Many books have been written about the life of this outstanding person; some authors even received a degree for them. His songs, his thoughts and actions were repeatedly subjected to careful study and comprehension. We will not talk about who John Lennon really is and what he wanted to say with his work - we just tell his story.
Childhood
John Winston Lennon was born on October 9, 1940 in the maternity hospital on Oxford Street. In almost every biography of John Lennon they write that this happened during the bombing - there was a Second World War. However, in reality there was nothing of the kind, and the person who first wrote about this in his book about The Beatles, many years later refuted his words. John's mother, Julia, did not spend much time with her child. After a year and a half, she broke up with the boy’s father, Alfred Lennon, and a little later she found another man, and Aunt Mimi took John to her house.
Mimi was a strict woman and kept the boy in black gloves. Of course, she loved the boy and wished him a better life, but in her own way: the limit of her hopes was that John unlearn at the institute and find a job. She wanted to grow a decent person out of him, so she strictly monitored his mores and tried to prevent him from “hobbling up with street punks,” while John had already put together his own hooligan gang and had a fight with all the boys in the area.
When John went to school, he discovered that the local dull life was not at all according to him: he began to study disgustingly, frankly engaged in nonsense in the classroom and was in a state of permanent war with teachers. Nevertheless, then his tendencies towards drawing manifested themselves, or rather, to the drawing of mocking cartoons and obscene drawings.
Around the same time, John was approaching his mother, Julia. Julia was a “black sheep” in her family - devoid of prejudice, she acted as she pleased, living at her own pleasure, and this was admired by John, who was always a rebel. They became good friends, and the mother always supported any imagination and hobbies of her son.
The quarrymen
And in the courtyard at that time was the 50s: Bill Haley's song Rock around the clock came out, in 1956 Elvis Presley appeared on the scene, and a wave of rock and roll swept headlong over Britain. However, here it turned into a slightly different form: a sciffle appeared - this style was a little like rock and roll, but it did not require complex instruments or the ability to play well, and therefore became unusually popular among young people.
And John did not stand aside: he and his friends on school tricks created his own sciffle group. His instrument was a guitar, although he could not play. The only thing - John's mother showed him a couple of chords on the banjo (the first song he learned was That'll Be The Day by Buddy Holly).
The guys played from time to time just for fun and did not consider this something serious. People in the group were constantly changing, someone came and went, constantly flashed new faces. And on July 6, 1957, Paul McCartney appeared. After some time, he brought George Harrison. George's mother, unlike Mimi, supported the guys in their passion for music: in the Harrison house, the company always found a warm welcome.
College of Art
Successfully failing all the exams at school, John, under the patronage of the director Podzhboy (who sincerely tried to establish contact with an uncontrolled student), somehow entered the art college. There he also practically did not study, constantly arranged various antics and sometimes interrupted classes. He still did not know what he wanted to do, but he already firmly realized that he hated any routine — be it work, study, or something else that required labor and diligence.
During that period of his life, he experiences a tremendous shock - the death of his mother, Julia. For that short period of time that they were friends, John became very attached to her. Julia was one of the few who really understood him. After the death of his mother, John seemed to break the chain: he became hardened, his antics became even angrier, his jokes even more caustic.
Then John met Cynthia Powell. Perhaps he needed her: John was trying to fill the void that arose after the death of his mother. In fact, he simply frustrated all his anger at the girl. John also met at the Stuart Sutcliffe Institute : an up-and- coming artist, Stu became interested in John's group and took the place of the bass player, although he could not play. He was much more intelligent and intellectually developed than all the other members of the group, and John admired Stu; many elements of the Beatles style were invented by him.
The group creaked, but slowly developed: they played in youth clubs, at parties, once managed to go on a tour of Scotland. All this time they did not have a specific name - Quarrymen had long been forgotten, the rest changed, and only after a while did The Silver Beatles appear, composed by John in the manner of the Buddy-Holly "Crickets" (The Crickets).
Hamburg
In 1960, the Beatles were lucky: Alan Williams invited them to go to Hamburg. At that time, he had already set up sending Liverpool groups “on tour” to the stream, and the guys were not the first. The place where they played was located on Hamburg's red light district, and the Beatles performed for 6-8 hours in a row all night, and slept in a movie theater.
The Hamburg public initially reacted to the guys who stood on the stage as idols, with a tepid temper; their manager, the nightmare, shouted at them: "Mac show" - a warped "make show." And the Beatles began to "make a show." They banged their feet loudly, rode around the stage, rolled in the dust - in a word, went crazy. Three-minute compositions stretched for a third of an hour. The audience rejoiced.
It all ended very unexpectedly - George Harrison, a minor, was deported from the country. After him, the rest of the group also had to leave Germany. The first trip to Hamburg ended unsuccessfully, however, it was here that the Beatles grew significantly in their skills and acquired many skills that were useful to them later.
