John Lennon

John Winston Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, England, during a German air raid on the city.^[1] His father, Alfred Lennon, was a merchant seaman largely absent from his childhood. His mother, Julia, was warm and musical but unable to care for him full-time, and he was raised primarily by his maternal aunt, Mimi Smith, in a semi-detached house in the Woolton suburb of Liverpool. The arrangement was loving but marked by the particular wound of maternal distance, a wound that would surface repeatedly in his adult life and work.

Lennon discovered rock and roll through Radio Luxembourg and American imports, and was transfixed by Elvis Presley and the skiffle movement. At fifteen he formed his first band, the Quarrymen, named after Quarry Bank High School. It was at a church fete in July 1957 that he met Paul McCartney, who impressed him immediately with his ability to tune a guitar and recall lyrics. Within months McCartney had joined the group, and the most consequential songwriting partnership in popular music history had begun.^[1]

His mother Julia was killed by an off-duty police officer's car in 1958 when Lennon was seventeen. The loss was devastating and shaped his art for the rest of his life. He later channeled this grief directly into the Plastic Ono Band album, in one of the most nakedly autobiographical records ever made.

After the Quarrymen evolved through several name changes and lineup refinements, the Beatles came into being with Lennon, McCartney, George Harrison, and eventually Ringo Starr. Between 1963 and 1970 the group transformed popular music, moving from Merseybeat pop to psychedelic experimentation, concept albums, and orchestral rock with a creative velocity that has not been matched. Lennon's contributions to the group ranged from the biting wit of early singles to the avant-garde explorations of the White Album and beyond.^[1]

His relationship with Yoko Ono, a Japanese-American conceptual artist he met in 1966 at her gallery show in London, reshaped his art and his life. Together they became internationally prominent peace activists, staging Bed-Ins for Peace in Amsterdam and Montreal in 1969 and mounting the "War Is Over (If You Want It)" billboard campaign.^[2] Ono's conceptual art practice, particularly her 1964 book Grapefruit, directly inspired his most enduring solo work, "Imagine."^[3]

After the Beatles' acrimonious dissolution in 1970, Lennon released John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, an album of startling emotional directness shaped in part by his work with primal scream therapist Dr. Arthur Janov. The follow-up, Imagine (1971), became his best-selling solo work and produced the anthem that defined his post-Beatles legacy. He released several further albums through the 1970s, including Some Time in New York City, Mind Games, and Walls and Bridges, before a five-year retirement from recording to raise his son Sean.^[1]

Lennon was shot and killed outside his apartment building, the Dakota, in New York City on December 8, 1980, by a deranged fan. He was 40 years old. His final album, Double Fantasy, co-credited with Ono, had been released just three weeks earlier. The grief that followed his murder was global in scale, and his music acquired an almost sacred quality in its aftermath.