John Lennon Biography

John's father left his mother when he was three, and the toddler was sent to live with his aunt. He was a rebellious child, preferring to draw and doodle, rather than study.

At 16, his aunt decided school was not getting Lennon very far and she got him accepted into Liverpool Art School.

Lennon soon took to music. He started a skiffle band called The Quarrymen that later morphed into The Beatles, with Lennon as the band's musical and social leader, while he and Paul McCartney wrote the songs. It was Lennon who also led the band in drug use, and encouraged them to follow his guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

In the late 1950s Lennon married his art school classmate, Cynthia Powell, and they had a son, Julian, in 1963. Five years later, with Lennon openly dating the older Japanese-American artist Yoko Ono, Cynthia filed for divorce.

After the death of Beatles manager Brian Epstein in 1967, tensions within the band surfaced as Lennon began to resent McCartney for taking control of the band and disliked some of the resulting projects such as Magical Mystery Tour and Let It Be. He was the first to break the band's all-for-one sensibility, and also the rule that no wives or girlfriends would attend recording sessions, as he brought Yoko into the studio.

In 1968 and 1969, the media flooded its pages with Lennon and Ono. First the pair recorded the inaccessible ‘Unfinished Music’ album; its cover photo of the couple naked caused a sensation and it was banned from many stores. Columnists accused Ono of influencing Lennon, and causing trouble for the beloved Beatles. The lovers recorded more difficult music, and decried political injustices, from the intimacy of their bed.

Lennon was also the first member to quit the group, which he did in September 1969 (Starr had left during 1968, but was persuaded to return; Harrison stated he was "leaving the band" on 10 January 1969 during the rehearsal sessions for Let It Be , but returned to the group after negotiations). Lennon agreed not to make an announcement while the band renegotiated their recording contract, and blasted McCartney months later for going public with his own departure in April 1970. Phil Spector's involvement in trying to revive the Let It Be material then drove a further wedge between Lennon (who supported Spector) and McCartney (who opposed him).

With the public unaware of the details, McCartney appeared to be the one who dissolved the group, depriving Lennon of the formalities. Lennon told Rolling Stone, "I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record." Though the split would only become legal some time later, Lennon's and McCartney's partnership had come to a bitter end. McCartney soon made a press announcement, declaring he had quit the Beatles and promoting his new solo record. McCartney later admitted Lennon had been the first to quit.

Throughout the 1970s Lennon made music with Ono, releasing the enduring and ever popular ‘Imagine’, in 1971. On Thanksgiving night of 1974, Lennon gave a legendary performance with Elton John at Madison Square Gardens, which was to be his last public performance. The following year Ono gave birth to Lennon's second son, Sean. Lennon announced his retirement in 1976.

Deciding to make a comeback, Lennon recorded a new album in 1980, which was starting to gain popularity, when he was shot by Mark David Chapman as he entered his apartment in New York. Devastated by his death, the world fell to mourning, with an international 10-minute silence.