John Ono
Lennon,
MBE, (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980)
was an English musician, singer and songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as a
founder member of the Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically
acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. With Paul McCartney, he formed
one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.
Born and
raised in Liverpool, as a teenager Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze;
his first band, the Quarrymen, evolved into the Beatles in 1960. As the group
disintegrated towards the end of the decade, Lennon embarked on a solo career
that produced the critically acclaimed albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
and Imagine, and iconic songs such as "Give Peace a Chance"
and "Imagine". After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, he changed his
name to John Ono Lennon. Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in
1975 to devote time to raising his infant son Sean, but re-emerged with Ono in
1980 with the new album Double Fantasy. He was murdered three weeks
after its release.
Lennon
revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings,
on film and in interviews. Controversial through his political and peace
activism, 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 some of his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement.
As of 2012,
Lennon's solo album sales in the United States exceed 14 million units,
and as writer, co-writer or performer, he is responsible for 25 number-one
singles on the US Hot 100 chart. 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.
1940-57: Early years
Lennon was
born in war-time England, on 9 October 1940 at Liverpool Maternity Hospital to
Julia (née Stanley) and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman who was away at the
time of his son's birth. His parents named him John Winston Lennon after his
paternal grandfather, John "Jack" Lennon, and then-Prime Minister
Winston Churchill. His father was often away from home but sent regular pay
cheques to 9 Newcastle Road, Liverpool, where Lennon lived with his
mother, but the cheques stopped when he went absent without leave in February
1944. When he eventually came home six months later, he offered to look after
the family, but Julia—by then pregnant with another man's child—rejected the
idea. After her sister, Mimi Smith, twice complained to Liverpool's Social Services,
Julia handed the care of Lennon over to her. In July 1946 Lennon's father
visited Smith and took his son to Blackpool, secretly intending to emigrate to
New Zealand with him. Julia followed them—with her partner at the time, 'Bobby'
Dykins—and after a heated argument his father forced the five-year-old to
choose between them. Lennon twice chose his father, but as his mother walked
away, he began to cry and followed her. It would be 20 years before he had
contact with his father again.
Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence he lived with his
aunt and uncle, Mimi and George Smith, who had no children of their own, at
Mendips, 251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton. His aunt purchased volumes of short
stories for him, and his uncle, a dairyman at his family's farm, bought him a
mouth organ and engaged him in solving crossword puzzles. Julia visited Mendips
on a regular basis, and when he was 11 years old he often visited her at
1 Blomfield Road, Liverpool, where she played him Elvis Presley records,
and taught him the banjo, learning how to play "Ain't That a Shame"
by Fats Domino
In September
1980, Lennon commented about 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 poet/musician. But I cannot be what I am not ... I was
the one who all the other boys' parents—including Paul's father—would say, 'Keep
away from him'... The parents instinctively recognised I was a
troublemaker, meaning I did not conform and I would influence their children,
which I did. I did my best to disrupt every friend's home ... Partly out
of envy that I didn't have this so-called home ... but I did... There
were five women that were my family. Five strong, intelligent, beautiful
women, five sisters. One happened to be my mother. [She] just couldn't deal
with life. She was the youngest and she had a husband who ran away to sea and
the war was on and she couldn't cope with me, and I ended up living with her
elder sister. Now those women were fantastic ... And that was my first
feminist education ... I would infiltrate the other boys minds. I could
say, "Parents are not gods because I don't live with mine and, therefore,
I know.'
He
regularly visited his cousin, Stanley Parkes, who lived in Fleetwood. Seven
years Lennon's senior, Parkes took him on trips and to local cinemas. During
the school holidays, Parkes often visited Lennon with Leila Harvey, another
cousin, often travelling to Blackpool 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, with Parkes recalling that
Lennon particularly liked George Formby. 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 drive up to the family croft at Durness, which was from about the time
John was nine years old until he was about 16." He was 14 years old when
his uncle George died of a liver haemorrhage on 5 June 1955 (aged 52).
