John Winston Ono Lennon MBE (born
John Winston Lennon; 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer and songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as a co-founder of the band
the Beatles, the most commercially successful band in the history of popular music. With
Paul McCartney, he formed a celebrated
songwriting partnership.
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. When
the group disbanded in 1970, 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 "
Working Class Hero". 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 raise 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
Manhattan 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 and the larger
counterculture.
As of 2012, Lennon's solo album sales in the United States exceeded
14 million 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 twice; as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1994.
[1]
Biography
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 of Irish descent, 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.
[6]
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.
[8]
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.
251 Menlove Avenue, where Lennon lived for most of his childhood
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 John was 11 years
old he often visited her at 1 Blomfield Road, Liverpool, where she
played him
Elvis Presley records, taught him the banjo, and showed him 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.
[15]
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."
1957–70: The Quarrymen to the Beatles
1957–66: Formation, commercial break-out and touring years
At age 15, Lennon formed the
skiffle group, the Quarrymen. Named after Quarry Bank High School, the group was established by him in September 1956. 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 he asked McCartney 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.
McCartney suggested his friend
George Harrison as the lead guitarist.
Lennon thought Harrison (then 14 years old) was too young. McCartney
engineered an audition on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus, where
Harrison played "
Raunchy" for Lennon and was asked to join.
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 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,
[47] 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 (MBE) in the
1965 Queen's Birthday Honours.
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. In March that year 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."
In March 1966, 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, he had made increasing use
of the drug, and was almost constantly under its influence for much of
1967. 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". Led primarily by Harrison and Lennon's interest in Eastern religion, the Beatles later travelled to Maharishi's
ashram in India for further guidance. While there, 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.
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!". In protest at Britain's involvement in the
Nigerian Civil War,
[83] its support of America in the
Vietnam war and (perhaps jokingly) against "Cold Turkey" slipping down the charts,
[84] Lennon returned his
MBE medal to the Queen, though this had no effect on his MBE status, which could not be renounced.
Lennon left the Beatles in September 1969,
and agreed not to inform the media while the group 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?"
1970–80: Solo career
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.
|
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Sample of " Imagine", Lennon's "most famous post-Beatles track."
Like "Give Peace a Chance", the song became an anti-war anthem, but its
lyrics offended religious groups. Lennon's explanation was, "If you can
imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion—not without
religion, but without this 'my god is bigger than your god' thing—then
it can be true."
|
| Problems playing this file? See media help. |
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 and anti-Nixon 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 the New York home of activist
Jerry Rubin after
McGovern lost to Nixon.
[105][106] Embroiled in a continuing legal battle with the immigration authorities, Lennon was denied
permanent residency in the US (which wouldn't be resolved until 1976).
Depressed, Lennon got intoxicated and had sex with a female guest,
leaving Ono embarrassed. Her song "Death of Samantha" was inspired by
the incident.
[108]
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.
[110] "
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.
[113]
1973–75: "Lost weekend"
Publicity photo of John Lennon and host
Tom Snyder from the television program
Tomorrow. Aired in 1975, this was the last television interview Lennon gave before his death in 1980.
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
menstrual pad
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).
[117]
Settled back in New York, Lennon recorded the album
Walls and Bridges. Released in October 1974, it yielded his only US
Hot 100 number-one non-Beatles single in his lifetime, "
Whatever Gets You thru the Night", featuring
Elton John on backing vocals and piano. (Although
Imagine reached number-one on the US
Record World chart
[119] and in several other countries). 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.
[122]
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.
[125]
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 by Lennon and Ono,
Double Fantasy was not well received, drawing comments such as
Melody Maker's "indulgent sterility ... a godawful yawn".
8 December 1980: Death
Strawberry Fields in Central Park with the Dakota in the background
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 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.
[139] As of 2015, he remains in prison, having been denied parole eight times.
