John Winston Lennon was born on the 9th October
1940 in Liverpool, England. His father Frederick Lennon
abandoned his family and then his mother Julia died in 1957.
So he lived with his aunt Mimi. He went to Dovedale
Primary school. In 1956 when he saw a film about rock
and roll music the music fascinated him. He formed
his first band the Quarry Men with Stuart Sutcliffe
on bass.
In 1957, he invited the guitarist song-writer Paul
McCartney and the guitarist George
Harrison to join the group. In 1958 John entered
Liverpool Art School where he met Cynthia (Sonya) Powell.
In 1960, the Quarry Men turned professional and changed
their name to the Silver Beetles then to the Beatles. In 1961 Sutcliffe decided
to return to art school full time but tragically died
shortly afterwards.
Hamburg
The manager of a local Liverpool record store, Brian
Epstein, became the Beatles' manager in 1962. The same
year, Ringo Star joined the group replacing Pete Best.
In 1962, Lennon married Cynthia Powell. Their son, John
Julian Lennon, was born in 1963. That same year, the
Beatles recorded their first album "Please Please Me"
which became an gigantic success. In April 1964, the
five best-selling singles and second-best selling albums
on the U.S. charts belonged to the Beatles. John like
being provocative and in 1966, at the height of their
popularity called the Beatlemania, Lennon infuriated
religious groups in the United States when he casually
asserted: "We are more popular than Jesus." The comment
had serious consequences for the band's image.
Beatlemania.
The band's final concert was held on August 29th 1966,
in San Francisco. There were rumours of a break up and
tensions between Lennon, McCartney and Harrison. Each
was moving in a different direction artistically.
In 1968, Lennon and Cynthia Powell divorced, and the
following year, he married Yoko Ono, a Japanese conceptual
artist and musician. Their son Sean Tara Ono Lennon
was born in 1975.
Post-Beatles
Following the break up of the Beatles, Yoko Ono and
Lennon collaborated. In 1969, they staged a "Bed-In
for Peace", a flamboyant peace protest in which, for
several days, they granted interviews exclusively from
their bed. Lennon concentrated on a solo career as well,
and in 1971, he once again topped the music charts with
Imagine.
"Lost weekend" is what John Lennon called his eighteen-month
separation from Yoko Ono . The separation began in early
1973. It was during this period with May Pang that Lennon
produced Harry Nilsson 's Pussy Cats album.
His 1980 co-release with Yoko One of Double Fantasy
was also a critical and commercial success. Tragically,
on December the 8th, 1980, Lennon was shot and killed
by Mark David Chapman, a crazy fan, outside his apartment
building in New York City.
His death inspired a ten-minute vigil of silence by
millions of fans around the world, occurring on the
14th December 1980. |
