible than Beatles.
—John Lennon
If The Beatles or the 60’s had a message, it was ‘Learn to swim. And once you’ve learned – swim!’
—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
People think the Beatles know what’s going on. We don’t. We’re just doing it.
—John Lennon
Topics: Ignorance
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
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
Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.
—John Lennon
Topics: Peace, World
Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.
—John Lennon
Topics: Madness, Insanity
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.
—John Lennon
A dream you dream alone may be a dream, but a dream two people dream together is a reality.
—John Lennon
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: Purpose, Meaning
There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
—John Lennon
Topics: Truth
Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.
—John Lennon
Topics: Feelings, Love
Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.
—John Lennon
Topics: Marriage
Always remember this: ‘A kiss will never miss, and after many kisses a miss becomes a misses’.
—John Lennon
Topics: Kiss
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
—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
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
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, Christianity, Religion
Everything is clearer when you’re in love.
—John Lennon
Topics: Love
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