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John Lennon biography

John Winston Lennon was born in Liverpool on 9 October 1940 . A founder member of The Beatles, and their singer, songwriter and guitarist, he was murdered in New York City on 8 December 1980.

The early years

Julia Lennon taught her son to play the banjo, and they shared a love of Elvis Presley’s music. The first song he learned to play was Fats Domino’s ‘Ain’t That A Shame’.

In 1957 she bought John his first guitar, a Gallotone Champion acoustic “guaranteed not to split”. Julia ensured it was delivered to her house rather than Mimi’s, as her sister was disapproving of music. She told her nephew, “The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it”.

Lennon’s first school was Mosspits Lane Infants School in Wavertree, Liverpool, which he attended from November 1945 to May 1946. He then changed to Dovedale Primary School, and upon passing his 11 Plus attended Quarry Bank Grammar School (1952-1957). He formed The Quarrymen in March 1957, and in July the same year met Paul McCartney at the garden fete at St Peter’s Church in Woolton, Liverpool.

The pair quickly bonded, and began rehearsing and writing songs together at McCartney’s home at 20 Forthlin Road. Lennon’s first completed song was ‘Hello Little Girl’ , later a hit for the Fourmost. McCartney also introduced Lennon to George Harrison , and convinced him to let the young guitarist join the group, eventually named The Beatles after a series of other names were rejected.

We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader – he was the quickest wit and the smartest and all that kind of thing.

Lennon failed all his GCE O level exams, but with the help of his head teacher was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art. There he met Cynthia Powell , who became his first wife. They married after she became pregnant with their son Julian, who was born on 8 April 1963 .

With The Beatles

An unruly pupil, Lennon dropped out of college before his final year. By this time, however, The Beatles were working hard to establish a name for themselves. Initially managed by Allan Williams from May 1960, they were booked later that year to play at the Indra club in Hamburg. The trip wasn’t a success: McCartney and drummer Pete Best were accused of arson after a fire started in the cinema where they were staying, and George Harrison was deported for working while under the age of 18. Lennon returned to Liverpool after his work permit was revoked.

The Beatles returned to Hamburg after Harrison turned 18, and from April 1961 began another residency. While there they recorded ‘My Bonnie’ with singer Tony Sheridan .

In 1962 they returned to Hamburg to play at the Star Club, and in May were signed to EMI subsidiary label Parlophone. Their first single, ‘Love Me Do’ , was released on 5 October.

By the following year The Beatles had become a worldwide phenomenon, under the auspices of manager Brian Epstein . Their success looked unstoppable, though in March 1966 Lennon was interviewed by journalist Maureen Cleave, who quoted him as saying:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I do not know what will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. We’re more popular than Jesus now . Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary.

The quote led to protests in the southern and midwest US states, which included public bonfires of Beatles records and memorabilia. Lennon issued an apology of sorts at a Chicago press conference in August 1966, saying:

I was not saying whatever they’re saying I was saying. I’m sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologise if that will make you happy. I still do not know quite what I’ve done. I’ve tried to tell you what I did do, but if you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then OK, I’m sorry.

By this time The Beatles had long tired of the demands of Beatlemania and the frenetic pace of touring. Lennon later wrote:

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.

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John was one of the best musicians of all time, possibly the best, certainly a genius.

The greatness of John Lennon as i see it:

–The increasing tension. For example I Should Have Known Better. Before Lennon, all pop music structure was AABA, where the tension decreased in the middle part B. But with Lennon the tension from the verse continued in the middle part. Besides that, in this song it is not only a key change in the transition to the middle part, it is even a little key change in it. The increasing tension was what first characterized The Beatles. The first single where the verse lacked this increasing tension was Can´t Buy Me Love. (But the chorus is OK). I didn´t know then it was a McCartney composition. – Other ways of increase the tension by Lennon is to pack together several little songs. Happiness Is A Warm Gun consists of three or four songs, and Bring On The Lucie consists of three songs. –All You Need Is Love has another way: First talking, then repeating half singing, then singing, and finally the climax in chorus. –The melody does not changes, but the background. For example in Strawberry Fields Forever and in Julia the singing melody uses the same notes, but instead the accompaniment changes! Listen to Puccini. He got tired of his sang melodies in Boheme and in Tosca he composed a lot where the sang melodies are often on the same notes, but the background changes instead. The effect can be stronger. –Octave Leap. For example, in the middle part of Please Please Me, Lennon makes an octave run in “…it´s so hard to reason with YOU…”, the climax of the song. George Martin didn´t understand the quality in that. In his orchestration of it in Off The Beatle Track, Martin excludes the octave, the most important bit of the song! –Verse and resolve. Typical for Lennon is a melody followed by a resolve, for example in No Reply “…I saw the light!”…and in Girl “girl! girl!…”. Lennon said that “a good song must have climax and resolve”. –Only one chord. In Tomorrow Never Knows there is only one chord, or bass note, an innovation in pop music. In the Middle Ages it was common with that bordun note, an unchanged bass note. When Lennon played the song the first time for George Martin, Martin didn´t like it. –Whole-tone scale. Most scales have both whole step and half steps between the notes in an octave. In the verse in Norwegian Wood, there is most whole steps, and that´s like the impressionists, for example Debussy. It sounds very clean. –Church Modes. A Hard Day´s Night is written in the mixolydian mode, an ancient vocal scale, preserved in British, Irish and American folk song. –If you play the beginning of Please Please Me slowly, you can hear the similarities with the Westminster bells ringing. When Lennon was a little boy, he loved visiting the divine services. Afterwards he used to improvise anthem music. Westminster bells could unconsciously have inspired him to the beginning of Please Please Me. There is also anthem music in the beginning of All You Need Is Love: “love love love…”. –The lamentation second. A little half step up in the scale. And that´s to indicate a pain. In All You Need Is Love Lennon sings the refrain twice unchanged and then suddenly the third time, rises a little, a very expressive and important step up. That step up started in the baroque epoch, and was called The lamentation second. When Lennon played it the first time to George Martin, Martin didn´t like it. He leaned towards McCartney and muttered: “It´s certainly repetitive”. –From darkness to light. Happiness Is a Warm Gun starts with a little melancholy, and ends with enthusiasm.—In the middle part of I Am The Walrus the darkness switches over to light: “sitting in an English garden…”. And the transition from the chaos and darkness in Revolution 9 to the light in Good Night. That is very typical in Wagner´s music. I think that temperamentally the two were similar. And I think Wagner would have loved the arrangement in Glass Onion. –Suggestive and hypnotic music. With small intervals between the notes in combination with some dissonance chord, Lennon can create a suggestive and hypnotic feeling in for example Across The Universe. It is more like Wagner than pop music. –Few notes. With few, but effective notes, Lennon can create more feeling than McCartney with all his notes, for example in If I Fell and Love. –A melody sang three times, in succession, with just a little change every time. When you hear it you can get frustrated or desperate not getting out from the melody. That we have in the middle part in I Call Your Name and in the middle part in And Your Bird Can Sing. And at the same time the melodies are stick together with a countermelody at the guitar. Rather hypnotic

