John Winston Ono Lennon John Winston Lennon
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John Lennon co-founded The Beatles in 1960 and became a central figure in 20th-century music. He wrote anthems like Imagine 1971 and performed with the band until their breakup in 1970. His solo career and activism continued until his murder outside the Dakota in 1980. Lennon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
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John Lennon by the numbers — life, work, and family.
John Lennon — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Born in an air-raid shelter during the Blitz on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, John Winston Lennon was the son of Julia Lennon and merchant seaman Alfred Lennon. Raised by his mother’s sister Mimi Smith, he attended Dovedale Primary and Calderstones School before enrolling at Liverpool College of Art. His mother taught him banjo chords, and he formed his first band, The Quarrymen, in the mid-1950s, which evolved into The Beatles with Paul McCartney and George Harrison.
The Beatles erupted in 1963 with singles Love Me Do and Please Please Me, sparking Beatlemania. After appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, they became global superstars. Lennon’s songwriting partnership with McCartney produced classics like Strawberry Fields Forever and Across the Universe. The band quit touring in 1966 and focused on studio albums such as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 1967 and the White Album 1968. Lennon formed the Plastic Ono Band with Yoko Ono and released solo hits like Imagine 1971. After a five-year hiatus, he returned with Double Fantasy in 1980.
Lennon married Cynthia Powell in 1962; their son Julian was born in 1963. He began a relationship with Yoko Ono in 1966, marrying her in 1969. The couple moved to New York City in 1971, where Lennon fought deportation for four years. They separated briefly in 1973–1974, during which Lennon lived with assistant May Pang in Los Angeles. After reconciling, their son Sean was born in 1975, and Lennon became a househusband until his death.
Lennon’s legacy endures through his music and activism. His song Imagine became a global peace anthem, and Yoko Ono donated its royalties to Amnesty International. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 1994 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame 1987. The Rolling Stone cover of Lennon kissing Yoko Ono, taken the day he died, has remained a powerful image. His murder sparked worldwide mourning, and he is remembered as a fearless voice for peace and creativity.
Browse the complete filmography of John Lennon — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
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Every award, honor, and recognition received by John Lennon — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
John Lennon's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
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A wall of memorable lines from John Lennon — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
When Real Music Comes to Me the Music of the Spheres, the Music That Surpasseth Understanding That Has Nothing to Do with Me, ‘Cause I’m Just the Channel. the Only Joy for Me Is for It to Be Given to Me, and to Transcribe It Like a Medium…those Moments Are What I Live For.
God Is a Concept by Which We Measure Our Pain.
My Role in Society, or Any Artist’s or Poet’s Role, Is to Try and Express What We All Feel. Not to Tell People How to Feel. Not as a Preacher, Not as a Leader, but as a Reflection of Us All.
Life Is What Happens to You While You’re Busy Making Other Plans.
We’re All Christ and We’re All Hitler. We Are Trying to Make Christ’s Message Contemporary. We Want Christ to Win. What Would He Have Done If He Had Advertisements, T.V., Records, Films and Newspapers? the Miracle Today Is Communication. so Let’s Use It.
Love Means Having to Say You’re Sorry Every Fifteen Minutes.
My Defenses Were so Great. the Cocky Rock and Roll Hero Who Knows All the Answers Was Actually a Terrified Guy Who Didn’t Know How to Cry. Simple.
I’ve Made Two ‘Discoveries’ in My Life: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. I Think That’s a Pretty Damned Good Choice.
Everybody Loves You When You’re Six Foot in the Ground.
Reality Leaves a Lot to the Imagination.
I Don’t Believe in Beatles, I Just Believe in Me.
If Everybody Wished for Peace Instead of Another Television Set, Then There Would Be Peace.
The More I See, the Less I Know for Sure.
Elvis Really Died the Day He Joined the Army. That’s When They Killed Him, and the Rest Was a Living Death.
Before Elvis There Was Nothing
Time You Enjoy Wasting Was Not Wasted.
My Wife Forced Me to Become Avant Garde When All I Wanted to Be Was Tom Jones.
Eternity Is a Hell of a Long Time.
Music Is Everybody’s Possession. It’s Only Lawyers Who Think You Can Buy and Sell It.
I’m Often Afraid, and I’m Not Afraid to Be Afraid, Though It’s Always Scary. but It’s More Painful to Try Not to Be Yourself.
People Think the Beatles Know What’s Going On. We Don’t. We’re Just Doing It.
