| John Lennon About the Author
John Lennon didn’t invent rock and roll, nor did he embody it as toweringly as figures like Elvis Presley and Little Richard, but he did more than anyone else to shake it up, move it forward and instill it with a conscience. As the most daring and outspoken of the four Beatles, he helped shape the agenda of the Sixties — socially and politically, no less than musically. As a solo artist, he made music that alternately disturbed and soothed, provoked and sought community. As a human being, he served as an exemplar of honesty in his art and life. Lennon was born in 1940 during the Nazi bombing of Britain and given the middle name Winston, after Prime Minister Churchill (he would later change his middle name to Ono). Knowing firsthand the horror of a world at war, and living through the era of Vietnam’s senseless carnage as well, Lennon came to embrace and embody pacifism via such classics of the Beatles era as “All You Need Is Love” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Yet he also had a countervailing dark side that found expression in pained outcries dating as far back as “Help.” This unvarnished aspect of the Lennon persona reached a fevered pitch with the drug-withdrawal blues of “Cold Turkey,” a 1969 single released under the name Plastic Ono Band. There were, in fact, numerous facets to Lennon’s character captured in the ongoing diary of his life in song. Many of his post-Beatles compositions — “Imagine,” “Mind Games,” “Instant Karma” and “Give Peace a Chance” — have rightfully become anthems, flaunting tough-minded realism, cosmic epiphany, hard-won idealism and visionary utopianism in equal measure. For all of the unvarnished genius of Lennon’s recordings, however, much of what lingers in the public memory goes beyond musical legacy. Rather, it has to do with leading by example. The relationship between John and his wife and collaborator, Yoko Ono Lennon, endured challenges from within and without to become one of the most touching and celebrated of twentieth century romances. They were gallantly foolish in undertaking performance art pieces — bed-ins, happenings, full-page ads declaring “War Is Over!” — spreading their message of peace. During the early Seventies Lennon fought the U.S. government to avoid deportation — a campaign of harassment by Nixon-era conservatives that was overturned by the courts in 1975 — and came to love his adopted city of New York. Then there were those five quiet years when the Lennons chose to lay low and raise their son, Sean Ono Lennon. Simply by stepping back and “watching the wheels” from the sidelines, John Lennon made a statement about priorities that said more than words and music. His eventual return to the recording scene in 1980 after that lengthy hiatus — his last album of original songs had been 1974’s Walls and Bridges — was one of the more eagerly anticipated musical events of the year. The album Double Fantasy, jointly credited to John Lennon/Yoko Ono, was released in November 1980. On December 8, a brilliant life came to an untimely end when Lennon was fatally shot by a deranged fan outside his New York City apartment upon returning from a recording session.
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