get a life u spent way tooooooo much time on this

When does healthy admiration become obsession?

Live and let live. This man is happy writing what he wrote, and his chosen subject was a brilliant choice: the musical genius and founder of the Beatles, John Lennon. YOU are the one who needs to get his own life.

Wrong , Tony. Johan spends a great deal of his time throughout these blogs with his obsessive love of Lennon and obsessive ignorance/hate of McCartney, this with opinions and self-created thoughts presented as fact with no corroborating sources or quotes. Johan is indeed in need of a life; dog and Robert (particularly) know of what they speak.

Thank you Mike.

Is there a problem with someone wanting to inform other people of famous people? I think it is interesting

beautiful, are you a writer?

Thank you. I am not a writer. I just happened to be paralyzed when I heard Please Please Me and Do You Want To Know a Secret the first time.

John Lennon will never die.

Much of pop and rock music, including heavy metal, is written in the mixolydian mode. As for the rest, you have mischievously selected aspects of music theory to suit your argument. I’m not fooled and I suspect many others aren’t either.

From what I can gather a lot of what makes John Lennon’s Beatle songs musically interesting comes from Paul Mccartney’s involvement (Tomorrow Never Knows, Come Together, A Day in the Life). This is made clear when you look at their solo works.

If you want to talk about Lennon’s genius talk about his lyrics, which flow wonderfully and are full of wonderful imagery. Across the Universe is the best example of this and might very well be Lennon’s best work (it’s also my favorite Beatles song, which is amazing since Paul is my favorite Beatle not John).

I agree! I love John Lennon

When John is still living, I always wish for a Beatles reunion. The day John Lennon died, my wish & hope for their reunion also died. 🙁

All I can say is that it still breaks my heart to know John is no longer here. I was 17 when he was senselessly murdered. I can still remember it like it was yesterday. John is the best musician ever, sadly we only got a small sample of his work. He is so greatly missed by so many. We will always have you in our hearts and mind through your creativity. I so glad you were with us as long as you were.

You forgot to mention the family home before he moved in with his aunt Mimi. He originally lived at 9 Newcastle Road, Wavertree when he was a little boy.

That insect that took him away from his family,friends and us should never be mentioned by name.Throw him on the dustbin of history,that useless git.

May the Lord Jesus, bless and keep your family and friends. I feel your pain. I suppose John had finished his course here on earth, so let’s look forward to seeing him there.

John said this out of pure honesty. At the time, The Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

I think Plastic Ono Band is one of the best albums ever. Someone at the height of his fame exposing his vulnerabilities and pain. Remarkable.

I read some where that the night that John got shot Yoko said to the doctors or the news reporters that she didn’t want to announce his death on the tv right away because she said Sean was in front of it.

If you were here today… …you’d love CD’s, email, and trolling on the Internet. Miss you, John. 🙂

that hurt more than it should have

He was controversial yet spiritual. Many never understood him. People misunderstood his words. He would use power of communication to read people. This is partly what resulted to his shooting. He knew folks hated him anyway.

He was an amazing singer. I saw John ,Paul, George and Ringo 1966 in Essen/ Germany. I will never forget the concert, when i was sixteen!!!

John was a true genius. However his most blatant act of stupidity was when he took up with Yoko. I still blame her for being one of the primary reasons for him wanting to leave the Beatles. It’s still a head scratcher to me why he was attracted to her. She had no real talent, she sang like a cat getting it’s tail pulled, her looks were a 2 on a scale of 1-10, and she was dumb as a stump. I will always believe that she somehow brainwashed him.

True. As George Michael sang: “turn a different corner and we never would have met.” I,too, wish John had turned a different corner. He might even still be alive.

I have been a Beatles fan all my life. There music was what helped me when I was growing up. John Lennon will always be a hero to me and I’ll be forever grateful for all of them in my life!

Well, Ono was from a wealthy family and as for her being all those great things you have mentioned….you are probably righ…Japan has the worst bands ever becoming famous just because Japanese tend to like crappy music.

Whatever or whoever Yoko might be, we should respect her simply because John respected her, and she probably saved him from dying of an OD in 69/70. However, her role in the murder is equivocal, and she couldn’t save him from Ronald Reagan’s minions. I agree with Paul, the assassin’s name should be forgotten, he was just a tool.

Ronald Reagans minions? Really, Manteau? Politics has no place here but if you really want to do this I’m game.

This site is intended to celebrate the Beatles’ legacy, which really centers around intimate and universal love. What ironic heartbreak that the comment section is soiled by haters and goons.

John Lennon was probably the most brilliant and prolific music composer of the 20th century. With that brilliance comes a certain inability to relate much as Edison, Tesla and Einstein had difficulty relating. They all shared the commonality of being misunderstood. The man was genius and should there be any doubt look at what he has written and its social impact. He and the rest of the Beatles changed the face of music forever.

I like John Lennon, but the most brilliant and prolific composer of the 20th century is probably George Gershwin (discounting classical music) and I would rank Cole Porter, Bob Dylan, and several others above John Lennon.