I’m Not Going to Waste My Life as I Have Been, Which Was Running at 20,000 Miles an Hour. I Have to Learn Not to Do That, Because I Don’t Want to Die at 40.
When I Used to See Cowboys and Indians Films When I Was a Kid in Liverpool, I Was Always on the Side of the Indians.
‘Imagine’ Is a Big Hit Almost Everywhere Anti Religious, Anti Nationalistic, Anti Conventional, Anti Capitalistic, but Because It Is Sugar Coated, It Is Accepted. Now I Understand What You Have to Do. Put Your Political Message Across with a Little Honey.
We’re Not the First to Say, ‘Imagine No Countries’ or ‘Give Peace a Chance,’ but We’re Carrying That Torch, Like the Olympic Torch, Passing It from Hand to Hand, to Each Other, to Each Country, to Each Generation. That’s Our Job.
I Don’t Belong to Any Left Wing, Right Wing, Middle Wing, Black Panthers, White Christians, Protestants, Catholics or Nothing.
Nobody Controls Me. I’m Uncontrollable. the Only One Who Controls Me Is Me, and That’s Just Barely Possible.
In the Old Days I Used to Think Song Writing Was This and You Know, I Love You and You Love Me and My Writing Was Something Else You Know. Even If I Didn’t Think of It Quite Like That. but Then I Just Realized Through Dylan and Other People, Bob Dylan Not Thomas, That It Is the Same Thing. That’s What I Didn’t Realize Being so Naive You Know, That You Don’t Write Pop Songs and Then You Do That and Then You Do That. Everything You Do Is the Same Thing, so Do It the Same Way. but Sometimes I’ll Write Lyrics to a Song First and Then I Get the Same Feeling as Kakky Hargreaves or a Poem and Then Write the Music to It After. so Then It’s a Poem Sung, Sometimes the Tune Comes and Then You Just Put Suitable Words to Fit the Tune, If the Tune’s Doo Der Loo Der Loo Der La and Then You Have Shagga Boo Choo Cha You Know, You Have Sound Words Then, Just the Sound of It, ‘Cus It Is All Sound, Everything’s Vibrations I Believe, You Know, Everything Is Sound Really or Vision. and Just the Difference Between Sound and Vision I’m Not Quite Sure About.
Sex Is the Only Kind of Exercise I Bother With.
My Life with the Beatles Had Become a Trap… I Always Remember to Thank Jesus for the End of My Touring Days; If I Hadn’t Said That the Beatles Were ‘Bigger Than Jesus’ and Upset the Very Christian Ku Klux Klan, Well, Lord, I Might Still Be up There with All the Other Performing Fleas! God Bless America. Thank You, Jesus.
Here I Am in My Hansel and Gretel House, Famous and Loaded, and I Can’t Go Anywhere. There’s Something Else I’m Going to Do, Only I Don’t Know What It Is, but I Do Know This Isn’t It for Me.
The Beatles Haven’t Got Any Magic You Haven’t Got. We Suffer Like Hell Anytime We Make Anything, and We Got Each Other to Contend With. Imagine Working with the Beatles, It’s Tough.
Without James Dean, the Beatles Would Have Never Existed.
Little-known facts about John Lennon — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
In the 1960s, Lennon tried to start a live-action adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings with himself as Gollum, Paul McCartney as Frodo, Ringo Starr as Sam, and George Harrison as Gandalf.
According to Yoko Ono in 2007, Lennon’s last words were a wish to go home and see son Sean before bedtime rather than have dinner out. Moments after returning to the Dakota, he was shot.
His mother Julia was killed by a drunk driver when John was 17; he later named his first son Julian after her and wrote Julia in her memory.
Lennon was the only Beatle who regularly ate meat; the others were vegetarians or converted to vegetarianism.
Elton John is the godfather of Lennon’s son Sean Lennon.
Lennon felt guilty about leaving his son Julian and worked to repair their relationship later in life.
It was hearing Paul McCartney’s single Coming Up in early 1980 that inspired Lennon to return to music; he said Oh shit, I’ve got to get back.
Lennon was cremated privately the day after his death; Yoko Ono has never revealed the whereabouts of his ashes. She asked for ten minutes of silence on December 14, 1980.
The Beatles song In My Life was played at Kurt Cobain’s funeral.
In 1989, the Republic of Abkhazia issued postage stamps of Groucho Marx and Lennon to reject their Communist past.