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, and was described by Harvey at the time as, "A
happy-go-lucky, good-humoured, easy going, lively lad”. He often drew comical
cartoons which appeared in his own self-made school magazine called The
Daily Howl, but despite his artistic talent, his school reports were
damning: "Certainly on the road to failure ... hopeless ...
rather a clown in class ... wasting other pupils' time."
His
mother bought him his first guitar in 1956, an inexpensive Gallotone Champion
acoustic for which she "lent" her son five pounds and ten shillings
on the condition that the guitar be delivered to her own house, and not Mimi's,
knowing well that her sister was not supportive of her son's musical
aspirations. As Mimi was sceptical of his claim that he would be famous one
day, she 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 years old, his mother, walking home after
visiting the Smiths' house, was struck by a car and killed.
Lennon failed all his GCE O-level examinations, and was accepted into
the Liverpool College of Art only after his aunt and headmaster intervened.
Once at the college, he started wearing Teddy Boy clothes and acquired a
reputation for disrupting classes and ridiculing teachers. As a result, he was
excluded from the painting class, then the graphic arts course, and 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 was "thrown out of
the college before his final year."
1957-66:
Formation, commercial break-out and touring years
The
Beatles evolved from Lennon's first band, the Quarrymen. Named after Quarry
Bank High School, the group was established by him in September 1956 when he
was 15, and began as a skiffle group. By the summer of 1957 the Quarrymen
played a "spirited set of songs" made up of half skiffle and half
rock and roll. Lennon first met Paul McCartney at the Quarrymen's second
performance, held in Woolton on 6 July at the St. Peter's Church garden fête,
after which McCartney was asked to join the band.
McCartney
says that Aunt Mimi: "was very aware that John's friends were lower
class", and would often patronise him when he arrived to visit Lennon.
According to Paul's brother Mike, McCartney's father was also disapproving,
declaring Lennon would get his son "into trouble"; although he later
allowed the fledgling band to rehearse in the McCartneys' front room at
20 Forthlin Road. During this time, the 18-year-old Lennon wrote his first
song, "Hello Little Girl", a UK top 10 hit for The Fourmost nearly
five years later.
George
Harrison joined the band as lead guitarist, even though Lennon thought Harrison
(at 14 years old) was too young to join the band, so McCartney engineered a
second audition on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus, where Harrison played
"Raunchy" for Lennon. Stuart Sutcliffe, Lennon's friend from art
school, later joined as bassist. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Sutcliffe
became "The Beatles" in early 1960. In August that year, the Beatles
engaged for a 48-night residency in Hamburg, Germany, and desperately in need
of a drummer, asked Pete Best to join them. Lennon was now 19, and his aunt,
horrified when he told her about the trip, pleaded with him to continue his art
studies instead. After the first Hamburg residency, 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 his 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 decided to stay in Hamburg, and drummer Ringo
Starr replaced Best, completing the four-piece line-up that would endure until
the group's break-up in 1970. The band's first single, "Love Me Do",
was released in October 1962 and reached No. 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, which is
evident in the vocal on the last song to be recorded that day, Twist and Shout. The Lennon–McCartney
songwriting partnership yielded eight of its fourteen tracks. With few
exceptions—one being the album title itself—Lennon had yet to bring his love of
wordplay to bear on his song lyrics, saying: "We were just writing
songs ... pop songs with no more thought of them than that–to create a
sound. And the words were almost irrelevant". In a 1987 interview,
McCartney said that the other Beatles idolised John: "He was like our own
little Elvis ... We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very
much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest". The Beatles
achieved mainstream success in the UK during the beginning of 1963. Lennon was
on tour 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 Queen's Birthday Honours of 1965.
Lennon performing with the Beatles in 1964.
Lennon
grew concerned that fans attending Beatles' concerts were unable to hear the
music above the screaming of fans, and that the band's musicianship was
beginning to suffer as a result. 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 seeking change.