Yeah, but let’s hear those other composers sing! On several occasions when I have attended a wedding what song did they play? Not Porter, Dylan, Gershwin or McCartney! John Lennon’s Grow Old With Me.

you are right

Dear Warptek, John had been an fervent supporter of Jimi Carter back in 1976., He had been an undesirable alien in the US of A from 1972 to 1975, when he eventually was granted his green card. He had won…too easily against a disgraced Nixon. In the meantime, John had nothing to fear from Carter’s team. But in November 1980, two things happened almost at the same time : The election of Ronald Reagan and John’s own return to the forefront of the pop*rock scene. You know what happened. Now, if you say politics are a forbidden subject here, we should never talk about John at all! I hate politics, but I’m convinced ( Like Sean ) that John Lennon’s assassination was a political one.

In November of 1980, two things happened almost at the same time: John’s return to the forefront of the pop*rock scene and the “Who Shot JR” episode of Dallas. You know what happened …

he was a really good friend of mine

I noticed a mistake and would like to correct it politely. John’s first school was actually Mosspits County Primary School. He was expelled in 1946 for misbehaviour and then enrolled in Dovedale Road Primary School. My source is ‘An Intimate Day by Day History’ by Barry Miles.

Time really works for Lennon. His compositions can age better.The tendency in later years in the voting of The Beatles best 20 songs, Lennon´s compositions always are dominating, with for example: –Strawberry Fields Forever, –Come Together, –Don´t let Me Down, –I Am The Walrus, –Revolution, –A Day In The Life, –Help, — Rain, –All You Need Is Love and don´t forget Hey Bulldog, a song that George Martin and McCartney stopped being released as single! and now there is a long story of that classic Lennon song in You Tube!! Today Harrison´s songs Something, While My Guitar Weeps and Here Comes The Sun are equally popular as McCartney´s most popular songs!! And Lennon´s solo songs are today more played than McCartney´s, for example: –Jealous Guy, –Imagine, –Woman, – –Instant Karma, –Give peace a Chance, –Love, –A Working Class Hero, –Grow Old With Me (on weddings nowadays). This Lennon´s success is despite George Martin´s always patronizing of him. George Martin preferred McCartney´s conventional and “vertical” melodies.

I don’t know why people persist in describing John’s upbringing as harrowing or tragic. After WW2 there were many children of John’s age, taken from institutions in Liverpool and from dysfunctional family situations, babies to teenagers, who were shipped off to the white commonwealth countries for a supposedly better life. While many did get this, others were horribly abused, physically, sexually, and mentally in foster homes and catholic institutions. Some of these people from John’s generation grew up so psychologically damaged they were institutionalised for the rest of their lives. The rest grew up effectively stateless and denied British citizenship to return to their place of birth and their families. It was years before they received any compensation from the British government and is one of the most shameful episodes in post war British history. John Lennon had a lucky escape. He came from a broken home and that was extremely sad but he was raised by people who loved and protected him and provided the best for him that they could. He grew up to be an angry young songwriter, no doubt about it, but I sometimes sensed that John himself was gaining perspective with increasing maturity before he was senselessly murdered.

In the praised film about The Beatles Eight Days A Week by Ron Howard from 2016, Lennon´s songs are dominating: Please Please Me, You Can´t Do That, A Hard Day´s Night, If I Fell, Help, Ticket to Ride, It´s Only Love, Day Tripper, I´m A Looser, Girl, Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, I´m Only Sleeping, Tomorrow Never Knows, Don´t Let Me Down. When they took up the recording of Sgt Pepper, they played Strawberry Fields Forever, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and A Day In The Life, no other songs from that album,but at the same time there is a big picture of McCartney.(formerly a very common typical situation).

There’s a fine line between healthy admiration and worrisome obsession as another commentator indicated here.

Without McCartney, there would’ve been no Lennon. And vice-versa. Said and done – concisely and simply.

Johan-Thank you once again for your willingness to praise John to the heavens and criticize Paul to no end. Your opinion and you are entitled to it. But, it’s old and repetitive and boring. The Beatles were John, Paul, George and Ringo. Not just John and not just Paul. You will never be objective when it comes to this topic but you will always be a bore. Merry Christmas.

The burden that lies upon a genius’ shoulder is that in spite of the freedom in ways of living, he is driven by an unconcscious and mysterious god within himself. Certain notions and ideas come to him – not knowing where from, not knowing that something within himself is driving him to create and he does not know to what purpouse these notions have. The artist, just like the genius is in a battle between these unconscious urges and the comfort and safety which all humans strive for. For that reason the life of a genius, so often ends in tragedy.

This is, in my opninion, of the upmost truth in the case of John Lennon. His nonchalant attitude when asked about his songwriting, may suggest that he himself, is not even aware of these urges. He suggests that he’s merely “putting words together”. However, the lyrical components of songs such as Strawberry Fields Forever and Across The Universe prove to me that John, was in some sense a higher being. His mind was able to grasp certain aspects that lie in the unconscious of all human beings.

This man was extraordinary, and to me the greatest artist to ever live.

john lennon is the bet singer songwriter of all the time

I was 10 years old when he died I was such a Beatles nerd but that ended when he died.

In the twelve month period from November 1966, John Lennon wrote five of the greatest songs ever – Strawberry Fields, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, A Day in the Life, All You Need is Love and I am the Walrus. Who else is comparable?

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JOHN LENNON

John Lennon is arguably the greatest songwriter of his generation. As founder and leader of The Beatles and also as a solo artist, Lennon has won seven GRAMMY® Awards, including two Lifetime Achievement Awards, Five BRIT Awards including two Special Awards for Outstanding Contribution to Music, 21 NME Awards, 15 Ivor Novellos and an Oscar (Academy Award). He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2008, Rolling Stone ranked Lennon in the Top 5 of the magazine’s “100 Greatest Singers Of All Time” list.

written by Anthony DeCurtis

‘ Gimme Some Truth ’ appears on John Lennon’s 1971 album Imagine , and in a sense it serves as the aesthetic and ideological counterbalance of that album’s legendary title track.

‘ Imagine ’ evokes a utopian world in which our heightened consciousness would make everything that oppresses us wither away, ‘Gimme Some Truth’ looks our real troubled world square in the eye and demands answers right now. If one song floats like a feather on a piano melody as gentle as an evening breeze, the other rides a droning, distorted guitar line and a searing slide-guitar solo. If one vocal sounds as intimate as your good angel speaking to you from someplace inside your own mind, the other pins you against the wall, so impassioned that the singer can barely take the breaths he needs to spit out his lyrics.

