John Winston Lennon ( Liverpool , 9 of October of 1940 – New York , 8 of December of 1980 ) was a musician, singer and British composer of rock , a member of the British band The Beatles , which played the guitar , sang and composed much of the lyrics, along with Paul McCartney . He was the author of some of the best-known melodies of the 20th century. He assumed and demonstrated with many of the songs he created, a defined position against war , social injustice and in favor of peace .
Biographical synthesis
He was born on October 9, 1940 in Liverpool during a punitive bombing by Nazi aviation. At its birth the Battle of Britain had recently ended, but the war with Germany was far from over.
The first years of John’s life weren’t exactly easy. His father worked abroad for long periods on a boat, so he was not present in the education of his son, when John turned five years old his mother remarried a man who did not want to raise a son from his wife’s previous marriage , so the boy was placed in the care of his aunt and her husband, whom John would remember taught him to solve crosswords and bought him a harmonica. In his early years, John was a mischievous student, he was often disruptive in class, and ridiculed his teachers, so many refused to accept him as a student. In his early teens he got his first guitar and could spend hours playing. His aunt used to tell him:
John, the guitar is great, but you will never make a living on it.
When he was made a Member of the British Empire along with the other three members of The Beatles, John gifted the decoration to his aunt, who kept it on her property with great pride until her death.
Training and musical consecration
Interested in music since his childhood, before forming The Beatles he participated in other bands, such as The Quarrymen, Johnny and The Moondogs]] and John & The Silver Beetles, in which he was accompanied by friends from his school, including Stuart Sutcliffe . In 1957 while John was playing for a band he had formed for school, he met Paul McCartney . The two struck up an immediate friendship, and developed a magnificent partnership, writing and composing songs.
John invited Paul to join the group because he knew how to play the guitar and also how to tune it, which caught his attention. Later they joined the band George Harrison , proposed by McCartney, and later Ringo Starr , as drummer, replacing Pete Best who had been the first chosen. The name of the group evolved from John The Silver Beetles to John Silver The Beatles and later, uniting the previous Beetles (‘beetles’) with the English word ‘beat’ (‘rhythm, pulse’), for the genre they played then, beat music, the name with which they would go down in history emerged: The Beatles. So Lennon and McCartney began writing songs together. At 18 years of age, Lennon wrote his first song, “Hello, Little Girl”; which would hit the UK top 10 when it was released by The Fourmost almost five years later.
Lennon always considered himself the leader of the group. After his death, Paul McCartney explained: “John represented us all. He was older and his leadership was way above ours, he was the most ingenious and intelligent and all that kind of thing.
In 1962 the quartet’s success in England began with their first single, “Love me do.” In 1963 the group recorded their first full-length album, Please, please me (‘please, please me’). Later that year, they conquered the US market with their album With The Beatles . The band began to churn out one hit after another, with lots of number 1s.
Lennon and Paul McCartney were the creative forces behind the group, and the amount of high-quality material they produced was incredible. Among the works that stood out the most are Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band , Help , Abbey Road and Revolver . Later they began to travel around the world and became enormously popular with a huge influence not only on popular music but also on the behavior of the youth.
In 1966 there was an event that evidences Lennon’s rebellious and combative personality, when he stated in an interview:
The Beatles are more popular than Jesus Christ .
The phrase, quickly spread by the press, created a great scandal and even some fans in the United States came to burn their discs of the group in public. John later claimed that it had been misinterpreted and explained:
I didn’t say that The Beatles are more popular than Jesus Christ, I said that we are famous like Jesus Christ, like television or anything else.
In 1966, while visiting a solo exhibition at the Indica Gallery in London , he met the Japanese visual artist Yoko Ono , whom he married after divorcing Cynthia Powell, and abandoning their son Julian (b.1963). Yoko induced him to experiment even beyond music. Some fans blamed her for Lennon’s separation from The Beatles in 1970, when the singer began a solo career full of simple songs.
Yoko would become the great love of his life and they would marry, in Gibraltar , in 1969, after Lennon had divorced his first wife. Yoko led him to experiment with new types of music and definitely influenced Lennon’s personality, which changed his way of thinking and acting.
Solo career
By 1969 The Beatles had started to break up, with Lennon being the main factor behind this. After 1970 John Lennon created a successful career with the help of his wife, Yoko Ono. In 1971 he published a new album, Imagine , which contains what is undoubtedly his most famous song, the pacifist anthem “Imagine”. Together with Yoko he made a huge campaign for world peace . His song “Give Peace a Chance” became an anthem for the antiwar movement calling for an end to the Vietnam War . Due to his pacifist stance and his influence on the youth, as well as for his alleged economic contribution to the liberationist and anti-racist group of the Black Panthers, the administration of President Nixon tried to deport him, but after a long struggle he was able to get a green card in 1976.
From 1975 to 1979, John Lennon did not produce true quality music, preferring to stay home with his son Sean, whom Yoko had recently given birth to.
Death
In 1980, Lennon released his long-awaited comeback, Double Fantasy . Such was the success that he returned to the studio to record a second album immediately: Milk and honey . However, Lennon’s work and life would be interrupted on December 8, 1980 when he was approached by a young man outside his luxurious New York apartment who asked him to sign a copy of the album. Paying no attention to the young man, Lennon went about his business. To be later hit from behind by four of the eight bullets fired by the fanatic.
Thus ended the life of one of the most influential musicians in popular music of the 20th century , elevated by his followers to the category of myth, and who in later years was honored in hundreds of tributes, such as two concerts in Liverpool and New York before 40,000 and 120,000 people respectively. In 2000, his hometown, Liverpool, decided to change the name of its airport, which has since been called John Lennon Airport.
Solo discography
- Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins – 1968
- Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions – 1968
- Wedding Album – 1969
- Live Peace in Toronto 1969 – 1969
- John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band – 1970
- Imagine – 1971
- Some Time in New York City – 1972
- Mind Games – 1973
- Walls and Bridges – 1974
- Rock ‘n’ Roll – 1975
- Double Fantasy – 1980
- Milk and Honey – 1984
- Live in New York City – 1986