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Quick Facts
- NAME: John Lennon
- OCCUPATION: Songwriter, Singer
- BIRTH DATE: October 09, 1940
- DEATH DATE: December 08, 1980
- EDUCATION: Quarry Bank High School, Liverpool College of Art
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Liverpool, United Kingdom
- PLACE OF DEATH: New York, New York
- Full Name: John Winston Ono Lennon
- Originally: John Winston Lennon
Best Known For
John Lennon, pop star, composer, songwriter and recording artist, founded the Beatles, a band that impacted the music scene like no other before or since.
Videos see all videos
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John Lennon - Mini Biography (7:55)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono - Musical Lovers
Watch a short video about John Lennon and Yoko Ono to learn how the creative couple met and made sweet music together.
Women of The Beatles - Cynthia Powell
Rolling Stone's David Wild and Anthony DeCurtis discuss John Lennon's first marriage to his high school sweetheart Cynthia Powell.
Women of The Beatles: May Pang
Biographer Barb Jungr, radio personality Ken Dashow, and friend Elliot Mintz discuss John Lennon?s "lost weekend" with May Pang that lasted 18 months.
John Lennon - Mini Biography
A short biography of John Lennon, from his superstardom with the Beatles to his fame as a solo artist and social activist, to his marriage to Yoko Ono. In 1980, Lennon was gunned down by Mark David Chapman.
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Play NowJohn Lennon. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 12:06, May 19, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045.
John Lennon. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045 [Accessed 19 May 2013].
"John Lennon." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 19 2013, 12:06 http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045.
"John Lennon," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045 [accessed May 19, 2013].
"John Lennon," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045 (accessed May 19, 2013).
John Lennon [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 19] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045.
John Lennon, http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045 (last visited May 19, 2013).
John Lennon. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045. Accessed May 19, 2013.
Synopsis
Pop star, composer, and songwriter John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, England. Lennon met Paul McCartney in 1957 and invited him to join his music group. They eventually formed the most successful songwriting partnership in musical history. Lennon left The Beatles in 1969 and later released albums with his wife Yoko Ono, and others. In 1980,
Contents
Quotes
"The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility."
"The more that I see, the less that I know for sure."
"All you need is love."
"There is nothing conceptually better than rock."
"We're all responsible for war…we all must do something, no matter what…"
he was killed by a crazed fan.
Early Life
Pop star, composer, songwriter and recording artist John Winston Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, during a German air raid in World War II.
When he was 4 years old, Lennon's parents separated and he ended up living with his Aunt Mimi. Lennon's father was a merchant seaman. He was not present at his son's birth and did not see a lot of his son when he was small.
Lennon's mother, Julia, remarried, but visited him and Mimi regularly. She taught Lennon how to play the banjo and the piano and purchased his first guitar. Lennon was devastated when Julia was fatally struck by a car driven by an off-duty police officer in July 1958. Her death was one of the most traumatic events in his life.
As a child, Lennon was a prankster and he enjoyed getting in trouble. As a boy and young adult,he enjoyed drawing grotesque figures and cripples. Lennon's school master thought that he could go to an art school for college, since he did not get good grades in school, but had artistic talent.
Forming the Beatles
At 16, Elvis Presley's explosion onto the rock music scene inspired Lennon to create the skiffle band called the "Quarry Men," named after his school. Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church fete on July 6, 1957. Lennon soon invited McCartney to join the group and they eventually formed the most successful songwriting partnership in musical history.
McCartney introduced George Harrison to Lennon the following year and he and art college buddy Stuart Sutcliffe also joined Lennon's band. Always in need of a drummer, the group finally settled on Pete Best in 1960.
The first recording they made was Buddy Holly's That'll be the Day in mid-1958. In fact, it was Holly's group, the Crickets, that inspired the band to change its name. Lennon would later joke that he had a vision when he was 12 years old—a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them "from this day on you are Beatles with an 'A.'"
The Beatles were discovered by Brian Epstein in 1961 at the Cavern Club, where they were performing on a regular basis. As their new manager, Epstein secured a record contract with EMI. With a new drummer, Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey), and George Martin as producer, the group released their first single, Love Me Do in October 1962. It peaked on the British charts at No. 17.
Lennon wrote the group's follow-up single, Please Please Me, inspired primarily by Roy Orbison but also fed by Lennon's infatuation with the pun in Bing Crosby's famous "Please, lend your little ears to my please." The song topped the charts in Britain.
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- John Lennon
- Yoko Ono
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
View groupYoko Ono met John Lennon in 1966 during a preview of Ono's art exhibition at a London gallery. The began an affair a year later and, after Cynthia Lennon filed for divorce, married in 1969. In addition to collaborating on numerous recordings, including Two Virgins and "Give Peace a Chance," the couple held "Bed-ins for Peace" to protest the Vietnam War. After the Beatles's breakup, they moved to New York, where their son, Sean Ono Lennon, was born in 1975. Lennon was shot and killed outside their apartment building on December 8, 1980. In his memory, Ono founded the Strawberry fields Memorial in Central Park, the John Lennon Museum in her hometown of Saitama, Japan, and the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono 2 people in this group
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The Beatles
View groupThe Beatles were a legendary rock group that formed in Liverpool, England, in 1960, and went on to transform popular music as a creative, highly commercial art form over the next decade. The Beatles were one of the most popular bands of all time, producing songs like "Yesterday, "Hey Jude," "Penny Lane, "With A Little Help From My Friends," "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," "Day Tripper" and "Come Together." Learn more about the "Fab Four"—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—by exploring our Beatles collection.
The Beatles 4 people in this group
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Famous Celebrity Couples 68 people in this group