Dr. Stephan Lynn, the emergency physician at Roosevelt Hospital, stated that even if Lennon had been shot in the middle of an operating room, he would not have survived his injuries.
Lennon felt that both Strawberry Fields Forever and Across the Universe were poorly recorded.
During his five-year retirement, Yoko Ono occasionally sent Lennon on solo trips; in Hong Kong he walked the streets unrecognized and felt he rediscovered himself.
Lennon wrote Beautiful Boy for his son Sean, who was born on Lennon’s 35th birthday.
The autopsy report listed cause of death as hypovolemic shock from multiple gunshot wounds, with five entrance and exit wounds; the fatal bullet lodged in his aorta.
Lennon was shot at 10:49 pm on December 8, 1980, outside the Dakota by Mark David Chapman, and was declared DOA at 11:07 pm.
After moving to New York, Lennon’s Liverpool accent softened; Paul McCartney recalled not recognizing his voice on the phone.
An actor named Mark Lindsay Chapman lost the role of John Lennon in John and Yoko: A Love Story 1985 due to sharing the killer’s surname.
Lennon received his U.S. green card on July 4, 1976, and could have applied for citizenship in 1981.
Like Paul McCartney, Lennon never learned to read sheet music.
Lennon’s favorite album was Safe as Milk by Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band; before his death he also enjoyed The Pretenders’ Brass in Pocket and The B-52’s debut.
Lennon was best man at Peter Boyle’s wedding on October 21, 1977.
After 1974, Lennon isolated from the Beatles: he slammed McCartney in the press, had a falling out with Harrison over Yoko’s participation in The Concert for Bangladesh, and avoided Ringo to stay sober. He and McCartney last met on April 24, 1976.
The Beatles briefly called themselves Johnny and the Moondogs and The Rainbows in 1959.
The first instrument Lennon learned was the harmonica.
The Rolling Stone cover photo of a nude Lennon hugging Yoko Ono, taken by Annie Leibovitz on December 8, 1980, was voted the top magazine cover of the last 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
Amateur photographer Paul Goresh took the last picture of Lennon alive, signing an album for Mark David Chapman hours before the murder.
Lennon was father to Julian Lennon with Cynthia and Sean Lennon with Yoko.
In 1974, Lennon and Harry Nilsson were ejected from the Troubadour Club for heckling the Smothers Brothers; they sent flowers and apologized, saying they had too many Brandy Alexanders.
The birth of his son Sean in 1975 mellowed Lennon; he watched Beatles films with Sean and gave a biting interview to Playboy in 1980 but was said to be easier to work with.
Yoko Ono signed over the royalties of Imagine to Amnesty International in perpetuity.
As of 2006, The Beatles are the biggest popular music act ever, with 400 million albums sold.
Lennon’s murder was announced by Howard Cosell during Monday Night Football on December 8, 1980.
Lennon was a heavy sleeper; journalist Maureen Cleave wrote he could sleep almost indefinitely.
He was born in an air-raid shelter during World War II.
Killer Mark David Chapman was reading The Catcher in the Rye when arrested.
Lennon’s first wife Cynthia dyed her hair blonde and dressed like Brigitte Bardot to please him.
Lennon appeared on the first cover of Rolling Stone magazine in November 1967.
He was a bright child but poor student, failing final exams; he entered art school on a headmaster’s recommendation but slacked off.
Lennon used pseudonyms including Dr. Winston O’Boogie, Booker Table, and Dwarf McDougal.
He learned banjo chords from his mother and later learned proper guitar chords from Paul McCartney.
Lennon kept his old bow-tie from Quarry Bank School and wore a favorite necktie during his immigration hearings.
Late in life, he became a fan of Bing Crosby, reintroduced by a restaurateur friend.
Neighbors at the Dakota included Roberta Flack, Peter Boyle, Gloria Swanson, and Lauren Bacall.
After the Beatles broke up, Lennon performed only three of their songs in concert: Come Together 1972, and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and I Saw Her Standing There with Elton John 1974.
A therapist described him as howling like a dog and swearing like a Merseyside docker.
In 2002, Paul McCartney changed song credits to McCartney & Lennon on some songs, causing public uproar, though early songs had been credited that way.
In the early 1970s, Lennon and Yoko sublet an apartment at the Dakota from Robert Ryan and later purchased it.
Lennon was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame with Paul McCartney in 1987.
Yoko Ono’s photograph of Lennon’s bloodstained spectacles sold at auction in 2002 for about $13,000. A tape of Lennon composing She Said She Said sold for $85,200.
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