John Winston Ono Lennon was an English musician who co-founded the Beatles and, with Paul McCartney, wrote many of the band’s songs.
Lennon was born in 1940 in Liverpool, England. When he was four, Lennon’s parents separated, and he moved in with his Aunt. Lennon’s mother, Julia, remarried but visited him regularly; in her visits, she taught him how to play the banjo and the piano, then got him his first guitar.
In 1957 Lennon met Paul McCartney and invited him to join his music group, the Quarry Men. The year after, Lennon had one of the most traumatic events in his life when Julia was struck by a car driven by an off-duty police officer. McCartney became his emotional anchor, as he also lost his own mother to cancer less than two years prior.
McCartney then introduced George Harrison to Lennon, and then Harrison and Stuart Sutcliffe joined Lennon’s band. After that, Pete Best joined in 1960.
Throughout their time as a band, many stories circulated about the origin of the name “The Beatles.” John and Stuart came up with the name during one of their late-night sessions, and they brought it to the rest of the band in 1960.
“I was looking for a name like The Crickets that meant two things, and from crickets I got to beetles. And I changed the BEA, because ‘beetles’ didn’t mean two things on its own. When you said it, people thought of crawly things; and when you read it, it was beat music,” Lennon said.
The group released their first single, Love Me Do, in 1962. Then Lennon wrote the follow-up single, Please Please Me.
After their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, the Beatles started getting more famous in the United States. After this interview, the band returned to the UK to film their first film, A Hard Day’s Night, and prepare for their first world tour.
During their 1966 world tour, while in the Philippines, their manager Brian Epstein declined an invitation from First Lady Imelda Marcos to attend a presidential palace reception, following the band’s strict policy against political appearances. Local media said this insulted the presidential family. As a result, the band was harassed by angry crowds as they tried to board their plane at the airport.
Epstein died of an accidental overdose the year after, and the Beatles lost the stabilizing force that held them together.
By this time, Lennon’s partnership with his second wife Ono started to cause serious tensions within the group, and he left the Beatles in 1969.
Then, financial, creative, and personal conflicts that built up over years led to the band’s breakup in 1970. The news of the breakup was kept secret until McCartney announced his departure in April 1970.
“It had just got out of hand, and Beatles was the final thing because I no longer believe in myth, and Beatles is another myth. I don’t believe in it. The dream is over. I’m not just talking about the Beatles, I’m talking about the generation thing. It’s over, and we gotta, I have to personally, get down to so-called reality,” Lennon said in an interview.
Shortly after the Beatles broke up, Lennon released his first solo album, John Lennon-Plastic Ono Band, followed by a project with Imagine, which was his most successful project after the Beatles.
Lennon and Ono moved to the United States in 1971, but were constantly threatened with deportation by the Nixon Administration. In 1973, he and Ono separated, then Lennon went to Los Angeles, California, where he spent more than a year drinking and making music.
The couple reunited in 1974, and she gave birth to their only child. Shortly after, Lennon decided to leave the music business to focus on being a father and husband.
In 1980, Lennon came back with his last album, Double Fantasy, but just a few weeks after the release, one of his fans, Mark David Chapman, shot him several times in front of his apartment in New York, and Lennon passed away at New York City’s Roosevelt Hospital on December 8, 1980, at the age of 40.
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