John Lennon

John Lennon, in full John Winston Ono Lennon   (born October 9, 1940, Liverpool, England—died December 8, 1980, New York, New York, U.S.), leader or coleader of British rock group the Beatles, authorand graphic artist, solo recording artist, and collaborator with Yoko Ono on recordings and other art projects.
Lennon’s fun-loving working-class parents married briefly and late and declined toraise their quick, sensitive, gifted son. Separated traumatically from each of them by age five, he was raised strictly (in Woolton, a Liverpool suburb) by his maternal aunt, Mimi Smith, whose husbanddied during Lennon’s adolescence, as did his biological mother, who had taught him to play the banjo. Such circumstances were not uncommon in the wake of World War II, but in Lennon they generated angerthat he sublimated with brilliance and difficulty and an intense need for human connection. At age 21 he married the supportive, traditional Cynthia Powell, whom he divorced in 1968. At age 28 hemarried the independent, unconventional Yoko Ono. And much earlier, at age 16, he founded a skiffle band that evolved into the Beatles, the most important musical group of the second half of the 20thcentury.
The Beatles were essentially a joint venture between practical pop adept Paul McCartney and alienated rock-and-roll rebel Lennon, but, as a disruptive cultural force, they always bore Lennon’sstamp. Musically, just two of countless examples are the forthright candour his vocal added to Smokey Robinson’s vulnerable “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” in 1964 and the “I used to be cruel to mywoman” bridge he added to McCartney’s positive-thinking “Getting Better” in 1967. Culturally too, Lennon assumed the role of the candid provocateur. All four Beatles were witty, all four irreverent.But only Lennon would have observed “We’re more popular than Jesus now” or boiled the story of youth culture down to “America had teenagers and everywhere else just had people.”
Lennon’s genius...