John Lennon

Few musicians have transcended culture in quite the same way as John Lennon. His name, image and iconography are ingrained in society, and that’s before you even get into The Beatles. Rising from humble beginnings in Liverpool, he became a star who personified the counterculture mantra: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”

He was a bespectacled symbol of depth and brooding introspection in the boom of pop culture. This started when he was growing up and a tempestuous relationship with his mother, Julia Lennon, ushered his sensibilities towards the arts. In 1956, just as Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent began to turn his ear toward rock ‘n’ roll, his mother bought him his first guitar.

Thereafter, the ever-confident youngster quickly formed the skiffle group, the Quarrymen. Before their second performance, one fateful day in the summer of ’57, Lennon met future Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney at a fête in Woolton. The rest is ancient history. The Quarrymen would soon transmute into the ‘Fab Four’ with Lennon, McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr quickly going on to change the world as we know it.

Lennon became known as ‘The Clever One’ in the group as he took inspiration from Bob Dylan and got spiritual with his songwriting. Soon songs like ‘Nowhere Man’, ‘Norwegian Wood’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ on Revolver, pushed the band into a progressive new realm, and Lennon grew his hair out. In the process, he inspired a legion of future art-rockers like his friend in the making, David Bowie.

It was around this time when Lennon crossed paths with Yoko Ono at an art exhibition of hers. From that moment on, “that old gang of mine; that’s all over,” he once said. “When I met Yoko is when you meet your first woman, and you leave the guys at the bar.” At this point, his focus moved from The Beatles, and he began to engage in more spiritual pursuits outside of music. This was self-evident when they eventually split and his first solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, became heavily influenced by Primal Scream therapy.

A further six solo records followed, and a drunken lost weekend period which he embarked upon with his friend Harry Nilsson. During these testing years, his relationships with Yoko Ono, McCartney and the rest of his former Beatles bandmates were strained. However, he was steadying himself out and returning to family life by the time the 1980s dawned. Then, sadly, tragedy struck.

On December 8th, 1980, Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman outside of his Dakota Building family apartment in New York City. In the aftermath, his son Sean Ono Lennon would poignantly state: “Now Daddy is part of God.” They are words of a boy ahead of his time that prove reflective of the sagacious father he had.

His legacy now resides in the spiritual realm that he helped to bring into blossom, as the ‘Imagine’ star once said himself: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”