The most successful, the most popular, the best. None of these words would be an exaggeration in an article about John Lennon, the famous composer, guitarist, and vocalist of The Beatles. He was a musician with fascinating philosophical ideas and, at the same time, a very complex character. Join us as we explore his success story at liverpoolski.
Life and Creative Journey
John Lennon was born in the capital of Merseyside on 9 October 1940. John’s parents, Alfred and Julia, separated when he was very young, so he was taken in and raised by his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George, who effectively became his mother and father. This followed a dramatic period where his biological parents fought over custody, ultimately failing to agree and giving him to his mother’s relatives. Sadly, his uncle passed away when John was 13. At 18, the young man experienced the death of his own mother, a tragedy that would later bond him with Paul McCartney, who also lost his mother in his youth.
Before The Beatles
John was a poor student at school, being more interested in art, singing, and drawing. In these subjects, he excelled, but he paid little attention to the others. For most of his childhood and youth, Lennon lived in the respectable Liverpool suburb of Woolton. His aunt would buy him books with interesting stories, while his uncle gave him a harmonica and taught him how to solve crosswords.
His biological mother, Julia, also played a role. She would visit her son, play him Elvis Presley records, and teach him to play the banjo and sing. The future star admitted that as a teenager, he was a rebel who was irritated by everything. The parents of all the boys John befriended considered him a bad influence and advised their sons to stay away from him. This even applied to Paul McCartney’s father!
Lennon described one example of his rebellious spirit with a story from his school days:
- In a school essay on the theme “What I want to be,” I wrote: “happy.” They told me, “You don’t understand the assignment,” and I replied, “You don’t understand life.”
In 1956, his mother bought John his first guitar, a Gallotone Champion. Interestingly, his aunt, who was raising him, did not support his creative aspirations and hoped he would eventually get bored of music. She believed you could never make a living from it, but John insisted that he would be famous one day.
Lennon’s mother was not a perfect woman, but John loved her, making her tragic death in 1958 very difficult for him to bear. For about two years afterwards, he drank heavily and got into fights. However, the emotional wounds eventually began to heal, and the memory of his mother became a source of inspiration.
During these years, rock and roll was gaining popularity, and John became a huge fan. Another musical style, skiffle, was also spreading across England and appealed to Lennon. It was popularised by young bands, including John’s group, The Quarrymen. On 6 July 1957, our hero met another great Liverpudlian, Paul McCartney. They soon began to collaborate, forming one of the most successful creative partnerships in music history.
The Beatlemania Years
The core of The Beatles was formed by the end of the 1950s when George Harrison joined. In the 1960s, the band became truly famous, and Beatlemania began. At their concerts, people would literally go wild, screaming and shrieking with delight.
Their very first album, Please Please Me, brought the group worldwide fame, and public opinion quickly formed that John and Paul were the best and most important members of the band. They did indeed write more of the lyrics and music and were the main driving force. However, McCartney was, so to speak, the more conventional “good boy,” while Lennon took on the role of the provocateur. All four were witty and irreverent, but in the latter department, John surpassed his bandmates. It’s not that Lennon was more naturally gifted than McCartney, but he poured his entire soul into the music.
This helps to understand what happened in 1966. In an interview, Lennon made the controversial statement, “We’re more popular than Jesus now,” adding that Christianity itself was practically finished. Such a comment could not go unnoticed and sparked a storm of protest, especially in the USA. Lennon received death threats, and so the talented group of rebels decided to stop touring.
This event led the band to move away from their established style of dress and appearance. For a time, Lennon became dependent on drugs. During this period, he grew distant from the group, and disagreements with Paul McCartney began to surface. Moreover, John started writing different kinds of songs, and it became immediately obvious whose composition was whose.
Even during this turbulent time, the Liverpool foursome continued to record songs, and in 1967 their new single “Strawberry Fields Forever” was praised for its astonishing ingenuity. The Beatles also released the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which revealed Lennon as a writer of profound lyrics. It was a turning point, as the band had previously sung mostly simple love songs. The song “All You Need Is Love,” also written by John, had an emphatically simple message and expressed a pacifist stance.
Beyond The Beatles
One day, John Lennon told McCartney he was leaving The Beatles. After that, Paul focused on his solo career, announcing his own departure before John did. He was also the first to release a solo album. For a long time, this led many to believe that McCartney was to blame for the split. It also irritated Lennon, who saw himself as the leader of the group and couldn’t accept that his former friend had taken on that role.
Thus, the legendary band ceased to exist, but John, like his bandmates, continued to delight fans with his work for some time. For example, the subject of this article wrote a song that some consider one of the best in the world – “Imagine.” In it, he expressed the hope that one day the people of the world would be united – a world without borders, where wars and even religions, or rather the divisions they cause, would be a thing of the past. During this period, his new love, Yoko Ono, had a significant influence on the Liverpool musician’s creativity.
Lennon was already married to his wife, Cynthia, but he became infatuated with another woman, which led to their divorce. Together with Yoko Ono, he formed the Plastic Ono Band, which existed until 1975 and released eight albums. During this period, Lennon’s songs often called for an end to wars, such as the one in Vietnam. The couple also became famous for their “Bed-Ins for Peace” protest actions, using their platform to advocate for peace.
A Tragic Death
Just when it seemed that the musician’s life was settling down, it turned out that some were unsettled by his fame. On 8 December 1980, Mark Chapman shot Lennon four times in the back, killing him right outside his home. The murderer received a life sentence, but the talented Liverpudlian could not be brought back. And the world would hear no new songs from him, though many more would be heard in his dedication.
Life Principles
Lennon had certain life principles that strongly influenced his creative success. Here are some of them:
- Love is all you need, but it requires effort, like a flower that must be nurtured.
- Imagination is real. Fairies or dragons exist, even if only in our minds. Reality is created by imagination.
- We must be who we are. There’s no need to try and please everyone.
- You can’t let other people decide things for you.
- Fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, because everyone wants a piece of you.
- Material possessions are overrated, as 90% of wealth is gained dishonestly.
- The role of the artist is to express their feelings. Not to teach people how to feel, but simply to reflect their own inner world.