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John Lennon (1940-1980),
British singer and songwriter, member of the Beatles and one of the
most prominent figures in popular music. Lennon was born into a
working-class family in Liverpool, England. His parents separated while he was
young, and he was raised by an aunt. In 1955, while in high school, he joined
his first rock-music group. In 1956 he met bassist Paul
McCartney. The two collaborated on songs and formed several bands,
including the four-member band that became known as the Beatles in 1960.
Lennon was the Beatles’ rhythm guitarist, lead singer, and
driving force early in the group’s career, when it performed raucous versions of
such rock-and-roll classics as “Twist and Shout” (1963), based on an arrangement
by the American rhythm-and-blues group the Isley Brothers. With McCartney,
Lennon formed one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful
songwriting partnerships in the history of popular music. Lennon, who attended
the Liverpool College of Art from 1957 to 1960, gave the partnership much of its
intellectual depth. In the mid-1960s, at the height of the Beatles’ fame, Lennon
helped to bring together rock culture and high culture by publishing two
collections of poetry, prose, and drawings, A Spaniard in the Works
(1964) and In His Own Write (1965).
In 1966 Lennon met Japanese conceptual artist Yoko Ono,
who later became his collaborator, his inseparable companion, and, in 1969, his
wife. With her he created albums of experimental music, along with conceptual
art projects, such as a highly publicized “Bed-in for Peace,” which the two
staged on their honeymoon. To protest the Vietnam War (1959-1975) and exemplify
the protest movement’s slogan, “Make Love, Not War,” they spent a week in bed in
Amsterdam, and another in Montréal. Lennon continued to sing rock and roll and
he recorded some of his best-known songs as a solo artist, starting even before
the Beatles broke up in 1970. These songs included “Give Peace A Chance” (1969),
“Instant Karma” (1970), and “Imagine” (1971).
In the 1970s Lennon and Ono settled in New York City. From
1975 to 1980 Lennon lived in seclusion, raising the couple’s son, Sean, while
Ono managed Lennon’s business affairs. In 1980 Lennon and Ono returned to
recording with the album Double Fantasy (1980), which produced a
number-one hit on the Billboard magazine charts, “(Just Like) Starting
Over” (1980). Later that year Lennon was fatally shot just outside his New York
apartment building by Mark David Chapman, a drifter who had gotten his autograph
just a few hours earlier. After his death, people around the world observed ten
minutes of silence to honor Lennon and his ideals of justice and peace. Lennon
was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991. In 1994 he was
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. |