The following January he was unknowingly introduced to LSD when a dentist,
hosting a dinner party attended by Lennon, Harrison and their wives, spiked the
guests' coffee with the drug. When they wanted to leave, their host revealed
what they had taken, and strongly advised them not to leave the house because
of the likely effects. Later, in an elevator at a nightclub, they all believed
it was on fire: "We were all screaming ... hot and hysterical."
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." The comment went virtually
unnoticed in England but caused great offence in the US when quoted by a
magazine there five months later. The furore that followed—burning of Beatles'
records, Ku Klux Klan activity and threats against Lennon—contributed to the
band's decision to stop touring.
1967-70: Studio years, break-up and solo work
Deprived
of the routine of live performances after their final commercial concert on 29
August 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.
According to biographer Ian MacDonald, Lennon's continuous experience with LSD
during the year brought him "close to erasing his identity". 1967 saw
the release of "Strawberry Fields Forever", hailed by Time
magazine for its "astonishing inventiveness", and the group's
landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which revealed
Lennon's lyrics contrasting strongly with the simple love songs of the
Lennon–McCartney's early years.
In
August, after having been introduced to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group
attended a weekend of personal instruction at his Transcendental Meditation
seminar in Bangor, Wales, and were informed of Epstein's death during the
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". They later travelled to Maharishi's ashram in
India for further guidance, where they composed most of the songs for The
Beatles and Abbey Road.
The
anti-war, black comedy How I Won the War, featuring Lennon's only
appearance in a non–Beatles' full-length film, was shown in cinemas in October
1967. McCartney organised the group's first post-Epstein project, the
self-written, -produced and -directed television film Magical Mystery Tour,
released in December that year. While the film itself proved to be their first
critical flop, its soundtrack release, featuring Lennon's acclaimed, Lewis
Carroll-inspired "I Am the Walrus", was a success. With Epstein gone,
the band members became increasingly involved in business activities, and in
February 1968 they formed Apple Corps, a multimedia corporation composed of
Apple Records and several other subsidiary companies. Lennon described the
venture as an attempt to achieve, "artistic freedom within a business
structure",but his increased drug experimentation and 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 go back to making records. Lennon
approached Allen Klein, who had managed The Rolling Stones and other bands
during the British Invasion. Klein was appointed as Apple's chief executive by
Lennon, Harrison and Starr, but McCartney never signed the management contract.
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, composed of 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 Nigerian Civil 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 rehearses "Give Peace a Chance"
in Montreal,
Quebec, Canada, in 1969
Lennon
left the group in September 1969, and agreed not to inform the media while the
band renegotiated their recording contract, but he 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 later interviews with Rolling Stone magazine, 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?"
1970-72:
Initial solo success and activism
Advertisement for "Imagine"
from Billboard,
18 September 1971.
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), was received with high praise. Critic Greil Marcus
remarked, "John's singing in the last verse of 'God' may be the finest in
all of rock." The album featured the songs "Mother", in which
Lennon confronted his feelings of childhood rejection, and the Dylanesque
"Working Class Hero", a bitter attack against the bourgeois social
system which, due to the lyric "you're still fucking peasants", fell
foul of broadcasters. 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.
With
Lennon's next album, Imagine (1971), critical response was more guarded.
Rolling Stone reported that "it contains a substantial portion of
good music" but warned of the possibility that "his posturings will
soon seem not merely dull but irrelevant". The album's 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.
However, Lennon softened his stance in the mid-1970s and said he had written
"How Do You Sleep?" about himself. He said 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
and Ono moved to New York in August 1971, and in December released "Happy
Xmas (War Is Over)". 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. In 1972, Lennon and Ono attended a
post-election wake held in New York by activist Jerry Rubin at his own place
after McGovern lost to Nixon. Lennon got intoxicated and caused a scandal by
having sex with some female guest in the next room from Ono. She had never truly
forgiven him, and wrote "Death of Samantha" song assumed to be
inspired by that particular incident. Embroiled in a continuing legal battle
with the immigration authorities, Lennon was denied permanent residency in the
US until 1976.