Those are two of the many sides of John Lennon, two expressions of the many truths that he came to know. These days we live in a world that to value an unthinking consistency above all other virtues. If you hold an opinion that contradicts something that you said twenty years before, it’s not assumed that you’ve simply matured or reconsidered your earlier views for perfectly good reasons. No, you’re a waffler, a hypocrite, a flip-flopper. People are not encouraged to ‘contain multitudes’, in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s immortal phrase. They are encouraged to be as small and one-dimensional as possible if they want to avoid controversy.

Lennon did not see himself or his world in those terms. He thought of his songs as snapshots of what he was thinking and feeling at the moment of composition. He believed that the one quality his calling as an artist demanded of him was complete emotional and intellectual honesty. And from his earliest years, he had no interest in disguising what he had to say to bring it into conformity with what anyone else thought his ideas should be, or even with points of view he may have felt at one time himself. If he was true to the emotion that had given birth to the song, that was enough.

‘I made the decision at sixteen or seventeen that what I did, I wanted everybody to see,’ Lennon explained in 1980. ‘I wasn’t going after the aestheticism or the monastery or the lone artist who supposedly doesn’t care what people think about his work. I care a lot whether people hate it or love it, because it’s part of me and it hurts me when they hate it, or hate me, and it’s pleasing when they like it. But, as many public figures have said, “The praise is never enough, and the criticism always bites deep.”’

From his undying love of rock’n’roll to his songs of social consciousness, from his devotion to women and family, to his eventual understanding of the fragility of all our lives, Lennon devoted his genius to chronicling the unvarnished experiences of one man’s journey through life. Whatever truths he found, he shared, and they are embodied in his songs. Well beyond his own tragic end, and even our own lives, they are his unending gift to us, and to everyone who comes after.

John and Sean Lennon playing frisbee, Japan, Summer 1977 Photo by Nishi F. Saimaru ©1977 Nishi F. Saimaru & Yoko Ono John and Julian Lennon, 1970 Photo by Richard DiLello ©1970 Richard DiLello

For better or worse, very few things remained constant in John Lennon’s life. In his early years that was not his fault. His mother and father bolted unpredictably in and out of his life, and then his mother was killed in a car accident when he was seventeen. After that he trusted very few people, fearful that they would leave him, so that truly loving anyone was an enormous risk, until he fully settled into his marriage to Yoko Ono.

But one love that lasted throughout Lennon’s life was rock’n’roll. In December of 1970, Lennon did the interviews with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone that would eventually be published as the book Lennon Remembers . Having just undergone primal-scream therapy and completed his fiercely autobiographical Plastic Ono Band album, Lennon was subjecting every aspect of his life to unforgiving self-examination. Rock’n’roll, however, emerged unscathed.

When Wenner asked him, ‘What do your personal tastes run to?’ Lennon replied, ‘“ Wop-bop-a-loo-bop ”, you know? I mean I like rock’n’roll, man, I – I don’t like much else… That’s the music that inspired me to play music.

There’s nothing conceptually better than rock ’n’ roll. No group, be it Beatles, Dylan or Stones, has ever improved on ‘ Whole Lotta Shakin’ (Goin’ On) ’ for my money.

Maybe I’m like our parents, that’s my period. I dig it and I’ll never leave it.’ It’s no surprise then that when Lennon attempted to communicate the depths of despair in his song ‘ Yer Blues ’, he sang, ‘Feel so suicidal, even hate my rock’n’roll’. From his standpoint, what could be worse than that?

Earlier in that Rolling Stone interview, Lennon explained that ‘I only liked simple rock and nothing else.’ However, for Lennon, there was really nothing simple about rock’n’roll. For him, it was a style of music that got directly to the essence of things, without pretence or affectation. As ambitious as he became as an artist and activist, there was always part of him that grew impatient with overwrought complexity – whether embodied in the tangled, allusive lyrics of Bob Dylan; the semi-classical aspirations of George Martin (and Paul McCartney); or the endless realpolitik arguments of the best and brightest in government for why nations couldn’t achieve peace.

A product of the tough port city of Liverpool, Lennon prided himself on his no-nonsense demeanour, and he eventually became a New Yorker, a breed not exactly known for restraint in their opinions. In interviews and conversations, when he encountered overly elaborate explanations, Lennon would start to wonder if he was being conned. He came to view obscurantist “literary” writing as a form of dishonesty, a means of shielding yourself from the consequences of just saying what you mean. If everything in a lyric was open to interpretation then you didn’t have to take responsibility for it. Apart from a brief psychedelic period in the mid-to-late Sixties, Lennon always strove for honesty and directness in his lyric writing. He inherited that standard from the rock’n’roll songs he grew up loving. They were the core of his musical DNA.

‘I remember the old rock songs better than I remember my own songs,’ Lennon said in a 1980 Interview. ‘If I sat down in a room and just started playing, if I had a guitar now and we were just hanging out singing, I would sing all the early and mid-Fifties stuff – Buddy Holly and all. I remember those. I don’t remember the chords or the lyrics or anything of the Beatles stuff. So my repertoire is that. I still go back to the stuff the Beatles performed before they wrote, you see. I would still enjoy doing it.’

Still from the 'Ten for Two Concert' footage, Crisler Arena, Ann Arbor, Michigan, December 10, 1971 ©1971 Yoko Ono Still from the 'One to One Concert' footage, Madison Square Garden, NYC, August 30, 1972 ©1972 Yoko Ono

But simplicity was far from the only gift Lennon received from early rock’n’roll. Even if lyricists like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Buddy Holly didn’t write lyrics that aspired to the sort of literary effects typical of the poetry Lennon might have read in school, they helped teach him about playfulness and a love of language purely for its own sake.

Lennon loved children’s poems, fairy tales, Mother Goose rhymes and the zany nonsense literature of such writers as Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. He read them voraciously as a child, and retained his fondness for them into adulthood. They are primary sources for the pun­wielding, wild and whirling words of his two splendid books of stories and drawings, In His Own Write (1964) and A Spaniard In The Works (1965).