Under the wing of Epstein
Returning to Liverpool with seasoned German clubs, the Beatles made a splash. They firmly established themselves in the most famous club of local hooligan youth, and there got a crowd of fans. Their liberated behavior on stage, free communication with the public, swaying music produced an unprecedented effect: all the performances ended in a grand brawl. It was there that they were picked up by a sleek white fellow Brian Epstein, who later became their manager. Under his strict guidance, the group completely changed its image: from the skin-tight, unwashed, obscene “teddy fights”, the Beatles turned into neat, sleek young people in suits. Subsequently, Lennon regretted that the group “succumbed” to show business: with a new image, they lost a part of themselves - their unique immediacy, simplicity and liveliness. John was annoyed by the fact that now they are curling a loach "for the sake of publicity", which they previously despised. With a new image, he will forget for a long time who John Lennon really is - a rebel and an implacable enemy of decency and the public.
At this time, they traveled several times to Hamburg. On his second round of arrival, John found out that Sutcliffe, who stayed there with his girlfriend Astrid, died of a brain hemorrhage. The death of a close friend crippled Lennon: according to the recollections of friends, he burst into tears after the words of Astrid; it was a rare case when John showed emotions in public.
Beatlemania
Meanwhile, The Beatles were spotted by George Martin, and under his strict guidance they recorded a record, then another, third and finally fourth She Loves You, which definitely marked the beginning of that three-year-old madness called "Beatlemania". The group traveled all over the world, wreaking havoc, riots in line-ups for tickets and out-of-band fans. John and his friends enjoyed the success with all their might: we won’t cite facts scrupulously gathered by fans about how the river poured into glasses, how they filled the pipes and how many girls spent the night in each of the Beatles hotels. However, in show business, the group remained a company of sleek pink-cheeked boys singing sugary love songs. Subsequently, John will call it the worst time in his life: he was forced to be not what he is, for the sake of commerce they turned a rocker rebel into a pay-boy, literally took away his true identity. Despite the outward brilliance and triumph, absolute moral degradation took place inside the Beatles.
Acid and the end of concert activity
Having finished the tour and returning to England, at first John did not know where to put himself. After the frantic rhythm of life on the verge of human capabilities, he felt exhausted and restless. It was then that John became interested in psychedelic experiences, marijuana, and LSD. Perhaps this is how he tried to destroy everything that had been his life before, and to open his mission - to re-understand who John Lennon really is. By the way, at about the same time an attribute appears, which later became an indispensable detail of the image of a musician. These were John Lennon's famous round glasses.
After some time, the concert career of the group ended. They have grown significantly musically and moved on to more intelligent studio albums. Then John showed a craving for the forefront and psychedelic, or acid rock. The results of his experiments were, for example, the fantastic I Am The Walrus and the hippie anthem All You Need Is Love.
Yoko Ono and the Beatles collapse
John's interest in the forefront and took advantage of Yoko Ono. John Lennon and Yoko Ono ideally suited each other - a purposeful Japanese woman whose main passion was attracting attention, and a restless superstar who needed a muse or genius to replace Cynthia's simpleton. They literally found each other. The Beatles at this time had a breakdown both in financial matters and in relations within the group. The result was a breakup with litigation. However, by that time John was already glad to leave the Beatles: interests took him in a completely different direction.
Solo career and political activity
The first joint album of John and Yoko consisted of sound experiments, noise and interference, and people simply remembered it mostly in the cover, where the couple appeared completely naked. This was only the beginning of a protest, a challenge that they threw around the world. Subsequently, they will hold an extraordinary number of different actions and performances designed to draw attention to the problems of violence in the world. The most famous of these is the “bed interview”, which took place in several cities; during it, John and Yoko sat in their hotel room (where anyone could go in) on a white bed in pajamas decorated with flowers, and talked to countless journalists. Also in 1969, Lennon returned to the queen the Order of the Cavalier of the British Empire received four years ago in protest against the participation in the armed conflict of Nigeria - Biafra and US support in Vietnam. After moving to New York, he actively participated in local anti-war events, thereby incurring government surveillance.
John continued to create - after slurred experimental albums, he released, being in the USA, Walls And Bridges, which was a significant success. After a long time - a break made in connection with the birth of his son Sean - his second album (with Yoko) Double Fantasy is released, which has become one of the pearls of the joint work of the spouses. Enticing creative prospects opened before them. Perhaps the best period for John Lennon began. However, everything broke off unexpectedly.
The death of John Lennon
Lennon was killed on December 8, 1980. Returning late from the recording studio, he heard a mysterious man hail him. Without waiting for an answer, he fired five bullets from a revolver at the musician. Lennon was taken to hospital, where he died from blood loss. This is a rare posthumous photo of John Lennon taken in a morgue.
Thousands of crowds gathered in the streets. His songs were broadcast around the world. A little later, in New York Central Park, 400,000 people paid tribute to the musician for ten minutes of silence. The murder of John Lennon shocked the whole world.
Lennon's integrity, honesty and bluntness truly deserve respect. His personal work was always inextricably linked with his immediate state, way of thinking. An extraordinary internal force that made him who he became, who he is John Lennon, carried away millions of people who preserved not only his memory, but also a particle of his soul.