Recorded
as a collaboration with Ono and with backing from the New York band Elephant's
Memory, Some Time in New York City was released in 1972. Containing
songs about women's rights, race relations, Britain's role in Northern Ireland
and Lennon's problems obtaining a green card, the album was poorly
received—unlistenable, according to one critic. "Woman Is the Nigger of
the World", released as a US single from the album the same year, was
televised on 11 May, on The Dick Cavett Show. Many radio stations
refused to broadcast the song because of the word "nigger". Lennon
and Ono gave two benefit concerts with Elephant's Memory and guests 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.
1973-75: “Lost weekend”
While
Lennon was recording Mind Games (1973), he and Ono decided to separate.
The ensuing 18-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. Lennon
also contributed "I'm the Greatest", to Starr's album Ringo
(1973), released the same month. (an alternate take, from the same 1973 Ringo
sessions, with Lennon providing a guide vocal, appears on John Lennon
Anthology).
In
early 1974, Lennon was drinking heavily and his alcohol-fuelled antics with
Harry Nilsson made headlines. Two widely publicised incidents occurred at The
Troubadour club in March, the first when Lennon placed a menstruation
"towel" 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. Lennon decided to produce Nilsson's album Pussy
Cats and Pang rented a Los Angeles beach house for all the musicians but
after a month of further debauchery, with the recording sessions in chaos,
Lennon moved to New York with Pang to finish work on the album. In April,
Lennon had produced the Mick Jagger song "Too Many Cooks (Spoil the
Soup)" which was, for contractual reasons, to remain unreleased for more
than 30 years. Pang supplied the recording for its eventual inclusion on The
Very Best of Mick Jagger (2007).
Settled
back in New York, Lennon recorded the album Walls and Bridges. Released
in October 1974, it yielded his only number-one non-Beatles 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", which he introduced as
"a song by an old estranged fiancée of mine called Paul".
Lennon
co-wrote "Fame", David Bowie's first US number one, and provided
guitar and backing vocals for the January 1975 recording. The same month, Elton
John topped the charts with his cover of "Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds", featuring Lennon on guitar and back-up vocals (Lennon is
credited on the single under the moniker of "Dr. Winston O'Boogie").
He and Ono were reunited shortly afterwards. Lennon released Rock 'n' Roll
(1975), an album of cover songs, in February. "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 an eight-piece band, Lennon performed two songs from Rock
'n' Roll ("Stand By Me", which was not broadcast, and
"Slippin' and Slidin'") followed by "Imagine". The band,
known as Etc., wore masks behind their heads, a dig by Lennon who thought Grade
was two-faced.
1975-80:
Retirement and return
With
the birth of his second son Sean on 9 October 1975, Lennon took on the role of
househusband, beginning what would be a five-year hiatus 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 compilation album of previously
recorded tracks. 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.
Lennon
emerged from retirement in October 1980 with the single "(Just Like)
Starting Over", followed the next month by the album Double Fantasy,
which contained songs written during a journey to Bermuda on a 43-foot sailing
boat the previous June, that reflected his fulfilment in his new-found stable
family life. Sufficient
additional material was recorded for a planned follow-up album Milk and
Honey (released posthumously in 1984). Released jointly with Ono, Double
Fantasy was not well received, drawing comments such as Melody Maker's
"indulgent sterility ... a godawful yawn".
8
December 1980: Death
At
around 10:50 pm on 8 December 1980, as Lennon and Ono returned to their
New York apartment in The Dakota, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back
four times at the entrance to the building. Lennon was taken to the emergency
room of the nearby Roosevelt Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival at
11:07 pm. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double
Fantasy for Chapman.
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. Chapman pleaded
guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life. As of
2012, he remains in prison, having been denied parole seven times.