So no wonder Lennon answered ‘Wop-bop-a-loo-bop’ when Wenner asked him about his ‘personal tastes’. Songs like Gene Vincent’s ‘ Be-Bop-A-Lula ,’ Lee Dorsey’s ‘ Ya Ya ’ and Larry Williams’s ‘ Bony Moronie ’ all revel in silly rhymes, light-hearted neologisms, and childlike, sing-song syllables. It was music that seemed to Lennon at once innocent and rebellious. In their playfulness such songs evoked the freedom of childhood, and in their raucous rhythms and refusal of adult language and decorum they posed an implicit – and occasionally explicit – threat to the established order. That grown-ups not only mocked the music but tried to stamp it out only provided undeniable proof of its power. That was another lesson from the early days of rock’n’roll that Lennon never forgot.

The insurgent force of rock’n’roll originated as adolescent rebellion – anything that kids did was good, anything adults did was bad. As bracing as it was, the culture surrounding the music even had a nihilistic strain. It was associated with juvenile delinquency, and an appetite for destruction. Teenagers became a social class of their own, and youth was not merely a chronological time period, but a state of mind and a set of values, even if that mostly consisted of rejecting the tepid conformity of Fifties post-war life. Rock’n’roll’s attitude was best summed by a line tossed off by Marton Brando in his role as Johnny Strabler, the leader of a motorcycle gang in the 1953 movie, ‘The Wild One’. When a girl asks him, “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” Brando offhandedly replies, “Whaddya got?”

Such scenes were thrilling and Lennon constructed much of his early identity on their basis. But as the Sixties counterculture began to take shape, and Lennon found himself as one of its leaders, it became evident to him that a more sophisticated approach to changing the world around him was necessary. At first the Beatles were encouraged by their handlers to avoid controversy at all costs, but their intelligence and desire to engage the issues confronting their generation finally made that patronising strategy impossible to sustain. Lennon’s insistence on speaking his mind, beginning with his correct observation in 1965 that the Beatles were ‘more popular than Jesus’, generated shockwaves, and he came to understand that if his words were going to have such an impact, he needed to learn how to use that power to advance the ideals he believed in.

But first he needed to understand who he was, and that process of social, political and psychological self-discovery that makes such songs as ‘Working Class Hero,’ ‘God,’ ‘Isolation’ and ‘I Found Out’ absolutely gripping. Those songs all appear on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), Lennon’s first solo album after leaving the Beatles . It’s an undeniable, acknowledged masterpiece, widely recognised as one of the greatest albums in the history of rock’n’roll. But even at that, its true significance is often not fully understood.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band front and rear covers

Among the album’s many sources, Lennon’s scarifying dive into the depths of himself in primal-scream therapy is the most obvious, which has lead to the album being heard almost exclusively in personal terms. But part of Lennon’s daring was his willingness to explore how social forces shaped him as fully as the terror of abandonment he experienced as a child. In the absence of more substantive options for forging an identity, accepting the chains that society provides seems like a worthwhile choice – or, as Lennon succinctly put it, ‘a working­ class hero is something to be.’ Still, Lennon’s songs didn’t simply indict “the Man” or “the system”, as so many protest songs did. Lyrics like ‘Keep you doped with religion, sex and TV/And you think you’re so clever and classless and free’ exploded the pretences of counterculture hipsters, and challenged them to question how “liberated” and free they really were.

Of course, Lennon also understood that every movement needs its slogans, and he made use of and even coined some of the best of them. ‘ Give Peace a Chance ’ ‘ Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) ’, ‘ Power to the People ’ and the lovely ‘ Happy Xmas (War Is Over) ’ are all intentionally meant to preach to the progressive choir, to keep the spirits of activists up and their hopes high. But even those songs are often more complex than they are thought to be. The conviction that ‘War is over if you want it’ suggests that if war persists perhaps we have not sufficiently desired its end, or done enough to bring that end about. (Just this year Robert Randolph and the Family Band recorded a torrid cover of Lennon’s anguished ‘I Don’t Wanna Be a Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die’ about very different armed conflicts than the Vietnam War that Lennon had in mind.

Similarly, ‘ Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) ’ is going to get friend and foe alike. If you want to “shine on” you need to make sure your actions keep you on the uplifting end of karma’s ever­-turning wheel.

Finally, ‘ Imagine ’, too, is not merely a pastel vision of a utopian world. It is a challenge and a responsibility, a sentiment akin to Mahatma Gandhi’s statement that ‘We need to be the change we wish to see in the world’.

Sometime in New York City (1972) is Lennon’s most overtly political album, and its opening track, ‘ Woman Is The N***** Of The World ,’ is one of its most compelling songs. Co-written with Yoko, It is perhaps the first feminist anthem recorded by a prominent male rock star, and it marks both the impact his marriage to Yoko had on his evolving political consciousness, but also the deepening of his own understanding of women’s role in the world – and in his life. John and Yoko use of the charged term ‘n*****’ in the song was both a provocation and a deft bit of political analysis and guerilla marketing. Comparing the political oppression of women to the plight of blacks, and using the most racially incendiary term in the language to underscore the connection, incited heated and necessary debate, as it was intended to.

Some Time In New York City album cover Woman Is The N***** Of The World Single Sleeve Woman Is The N***** Of The World advertisement

Lennon knew as well that no truth is absolute, and that the presence of love can excite our deepest fears.

Many songs have been written about jealousy, but none match Lennon’s ‘ Jealous Guy ’ for insight and honesty. Declarations like ‘I was shivering inside,’ ‘I was swallowing my pain’ and ‘I began to lose control’ are rare in any style of popular music, let alone a delicate ballad. Lennon’s ability to plumb the depths of himself and state his fears so directly – with such a raw, eloquent beauty is one of his most profound gifts.

Meanwhile, ‘ I’m Losing You ’ explores those feelings of desperation in a musical context that reflects those emotions rather than soothes them. And, as always, Lennon could be caustic.

The fear of being abandoned and alone drives ‘ Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down And Out) ’, to its bitter conclusion: ‘I’ll scratch your back, and you knife mine.’

The serrated rhythms of ‘ Well, Well, Well ’ capture the mood of a couple – guess who – who are “nervous, feeling guilty” and talking about revolution ‘just like two liberals In the sun.’

