John Lennon Biography and List of Works

Rockstar, singer, writer, poet, and composer, John Lennon was the Beatles' most committed rock'n'roller, their social conscience and their verbal wit. Many of the group's lyrics (e.g. 'Penny Lane', 'Eleanor Rigby', 'She's Leaving Home') had a considerable influence on the success of the Liverpool Poets (Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten) and the Underground poetry movement. The poet and novelist Philip Arthur Larkin described the Beatles' work as 'an enchanting and intoxicating hybrid of Negro rock-and-roll with their own adolescent romanticism', and 'the first advance in popular music since the War'.

"I'm a moldy moldy man..."
(from In His Own Write, 1964)

John Lennon was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, into a working class family. His parents, Julia and Fred, separated before he was two and Lennon went to live with his mother's sister, Mimi Smith. He attended Liverpool's Dovedale Primary School and later the Quarry Bank High School. In 1955 he started a skiffle group, called the Quarrymen, which took the name from his school.

When Lennon was 17, his mother was killed in a bus accident. In the summer of 1956 he met Paul McCartney and they started to write songs together. He became the Beatles rhythm guitarist, keyboard player, vocalist, and partner in the Lennon-McCartney song-writing team. After 1969, which was the final year of Lennon's activities with the Beatles, he grew closer to his second wife Yoko Ono, whom he married in 1969. They arranged much publicity for peace movement by staying in bed while being filmed and interviewed, and their single with Plastic Ono Band 'Give Peace a Chance' (1969) became the 'national anthem' for pacifist.

"What we're really doing," said John, "is sending out a message to the world, mainly to the youth, to anybody who is interested in protesting for peace or protesting any form of violence." John summoned up the message in one colloquial phase: "Give peace a chance."

As the phasing of John's famous chant suggests, the model for all the Lennons' peace propaganda was Madison Avenue advertising. John believed deeply in the power of images and slogans to affect the mass mind. He was sure that during his years as a Beatle he had mastered the techniques of manipulating the media, and of course, he had a very able partner in this work in Yoko Ono...
(from The Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman, 1988)

From 1968 to 1969 Lennon recorded Two Virgins, Life With the Lions, The Wedding Album and Plastic Ono Band, but generally agreed his best solo album was Imagine, which appeared in 1970. On the birth of his son Sean (1975-), Lennon retired from music, but in 1980 Lennon and Ono released Double Fantasy, which won a Grammy for the Album of the Year. Lennon was murdered on December 8, 1980, in New York. His death affected millions of people, and he continues to be admired by new generations of fans.

"After his death, Linda and I went round to Yoko's and we all cried so hard, you know, we had to laugh. She wanted to get us something to eat and she mentioned caviar. We all said, 'Let's do it.' Her houseman brought it in, mumbling, and he backed out and there was the caviar tin with just a little bit in the bottom. Her servants had eaten it all!"
(from Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now by Barry Miles, 1997)

For further reading:The Penguin John Lennon; Lennon Remembers: The Rolling Stone Interviews by Jann Wenner; The Lennon Factor by Paul Young; The John Lennon Story by George Tremlett; John Lennon: One Day At A Time: A Personal Biography of The Seventies by Anthony Fawcett; A Twist of Lennon by Cynthia Lennon; John Lennon: The Life and Legend, Editors of Sunday Times; Lennon: What Happened, ed. by Timothy Green; Strawberry Fields Forever: John Lennon Remembered, by Vic Garbarini, Brian Cullman and Barbara Graustark; John Lennon: Death of a Dream by George Carpozi; The Lennon Tapes, by Andy Peebles; John Lennon: In My Life by Peter Shotton and Nicholas Schaffer; Loving John by May Pang; Dakota Days by John Green; The Book of Lennon by Bill Harry; John Oko Lennon 1967-1980 by Ray Coleman; John Winston Lennon 1940-66 by Ray Coleman; Come Together by Jon Wiener; John Lennon: For the Record by Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld; The Lennon Companion by Elisabeth M. Thomson and David Gutman; Imagine John Lennon by Andew Solt and Sam Egan; Skywriting By Word Of Mouth by John Lennon; The Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman; John Lennon My Brother by Julia Baird; The Other Side of Lennon by Sandra Shevey; Days in the Life by Philip Norman; The Murder of John Lennon by Fenton Bresler; The Art & Music of John Lennon by John Robertson; In My Life by Kevin Howless and Mark Lewisohn; John Lennon by Fredric Seaman; Let Me Take You Down by Jack Jones; The Immortal John Lennon 1940-1980 by Michael Heatley; AI: Japan Through John Lennon's Eyes (A Personal Sketchbook) by John Lennon.

Yoko Ono: raised in Tokyo by her wealthy Japanese banking family. She became the first woman admitted to study philosophy at Japan's Gakushuin University. In 1953 she moved to the US to study at Sarah Lawrence College. After dropping out she joined New York avant-garde movement. During the early sixties, Ono's works were exhibited and/or performed at the Village Gate, Carnegie Recital Hall and numerous New York galleries. In mid-sixties, she lectured at Wesleyan College and had exhibitions in Japan and London, where she met John Lennon at the Indica Gallery. Lennon separated from his wife Cynthia, with whom he had one child, Julian. - Ono's best known solo album Season of the Glass appeared in 1981 and received much attention outside avant-garde and critical circles.

Other pop or rock stars with literary merits (novels, collections of poems, short story collections): Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Nick Cave, Ulf Lundell - Collections by the Liverpool Poets: The Mersey Sound (1967), The Liverpool Scene (1967), New Volume (1983)

In His Own Write (1964) - alternative titles were among others The Transistor Negro, Left Hand Left Hand (after Osbert Sitwell's Left Hand Right Hand) and Stop One and Buy Me. The contract was signed in January 1964 and the book - with 31 pieces of writing and enough drawings - was published three months later on March 23, 1964. Introduction was written by Paul McCartney and the work was designed by Robert Freeman. By January 1965 it had sold nearly 200 000 copies. (Source: John Savage, introduction in Pimlico double edition, 1997

A Spaniard in the Works (1965), published on June 24, 1965, went through four impressions and sold 100 000 copies within three months.

Films and videos:

Selected albums / The Beatles:

Selected albums from 1968:

A Spaniard in the Works, (1965)
A Hard Day's Night, (1964)
Help, (1965)
How I Won the War, (1967)
Magical Mystery Tour, (1968)
Let It Be, (1971)
The Bed-In, (1991)
The John Lennon Video Collection, (1992)
One To One, (1993)
Two Virgins, (1968)