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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 05:38, May 24, 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 24 May 2013].
"John Lennon." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 24 2013, 05:38 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 24, 2013].
"John Lennon," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045 (accessed May 24, 2013).
John Lennon [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 24] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045.
John Lennon, http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045 (last visited May 24, 2013).
John Lennon. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/john-lennon-9379045. Accessed May 24, 2013.
Lennon and Yoko's artist partnership began to cause further tensions within the group. Together they invented a form of peace protest by staying in bed while being filmed and interviewed, and the single recorded under the name of The Plastic Ono Band, Give Peace a Chance (1969), became the national anthem for pacifists.
Lennon left The Beatles in September 1969,
Contents
just after the group completed recording Abbey Road. The news of the breakup was kept secret until McCartney announced his departure in April 1970, a month before the band released Let It Be, recorded just before Abbey Road.
Solo Career
After the Beatles broke up, Lennon released Plastic Ono Band, with a raw, minimalist sound that followed "primal-scream" therapy. In 1971, he followed up with Imagine, the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed of all Lennon's post-Beatles efforts. The title track was later listed as the third all-time best song by Rolling Stone magazine.
Peace and love, however, was not always on Lennon's agenda. Imagine also included the track How Do You Sleep?, a nasty response to veiled messages at Lennon in some of McCartney's solo recordings. Later, the former songwriting duo buried the hatchet, but never formally worked together again.
Lennon and Ono moved to the U.S. in September 1971, but were constantly threatened with deportation by the Nixon administration. Lennon was told he was being kicked out of the country because of his 1968 marijuana conviction in Britain. But Lennon believed the true reason was his activism against the unpopular Vietnam War. Documents later proved him correct. Two years after Nixon resigned, Lennon was granted permanent U.S. residency in 1976.
In 1972, Lennon performed at Madison Square Garden to benefit mentally handicapped children and continued to promote peace while battling to stay in the U.S. That immigration battle took a toll on the Lennon's marriage and in the fall of 1973, they separated. Lennon went to Los Angeles, where he partied and took a mistress, May Pang. He still managed to release hit albums, such as Mind Games, Walls and Bridges and Rock and Roll, in collaboration with David Bowie and Elton John.
In the end, Lennon realized he really loved Yoko and he could not live without her. They reconciled and she gave birth to their only child, Sean, on Lennon's 35th birthday. He decided to leave the music business to raise his son and become a house husband.
Assassination
In 1980, Lennon returned to the music world with the album Double Fantasy, featuring the hit single (Just Like) Starting Over. Unfortunately, just a few weeks after its release, Lennon was shot by a deranged fan in front of his apartment complex in New York. Lennon died of the age of 40 at the Roosevelt Hospital on December 8, 1980, after receiving multiple gun shots in the back.
His death affected millions of people, record sales soared and he continues to be admired by new generations of fans.
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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