Such moments of dread and self­-doubt require the gentleness and encouragement of ‘ Hold On ’ – ‘hold on, John; hold on, Yoko; hold on, world: It’s gonna be all right.’

The hard-fought optimism that love provides, the rock-solid conviction that, however difficult the struggle, you’re not in it alone, leads to the sweetness of ‘ Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) ’ – a paean to a true love child and the awareness, in one of Lennon’s most memorable lines, that ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’ That acceptance of the world and its inevitable changes is the ultimate gift of love. The inability to control life makes it more precious, because it requires knowledge of life’s evanescence, even as love has made life so much more desirable.

Which is the beauty and poignancy of ‘ Grow Old With Me ’, Lennon’s lovely, deeply felt wish for a long life with Yoko. The song was inspired by Robert Browning’s poem ‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’, and replies to a song Yoko had written called ‘Let Me Count the Ways’, drawing on the well-known sonnet that begins ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’ by Browning’s wife, Elizabeth Barrett. The nineteenth-century marriage of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning is among the most moving love stories in literary history, and John and Yoko clearly identified with them. Among the many reasons why ‘Grow Old With Me’ is notable is how strongly it counteracts the rock’n’roll mythology of living fast and dying young. It is a hymn to longevity, to the possibility that love can deepen and grow, that romance never has to end.

In one of his final interviews, Lennon described the central aesthetic question of his and Yoko’s life this way. ‘In a way,’ he told the New York Times critic Robert Palmer, ‘we’re involved in a kind of experiment. Could the family be the inspiration of art, instead of drinking or drugs or whatever? I’m interested in finding that out.’

While one of the innumerable tragedies of John Lennon’s death at the age of forty is that he never fully got the opportunity to answer that question, the fact that he asked it in the first place suggests that as far as he was concerned the ‘experiment’ he referred to had already reached an irrefutable conclusion. The life he had built with Yoko and their son Sean had provided plenty of material for great art. But as life became richer and more satisfying, its ephemeral nature became more apparent. When you’re experiencing so many moments that you wish would last forever, you are inevitably haunted by the awareness that they can’t.

The solution, Lennon understood, was a calm awareness that we are all living on ‘ Borrowed Time .’ That song’s gentle reggae lilt lightens the weight of its ideas, and captures the sense of wise acceptance that had increasingly come to be part of his world view. Lennon still lived his life with passion and intensity, still committed to his beliefs with conviction, but the anger that had been with him for so long had eased. Without question, there are many complex reasons for that welcome development, but the simplest reasons perhaps are the most determinative ones. He had settled into his marriage; he was enjoying fatherhood; he had come back refreshed to his music, and as he entered his forties, he had matured. He had discovered that many things could and should be important, but not everything had to be a matter of life or death. In short, he was happy.

Humour, always an under-appreciated aspect of Lennon’s music, was still very much a part of his new vision, hilariously, ‘ Crippled Inside ’ takes the serious theme of the lies of the world – and ourselves – to hide our vulnerabilities and fears, and sets it to a tinkly, honky-tonk beat. The song in that sense mirrors its subject – a cheerful surface genially concealing a scarier reality.

Similarly, the jaunty ‘ Nobody Told Me ’ comments on the confusion of living in confounding times (‘Most peculiar, mama!’) with such panache that it remains perfectly relevant as a soundtrack for today. ‘Scared’ and, particularly, the hauntingly beautiful ‘How?’ address the internal version of such confusion and terror, with characteristic honesty.

Perhaps Lennon’s greatest philosophical song is ‘ Watching the Wheels ’, which appears on Double Fantasy . It can be thought of as his explanation of his life to fans who had wondered what he’d been doing since 1975 when he had stopped making albums and devoted himself to his life with Yoko and Sean. ‘Ah, people asking questions, lost in confusion’ Lennon sings. ‘I tell them there’s no problems, only solutions.’ Given the tumultuous life he had lived to that point, that optimism was earned.

Without being at all self-righteous, the song also has a strong spiritual undercurrent. The wheel, being a circle, is one of the oldest symbols of unity in human history. The karmic wheel, the mandala, the wheel of fortune all spin, and, as the song suggests, peace of mind comes from neither panicking nor growing complacent with their turnings. That is the state of mind Lennon had achieved by the end of his life.

Acceptance is not necessarily passive. Lennon still believed the world could – be made a better place in both personal terms and for humanity at large. Speaking about Double Fantasy on the very day he was killed, Lennon describes himself as reconnecting with his audience in this way: ‘I’m saying “Here I am now, how are you? How’s your relationship going? Did you get through it all? Weren’t the Seventies a drag? Here we are, well, let’s try to make the Eighties good, because it’s still up to us to make what we can of it.”’

Double Fantasy album cover Watching The Wheels single cover

The confluence of those crucial events had a decisive effect on the remaining years of Lennon’s life. For the next five years he would disappear from public life almost completely, devoting himself to raising Sean and re-immersing himself in his life with Ono. It was an unprecedented move for a rock star of his fame and stature, and he characteristically threw himself into it without reserve. When he re-emerged again in 1980 to do interviews for Double Fantasy , an album dedicated to the ideal of family and domestic bliss that he had embraced with Ono, Lennon delivered spontaneous lectures on feminism and the importance of sharing gender roles in relationships.

When a reporter from Playboy asked if Lennon had been working on any ‘secret projects’ during this period, Lennon made it decidedly clear that his personal life was the only project he had been interested in – or had any time for. ‘Are you kidding?’ Lennon replied. ‘There were no secret projects going on in the basement. Because bread and babies, as every housewife knows, is a full-time job…And it is such a tremendous responsibility to see that the baby has the right amount of food and doesn’t overeat and gets the right amount of sleep. If I, as housemother, had not put him to sleep and made sure that he was in the bath by 7:30, no one else would have…Now I understand the frustration of those women because of all the work. And there is no gold watch at the end of the day.’

As strong a personality as you could encounter even on his most cooperative day, Lennon couldn’t stand the idea that some people viewed him as passively under Ono’s spell. ‘Listen, if somebody’s gonna impress me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Yoko Ono, there comes a point when the emperor has no clothes,’ he insisted. ‘There comes a point where I will see. So for all you folks out there who think that I’m having the wool pulled over my eyes – well, that’s an insult to me. Not that you think less of Yoko, because that’s your problem; what I think of her is what counts! But if you think you know me or you have some part of me because of the music I’ve made, and then you think I’m being controlled like a dog on a leash because I do things with her, then screw you. Because – fuck you brother or sister, you don’t know what’s happening. I’m not here for you. I’m here for me and her and the baby!’

