He
was part of one of the most famous, most critically acclaimed, and
most popular music acts in all of history...
...one
of the most successful songwriting partnerships in musical history.
...and
one of the most famous marriages in modern times. He was a
stay-at-home dad to his son Sean, and tragically, he was murdered by
a delusional fan.
John
Lennon had a truly “bigger-than-life” life.
At
age 15, in 1956, British lad John Lennon started his first band, The
Quarrymen. He soon met Paul McCartney, who asked to join the band; by
1959, George Harrison (who was just 14 years old at the time) joined
the band as well. Along with bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, the four
changed the band's name to The Beatles. The guys were on their way
when they were offered a residency to play music in Hamburg, Germany.
Pete Best went along to play drums. Eventually the group returned to
England, without Sutcliffe, and replaced Best with drummer Ringo
Starr. Now the stage was set for The Beatles to hit it big – with
number-one hit after hit. After hit!
Lennon
and McCartney wrote approximately 180 songs together. Most, of
course, were recorded by The Beatles.
Many
songwriting duos have one person who writes the words and another who
creates the music for those words—or, sometimes, one person who
thinks up the music and another who writes words that fit the tune.
Lennon-McCartney were a little different: they both created
music and lyrics. Sometimes they worked closely together on a
song, “eyeball-to-eyeball,” but other times they wrote songs on
their own but had a bit of input from the other. In the latter case,
they shared equal writing credit because they had agreed to do just
that before they got famous.
After
The Beatles broke up, in 1969, John Lennon continued to write and
record songs, either solo or with his second wife, Yoko Ono. He
retired from “the biz” to raise their son, but just before his
murder John Lennon made a comeback with the 1980 album Double
Fantasy.
Did
you know...?
John
Lennon loved to draw and write, and while in high school he used to
collect his satirical, nonsensical writings and bizarre drawings in
an exercise book he called The Daily Howl. He later published
several books of his short stories, poetry, plays, and drawings.
Lennon
may owe his musical career to a bus driver who heard him playing a
mouth organ and was impressed. The driver gave Lennon a professional
harmonic that someone had left on a bus. Lennon later learned to play
the banjo, acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitar, piano, and
electronic keyboard.
Last
year, on what would have been his 70th birthday, the John
Lennon Peace Monument was unveiled in his hometown of Liverpool,
England. Lennon's first wife and son Julian performed the unveiling.
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