[140]
Personal relationships
Cynthia Lennon
Lennon and Cynthia Powell (1939–2015) 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 attributed 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 in November 1968, with Lennon giving her
£100,000 ($240,000 in U.S. dollars at the time), a small annual payment
and custody of Julian.
Brian Epstein
The Beatles were performing at Liverpool's
Cavern Club in November 1961, 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
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 Ono
Two versions exist of how Lennon met Ono. According to the first, told by the Lennons, 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 visiting and telephoning Lennon's home and, when his wife
asked for an explanation, Lennon 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."
[170] 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 in
Gibraltar on 20 March 1969, and spent their honeymoon at the
Hilton 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. The couple settled at
Tittenhurst Park at
Sunninghill in
Berkshire.
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 1973.
[180]
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.
Upon returning 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 claimed to
have 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
Although his friendship with Starr remained consistently friendly
during the years following the Beatles' break-up in 1970, Lennon's
relationships 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 offended 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
Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon as what they termed a "
Bed-In for Peace" at the
Amsterdam Hilton Hotel; the March 1969 event attracted worldwide media ridicule.
[191][192] At a second Bed-In three months later at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal
Lennon wrote and recorded "Give Peace a Chance". Released as a single,
it was quickly taken up as an anti-war anthem and sung by a quarter of a
million demonstrators against the
Vietnam War in Washington, DC, on 15 November, the second
Vietnam Moratorium Day.
In December, they paid for billboards in 10 cities around the world
which declared, in the national language, "War Is Over! If You Want It".
[195]
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."
[full citation needed] In London, Lennon and Ono staged a "Britain Murdered Hanratty" banner march and a "Silent Protest For James Hanratty",
[83] and produced a 40-minute documentary on the case. At an
appeal hearing years later, Hanratty's conviction was upheld
[full citation needed] after
DNA evidence matched.
[199] His family continued to appeal in 2010.
[200]
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".
In 1973, Lennon contributed a limerick called "Why Make It Sad To Be Gay?" to Len Richmond's
The Gay Liberation Book.
[211]
Lennon's last act of political activism was a statement in support of
the striking minority sanitation workers in San Francisco on 5 December
1980. He and Ono planned to join the workers' protest on 14 December.
[212]
By this time, however, Lennon had also quietly renounced the
counterculture views which he had helped promote during the 1960s and
1970s and became more aligned with
conservatism,
[213][214] though whether he had actually aligned to a more conservative world view is disputed
[215]
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 reelection; 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 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![221][222]
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
Confidential (here declassified and censored) letter by
J. Edgar Hoover about FBI surveillance of John Lennon.
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 bandmate
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. In 1969, Lennon wrote "Four in Hand"—a skit based on his teenaged experiences of
group masturbation—for
Kenneth Tynan's play
Oh! Calcutta!.
[237] 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.
[240] Double Fantasy
producer Jack Douglas claimed that since his Beatle days Lennon
habitually tuned his D-string slightly flat, so his Aunt Mimi could tell
which guitar was his on recordings.
[242] Occasionally he played a six-string bass guitar, the
Fender Bass VI, providing bass on some Beatles numbers ("
Back in the U.S.S.R.", "
The Long and Winding Road", "
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 1967.
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."
[248] 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.
As his Beatles era segued into his solo career, his singing voice
found a widening range of expression. Biographer Chris Gregory writes of
Lennon "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."
Music critic Robert Christgau calls this Lennon's "greatest vocal
performance ... from scream to whine, is modulated electronically ...
echoed, filtered, and double tracked."
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.
[259] 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.
[260] 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".
[261]
In December 2013 the
International Astronomical Union named one of the craters on
Mercury after Lennon.
[262]
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.
a His album sales in the US stand at 14 million units.
Double Fantasy was his best-selling solo album, at three million shipments in the US; Released shortly before his death, it 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 "
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". He was appointed
Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) with the other Beatles in 1965 (returned in 1969
[272]). Lennon was posthumously inducted into the
Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987
[full citation needed] and into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994