For John Lennon, the truth was not a fixed category, but a shifting one that took into account all of the factors that determine the circumstances of our lives. He lived by a code of honesty, of self-revelation, of the belief that the best songs he could write were the ones that communicated a clear picture of who he was at the moment of their creation. That process of speaking person-to-person is how the truth took shape for him. His life and his work were continual experiments in discovery and rediscovery. His values remained constant. What changed were the times, the ways in which those values could best be presented and transmitted, and the definition of those values given the current state of the world.

Whether he was singing rock’n’roll songs or writing songs that captured how fragile our lives are, whether he was extolling the virtues of women or railing against the evils perpetrated by our governments, Lennon viewed his work as one rich story, one step on the journey to Creating a better world, one ongoing, never-ending search for truth.

‘I always consider my work one piece…and I consider that my work won’t be finished until I’m dead and buried – and I hope that’s a long, long time,’ he said on the last day of his life. ‘So to me it’s part of one whole piece of work from the time I became public to now…And the eighties is like, we’ve got a new chance.’

Every decade, every new year, every day, every moment constitutes a ‘new chance.’ As Lennon sings in ‘ Borrowed Time ’, ‘Now I am older/The more that I see, the less that I know for sure/Now I am older/The future is brighter, and now is the hour.’ Now, and whenever anyone hears any of these songs.

Written by Anthony DeCurtis Originally published in the John Lennon ‘ Gimme Some Truth ‘ 4 x CD Box Set

John Lennon

• Born October 9 , 1940 · Liverpool, Lancashire, England, UK
• Died December 8 , 1980 · New York City, New York, USA (murdered by gunshot)
• Birth name John Winston Lennon
• Height 5′ 11″ (1.80 m)
• John Winston (later Ono) Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, England, to Julia Lennon (née Stanley) and Alfred Lennon , a merchant seaman. He was raised by his mother's older sister Mimi Smith . In the mid-1950s, he formed his first band, The Quarrymen (after Quarry Bank High School, which he attended) who, with the addition of Paul McCartney and George Harrison , later became The Beatles . After some years of performing in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, "Beatlemania" erupted in England and Europe in 1963 after the release of their singles "Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me". That same year, John's first wife Cynthia Lennon welcomed their only son Julian Lennon , named after John's mother. The next year the Beatles flew to America to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) (aka The Ed Sullivan Show), and Beatlemania spread worldwide. Queen Elizabeth II granted all four Beatles M.B.E. medals in 1965, for import revenues from their record sales; John returned his four years later, as part of an antiwar statement. John and the Beatles continued to tour and perform live until 1966, when protests over his calling the Beatles phenomenon "more popular than Jesus" and the frustrations of touring made the band decide to quit the road. They devoted themselves to studio work, recording and releasing albums such as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "Magical Mystery Tour" and the "White Album". Instead of appearing live, the band began making their own "pop clips" (an early term for music videos), which were featured on television programs of the time. In the late 1960s John began performing and making albums with his second wife Yoko Ono , as the Beatles began to break up. Their first two albums, "Two Virgins" and "Life With The Lions", were experimental and flops by Beatles standards, while their "Wedding Album" was almost a vanity work, but their live album "Live Peace In Toronto" became a Top Ten hit, at the end of the 1960s. In the early 1970s John and Yoko continued to record together, making television appearances and performing at charity concerts. After the release of John's biggest hit, "Imagine", they moved to the US, where John was nearly deported because of his political views (a late-'60s conviction for possession of hashish in the U.K. was the excuse given by the government), but after a four-year legal battle he won the right to stay. In the midst of this, John and Yoko separated for over a year; John lived in Los Angeles with personal assistant May Pang , while Yoko dated guitarist David Spinozza . When John made a guest appearance at Elton John 's Thanksgiving 1974 concert, Yoko was in the audience, and surprised John backstage. They reconciled in early 1975, and Yoko soon became pregnant. After the birth of their son Sean Lennon , John settled into the roles of "househusband" and full-time daddy, while Yoko became his business manager; both appeared happy in their new life together. After a five-year break from music and the public eye, they made a comeback with their album "Double Fantasy", but within weeks of their re-emergence, Lennon was murdered on the evening of December 8, 1980 by Mark David Chapman , a one-time Beatles fan angry and jealous over John's ongoing career, who fatally shot Lennon four times in the back outside his apartment building, The Dakota, as Lennon was returning from a recording session. Within minutes after being shot, John Lennon was dead at age 40. His violent death was a sudden and tragic end to the life of a talented singer and musician who wanted to make a difference in the world. - IMDb Mini Biography By: paulabb
• Spouses Yoko Ono (March 20, 1969 - December 8, 1980) (his death, 1 child) Cynthia Lennon (August 23, 1962 - November 8, 1968) (divorced, 1 child)
• Children Sean Lennon Julian Lennon Kyoko Ono Cox
• Parents Alfred Lennon Julia Lennon
• Relatives Mimi Smith (Aunt or Uncle) Julia Baird (Half Sibling)
• Round-framed glasses and army-surplus jacket
• Songs about personal issues, political and social themes
• His Rickenbacker 325 guitar (replaced later with an Epiphone Casino)
• Bizarre, humorous personality and outspoken, rebellious nature
• He frequently wrote songs about love being the answer to the world's problems
• During the 1960s he had attempted to instigate a live action adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien 's "Lord Of The Rings" books (of which he was a fan), starring himself and his Beatle bandmates. Lennon had expressed interest in the role of Gollum, with Paul McCartney playing Frodo, Ringo Starr playing Sam and George Harrison playing Gandalf.
• In a 2007 interview on the BBC Radio program Desert Island Discs, his wife, Yoko Ono , revealed what his last words were. She said that he wanted to go home and see son Sean before he went to sleep rather than go out for dinner after leaving the recording studio. According to Ono: "I said 'Shall we go and have dinner before we go home?' and John said, 'No, let's go home because I want to see Sean before he goes to sleep.'" Moments later, he was gunned down in front of the historic Dakota building where the family lived in New York City.
• Elton John is the godfather of his son Sean Lennon
• It was after hearing Paul McCartney 's new single "Coming Up" that Lennon decided to return to music in early 1980. His reported response was, "Oh shit, I've got to get back." Lennon loved the song.
• His mother Julia Lennon (44) was killed by a drunk driver when John was seventeen; his stepfather broke down at the news, and John had to go with the police to identify her body (he later named his first son [ Julian Lennon ] for her, and remembered his mother in the song "Julia", ten years after her death). His best friend and former band mate Stuart Sutcliffe died from a brain hemorrhage in 1962, when they were both 21; John asked Stuart's mother for the old scarf he'd worn to art school, and kept it as a memento.
• 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.
• Will all the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry. [At Royal Variety Performance 4th November 1963]
• 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.