Personal Relationships
Cynthia
Lennon
John Lennon and Cynthia Powell in 1959
Lennon
and Cynthia Powell met in 1957 as fellow students at the Liverpool College of
Art. Although being scared of Lennon's attitude and appearance, she heard that
he was obsessed with French actress Brigitte Bardot, so she dyed her hair
blonde. Lennon asked her out, but when she said that she was engaged, he
screamed out, "I didn't ask you to fuckin' marry me, did I?" She
often accompanied him to Quarrymen gigs and travelled to Hamburg with
McCartney's girlfriend at the time to visit him. Lennon, jealous by nature,
eventually grew possessive and often terrified Powell with his anger and
physical violence. Lennon later 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, "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".
Recalling
his reaction in July 1962 on learning that Cynthia was pregnant, Lennon said,
"There's only one thing for it Cyn. We'll have to get married." The
couple were married on 23 August at the Mount Pleasant Register Office in
Liverpool. His marriage began just as Beatlemania took hold across the UK. He
performed on the evening of his wedding day, 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 to keep their marriage secret. Julian
was born on 8 April 1963; Lennon was on tour at the time and did not see his
son until three days later.
Cynthia
attributes the start of the marriage breakdown to LSD, and as a result, she
felt that he slowly lost interest in her. When the group travelled by train to
Bangor, Wales, in 1967, for the Maharishi Yogi's Transcendental Meditation
seminar, a policeman did not recognise her and stopped her from boarding. She
later recalled how the incident seemed to symbolise the ending of their
marriage. After arriving home at Kenwood, and finding Lennon with Ono, Cynthia
left the house to stay with friends. Alexis Mardas later claimed to have slept
with her that night, and a few weeks later he informed her that Lennon was
seeking a divorce and custody of Julian on grounds of her adultery with him.
After negotiations, Lennon capitulated and agreed to her divorcing him on the
same grounds. The case was settled out of court, with Lennon giving her
£100,000 and custody of Julian.
Brian
Epstein
Starr, McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Epstein
at the preview
of A Hard Day's Night in 1964
The
Beatles were performing at Liverpool's Cavern Club in 1962, when they were
introduced to Epstein after a midday concert. Epstein was homosexual. According
to biographer Philip Norman, one of his reasons for wanting to manage the group
was that he was physically attracted to Lennon. 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 café 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, who
was intoxicated with alcohol at the time, the matter was simple: "He
called me a queer so I battered his bloody ribs in".
Lennon
delighted in mocking Epstein for his homosexuality and for the fact that he was
Jewish. When Epstein invited suggestions for the title of his autobiography,
Lennon offered Queer Jew; on learning of the eventual title, A
Cellarful of Noise, he parodied, "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." During the
recording of "Baby, You're a Rich Man", he sang altered choruses of
"Baby, you're a rich fag Jew".
Julian Lennon
Julian Lennon at the unveiling of the
John Lennon Peace
Monument in Liverpool, 2010
Lennon's
first son, Julian, was born as his commitments with the Beatles intensified at
the height of Beatlemania during his marriage to Cynthia. 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, and though
it was later reported to have been derived from the initials LSD, Lennon
insisted, "It's not an acid song." McCartney corroborated Lennon's
explanation that Julian innocently came up with the name. 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 Julian was already
strained, and after Lennon and Ono's 1971 move to New York, Julian would not
see his father again 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."
In
a Playboy interview with David Sheff shortly before his death, Lennon
said, "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." He said he was trying to
re-establish a connection with the then 17-year-old, and confidently predicted,
"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
One
Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1980
Two
versions exist of how Lennon met Ono. 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 supposedly not heard of the Beatles, but
relented on condition that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which 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, Notations, but McCartney declined to give her any of his
own manuscripts for the book, suggesting that Lennon might oblige. When asked,
Lennon gave Ono the original handwritten lyrics to "The Word".
