Facts about John Lennon
John Lennon Biography
John Lennon and Paul McCartney were one of the top songwriting teams of the 20th century, and formed half of the superband The Beatles. Together they wrote dozens of hit tunes, ranging from “Help!” and “Ticket to Ride” to “Penny Lane” and “Let It Be.”
John Lennon wrote or co-wrote most of The Beatles’ hits, played guitar and sang lead on many songs, and gave the band a special edge with his restless creativity. (Though Lennon and McCartney each wrote their own songs as well as collaborating, they published all their songs under the names Lennon and McCartney.) The Beatles, which also featured drummer Ringo Starr and guitarist George Harrison, became the biggest band of the 1960s and remain popular decades later.
The Beatles broke up in 1970, and John Lennon followed up with a solo career marked by genius and eccentric recordings and public pleas for world peace. (The latter included his hit 1971 single, “Imagine,” with lyrics like: “Imagine there’s no countries / It isn’t hard to do /Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion too.”)
John Lennon’s romance with Yoko Ono was a major influence on his post-Beatles career, and he collaborated with her on everything from the modern pop hymn “Imagine” to avant-garde noise and poetry.
After a reclusive five years as a family man, John Lennon released an album with Yoko in 1980, Double Fantasy. As their new song “Just Like Starting Over” was reaching the top of the charts, Lennon was shot to death outside the Dakota building, his New York City home, by a schizophrenic fan named Mark David Chapman.
Extra credit
John Lennon published two illustrated books of poetry and wit in the mid-1960s: In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works… His son Julian Lennon is also a singer and musician… John Lennon’s political positions gained him the enmity of J. Edgar Hoover‘s F. B. I. and the U.S. State Department, and researchers are still trying to get files on Lennon made public.