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Inside John Lennon's 'Lost Weekend' Period

Lennon took the moniker for this period of self-introspection and productivity from The Lost Weekend , a 1945 film starring Ray Milland as an alcoholic writer struggling to overcome his addiction and return to his creative process.

Lennon began an affair with May Pang

Beginning the summer of 1973 and lasting through early 1975, Lennon’s lost weekend marks the period of separation between himself and Ono. Four years into their marriage the cracks were beginning to show and Lennon moved out, embarking on an affair with the couple’s assistant May Pang. Lennon and Pang split their time between Pang’s New York City apartment and a house they rented in Los Angeles.

Pang has always maintained the relationship happened with Ono’s blessing. “The affair was not something that was hurtful to me,” Ono told The Telegraph in 2012 . “I needed a rest. I needed space. Can you imagine every day of getting this vibration from people of hate? You want to get out of that,” she added in reference to many fan’s belief she was instrumental in breaking up The Beatles . “I started to notice that he became a little restless on top of that, so I thought it’s better to give him a rest and me a rest. May Pang was a very intelligent, attractive woman and extremely efficient. I thought they’d be OK.”

Lennon drank alcohol and did drugs in excess

Away from Ono, Lennon began drinking heavily and abusing drugs. In L.A., he teamed with producer Phil Spector to record an album of rock standards that had inspired him. “The guys were all drinking — and John was being one of the guys,” Pang said to Uncut in 2009. “Everyone was as blitzed as he. One of the bass players got into a car wreck. We got kicked out of A&M [studios] when someone threw a bottle of liquor down the console.”

A more famous ejection happened when Lennon and his drinking buddy, singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, were tossed out of the Troubadour rock club in West Hollywood in March 1974 for heckling the Smothers Brothers. “I got drunk and shouted,” Lennon reportedly recalled of the incident. “It was my first night on Brandy Alexanders — that’s brandy and milk, folks. I was with Harry Nilsson, who didn’t get as much [press] coverage as me, the bum. He encouraged me. I usually have someone there who says, ‘OK, Lennon. Shut up.’”

He reunited with Paul McCartney for a jam session

Despite the substance abuse, the period was a productive time in regards to music. Lennon completed three albums, Mind Games , Walls and Bridges and Rock ‘n’ Roll , as well as producing LP’s for Nilsson and former bandmate Ringo Starr . Surprisingly, the single “Whatever Gets You Through the Night,” from Walls and Bridges , was Lennon’s first solo No. 1 hit in the U.S., featuring Elton John on piano and backing vocals.

But it was an impromptu jam session on March 28, 1974, that ignited rumors of a possible Beatles comeback. Lennon was at Burbank Studios producing a single for Nilsson when McCartney and his wife Linda unexpectedly stopped by. “I jammed with Paul,” Lennon revealed in a later interview . “I did actually play with Paul. We did a lot of stuff in L.A., though there were 50 other people playing, all just watching me and Paul.”

The session is the only known instance of Lennon and McCartney playing together between the breakup of The Beatles in 1970 and Lennon’s murder in 1980. The tape of the session was released on the bootleg A Toot and a Snore in ‘74 but produced nothing musically substantial.

A subsequent reunion between the two was reportedly being discussed, with Lennon planning to meet McCartney in New Orleans where the latter, along with his band Wings, would be recording the album Venus and Mars in early 1975. In her memoir, Pang wrote that Lennon was open to the notion. “He kept bringing up the trip, and each time he mentioned it he grew more enthusiastic,” she says in Loving John: The Untold Story .

Lennon eventually reunited with Yoko Ono and went on to have a son with her

But the anticipated meeting in New Orleans would never come to pass. Around the same time, Ono had reached out to Lennon requesting he visit their apartment at The Dakota in New York regarding a treatment she thought would end his nicotine addiction. Lennon, who said he spoke with Ono almost daily during his “lost weekend” and begged to be allowed to return home, would remain with his wife from then on. Their son Sean would be born in October 1975.

Explaining their decision to reunite, Ono told Playboy in a joint interview with Lennon in 1980 that it, “slowly started to dawn on me that John was not the trouble at all. John was a fine person. It was society that had become too much. We laugh about it now, but we started dating again. I wanted to be sure. I’m thankful for John’s intelligence… that he was intelligent enough to know this was the only way that we could save our marriage, not because we didn’t love each other but because it was getting too much for me.”

For Lennon, it was about reordering priorities with the focus now being on the family. Especially with a new baby on the way. “The number one priority is her and the family,” he told Playboy . “Everything else revolved around that.”

Taking on the role of househusband, Lennon focused on family and took a five-year hiatus from the music industry. In October 1980 he released the single “(Just Like) Starting Over,” ahead of the November release of his and Ono’s album Double Fantasy which received mostly negative critiques. It would be Lennon’s last studio album before his death the following month.

Pang would remain in contact with Lennon until his death. She married record producer Tony Visconti in 1989 and the couple had two children. They divorced in 2000. In a 2015 interview , Pang referred to her split with Lennon, the end of the “lost weekend,” as a “gray zone.” She recalled that at that time, early 1975, the couple were considering buying a home in the Hamptons, and then Lennon returned to Ono. Pang said she remained romantically involved with Lennon for several years after their split and the last time she saw him was the winter of 1978-1979.

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