Ono
began telephoning and calling at Lennon's home, and when his wife asked for an
explanation, he explained that Ono was only trying to obtain money for her
"avant-garde bullshit". In May 1968, 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, he said, they "made love
at dawn." When Lennon's wife returned home she found Ono wearing her bathrobe
and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, "Oh, hi." Ono became
pregnant in 1968 and miscarried a male child they named John Ono Lennon II
on 21 November 1968, a few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was
granted.
During
Lennon's last two years in the Beatles, he and Ono began public protests
against the Vietnam War. They were married at The Rock Hotel in Gibraltar on 20
March 1969, and spent their honeymoon at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel 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.
May
Pang
May Pang
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 18-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. Whilst drinking with Nilsson, after misunderstanding something
Pang said, Lennon attempted to strangle her, relenting only when physically
restrained by Nilsson.
On
moving to New York, they prepared a spare 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. But after the meeting he failed to return home or call
Pang. When Pang telephoned the next day, Ono told her Lennon was unavailable,
being exhausted after a hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared
at a joint dental appointment, stupefied and confused to such an extent that
Pang believed he had been brainwashed. He told her his separation from Ono was
now over, though Ono would allow him to continue seeing her as his mistress.
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 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
Lennon (left) and the rest of
The Beatles arriving in the US
in 1964
Although
his friendship with Starr remained consistently friendly during the years
following the Beatles' break-up in 1970, Lennon's relationship with McCartney
and Harrison 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 while holidaying in Florida with Pang and Julian.) Harrison
incensed Lennon in 1980, when he published an autobiography that made little
mention of him. Lennon told Playboy, "I was hurt by it. By glaring
omission ... my influence on his life is absolutely zilch ... 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,
they even played music together again before eventually 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. Lennon summarised his feelings towards
McCartney in an interview three days before his death: "Throughout my
career, I've selected to work with ... only two people: Paul McCartney and
Yoko Ono ... That ain't bad picking."
Along
with 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 mediocre material. When McCartney released, "Coming
Up", in 1980, the year Lennon returned to the studio and the last year of
his life, he took notice. "It's driving me crackers!" he jokingly
complained, because he could not get the tune out of his head. 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."
Political activism
Recording "Give Peace a Chance" during
the Bed-In
for Peace at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal
Later that year, Lennon and Ono supported efforts by the family of James Hanratty, hanged for murder in 1962, to prove his innocence. Those who had condemned Hanratty were, according to Lennon, "the same people who are running guns to South Africa and killing blacks in the streets. ... The same bastards are in control, the same people are running everything, it's the whole bullshit bourgeois scene." In London, Lennon and Ono staged a "Britain Murdered Hanratty" banner march and a "Silent Protest For James Hanratty", and produced a 40-minute documentary on the case. At an appeal hearing years later, Hanratty's conviction was upheld after DNA evidence matched. His family continued to appeal in 2010.
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. On moving to New York City in August that year, they befriended two of the Chicago Seven, Yippie peace activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Another political activist, John Sinclair, poet and co-founder of the White Panther Party, was serving ten years in prison for selling two joints of marijuana after previous convictions for possession of the drug. In December 1971 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 15,000 people attended the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally", a protest and benefit concert with contributions from Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, and others. Lennon and Ono, backed by David Peel and Rubin, performed an acoustic set of four songs from their forthcoming Some Time in New York City album including "John Sinclair", whose lyrics called for his release. The day before the rally, the Michigan Senate passed a bill that significantly reduced the penalties for possession of marijuana and four days later Sinclair was released on an appeal bond. The performance was recorded and two of the tracks later appeared on John Lennon Anthology (1998).
Following the Bloody Sunday incident in Northern Ireland in 1972, in which 14 unarmed civil rights protesters were shot dead by the British Army, Lennon said that given the choice between the army and the IRA (who were not involved in the incident) he would side with the latter. Lennon and Ono wrote two songs protesting British presence and actions in Ireland for their Some Time in New York City album: "Luck of the Irish" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday". In 2000, David Shayler, a former member of Britain's domestic security service MI5 suggested that Lennon had given money to the IRA though this was swiftly denied by Ono. 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 Republican slant.
According to FBI surveillance reports (and confirmed by Tariq Ali in 2006) Lennon was sympathetic to the International Marxist Group, a Trotskyist group formed in Britain in 1968. However, the FBI considered Lennon to have limited effectiveness as a revolutionary since he was "constantly under the influence of narcotics".
Deportation attempt
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 United States Immigration
and Naturalization Service (INS) 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 three and
a half years in and out of deportation hearings until on 8 October 1975, when a
court of appeals barred the deportation attempt, stating "... the
courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political
grounds." 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. In 1972, Bob Dylan wrote a letter to the INS defending
Lennon, stating:
John
and Yoko add a great voice and drive to the country's so-called art institution.
They inspire and transcend and stimulate and by doing so, only help others to
see pure light and in doing that, put an end to this dull taste of petty
commercialism which is being passed off as Artist Art by the overpowering mass
media. Hurray for John and Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The
country's got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!
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 City 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", which comprised 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"
certifying his permanent residency, and when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as
president in January 1977, Lennon and Ono attended the Inaugural Ball.
FBI surveillance and declassified 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.
Writing
and art
Beatles'
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 lamp post,
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". 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 not
only surprised by the positive reception, but that the book was reviewed at
all, and suggested that readers "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 and Ono
attended the opening night performance, their second public appearance together
to date. 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.
Musicianship
Instruments played
Lennon's
playing of a 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. His mother taught him how to
play the banjo, later buying him an acoustic guitar. At 16, he played rhythm
guitar with the Quarrymen. As his career progressed, 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.
Occasionally he played a six-string bass guitar, the Fender Bass VI, (Back
in the USSR), providing bass on some Beatles' numbers (The Long and
Winding Road or Helter Skelter) that occupied McCartney with another
instrument. 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". In 1964, he became one of the
first British musicians to acquire a Mellotron keyboard, though it was not
heard on a Beatles' recording until "Strawberry Fields Forever" in
late 1966.
Vocal style
When
the Beatles recorded "Twist and Shout", the final track during the
mammoth one-day session that produced the band's 1963 debut album, Please
Please Me, Lennon's 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 vocal delivery to range from, "extreme
vulnerability, sensitivity and even naivety" 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" 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."
Legacy
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 "revolutionised 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. On
National Poetry Day in 1999, after conducting a poll to identify the UK's
favourite song lyric, the BBC announced "Imagine" the winner.
In
a 2006 Guardian article, Jon Wiener wrote: "For young people in
1972, it was thrilling to see Lennon's courage in standing up to [US President]
Nixon. That willingness to take risks with his career, and his life, is one
reason why people still admire him today." For music historians Urish and Bielen,
Lennon's most significant effort was "the self-portraits ... in his
songs [which] spoke to, for, and about, the human condition."
Lennon
continues to be mourned throughout the world and has been the subject of
numerous memorials and tributes. In 2002, the airport in Lennon's home town was
renamed the Liverpool John Lennon Airport. In 2010, on what would have been
Lennon's 70th birthday, the John Lennon Peace Monument was unveiled in Chavasse
Park, Liverpool, by Cynthia and Julian Lennon. The sculpture entitled 'Peace
& Harmony' exhibits peace symbols and carries the inscription "Peace
on Earth for the Conservation of Life · In Honour of John Lennon
1940–1980".
Awards and sales
The
Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership is regarded as one of the most
influential and successful of the 20th century. As performer, writer or co-writer
Lennon has had 25 number one singles on the US Hot 100 chart. His album sales
in the US stand at 14 million units. Double Fantasy, released shortly before
his death, and his best-selling, post-Beatles' 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 recognised Lennon in several reviews of
artists and music, ranking him fifth of "100 Greatest Singers of All
Time" and 38th of "100 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. Lennon was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of
Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
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