December 8, 1980-2025: 45 years without John Lennon, immortal icon

But yes, I know that there are even more than two months – and for the precise anniversary I am preparing a large and detailed special. It is precisely because I am working on these days that I have thought it well to offer you a sort of chronological summary of John Lennon’s professional and personal life, useful (I hope) both for those who know him well and for the many who basically only heard him name. A synthetic summary, let’s say “for beginners” – moreover on Lennonpotrei write a book (but I will not do it).

John Lennon, before the Beatles

Born in Liverpool On October 9, 1940, abandoned by his father Alfred and neglected by his mother Julia, the boy John Winston Lennon He is raised by Julia’s sister, aunt Mimi. Rebeling and aggressive teenager, intelligent but listless student, finds an outlet in music, and founds a skiple music complex (a kind of primordial rock’n’roll) baptizing it quarrymen, of which he is the leader and guitarist. On July 6, 1957 he met Paul McCartneyalso guitarist, and invites him to enter the band. It is the moment when the Beatles are born in all respects.

John Lennon and Beatles – the beginnings

The quarrymen are enthusiastic and willing, but musically still poor. The record publications follow carefully, especially the US ones that come to Liverpool to bring from the sailors of the port that perform the Atlantic crossings. They have few engagements, in the city there are much better complexes than them, which in the meantime have welcomed in formation George Harrison And Stu Sutcliffe, a friend of John. A small local manager offers them a engagement to play in Hamburg, and the Quarrymen – who in the meantime have changed their name in Beatles – They accept by hiring the drummer Pete Best.

John Lennon and Beatles – The years of Hamburg

In the German city the Beatles are bones, also playing ten/twelve hours per evening every day, and learning to relate to a warm but also demanding and sometimes violent audience. It is a fundamental school for the Beatles; When, after several Hamburgian stays, they will return to perform in Liverpool, the city’s audience discovers that the scalcinated Quarrymen have become the Beatles, a respectable band. So much Brian Epsteinowner of a city record shop, proposes himself as their manager and succeeds, after months and months of insistence and continuous waste, to procure a record contract.

John Lennon and Beatles – Liverpool years

The Beatles play almost every day, twice a day, at the Cavern, a cellar frequented by the city youth; And it is with that faithful and warm audience that they experience their first original compositions (until then they had played almost only cover of other interpreters). And it is precisely with an original composition by John Lennon and Paul McCartney – “Love Me Do” – that the Beatles debut recorded on the Emi label (the formation is made up of John, Paul – who in the meantime has gone to the bass to replace Stu Sutcliffe – George and the new entrance, the drummer Ringo Starr. The single, produced by George Martinenters the ranking, but it is with the second 45 laps-“Please please me”, also this signed Lennon-McCartney-who arrive for the first time at the top of the ranking. It is the beginning of (almost) a decade of sensational successes, which will make Beatles the most important musical phenomenon of the decade and the century.

John Lennon and Beatles – the years of London (and of the world)

For work reasons, the Beatles leave Liverpool and move to London, which acts as a basis for their concert tours – both in Great Britain and then all over the world, where their popularity has exploded giving life to a sort of collective madness that the newspapers have baptized Beatlemania – and where they record all their records in the EMI studios ad Abbey Road. The musical production of the Beatles is almost entirely made up of collaborations between John and Paul, with some contribution by George. The two authors are undoubtedly the most important names of the Beatles, while alternating their leadership (authoritative Lennon and often spokesperson for the group, McCartney more reserved and attentive to the details of the recordings). It is a friendship cemented by common experiences of the past – both John and Paul have lost their mother from teenagers – and by the extraordinary creativity of both, which makes them complementary and gives life to dozens of great songs.

John Lennon and Beatles – The death of Brian Epstein

In August 1967, when the Beatles are at the top of the world celebrity thanks to the exit of a fundamental album as “Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” – the manager who had led their international ascent dies. For the group it is a serious blow, both emotional and practical: upon the death of Epstein, John and Paul react in the opposite way, Paul rolling up his sleeves and effectively taking on an organizational role, John retiring in the background, also because distracted by the exclusive relationship he started with the Japanese artist Yoko Ono. But in this way the seeds of the imminent dissolution of the group are thrown, which arrives a couple of years later at the height of a series of discussions and quarrels both for artistic differences and for economic issues related to the management of the Apple company founded by the Beatles.

John Lennon after the Beatles – the first years as a soloist, pacifist initiatives

After the dissolution, all the members of the band will release solo albums. After some experimental and explicitly non -commercial works, Lennon enters the market “John Lennon – Plastic Ono Band”, an intense and dramatic disc in which he tackles his inner ghosts and basically repudiates the experience with the Beatles. The album receives excellent criticism and gets good sales results, but it is in the next “Image“, From 1971, which Lennon publishes his most famous and lasting song. It is a song in good utopian and nihilistic, whose text hopes for a world without nations, without borders, without religions and in peace. The theme of peace is at the center of some medically sensational initiatives of which John is the protagonist with his wife Yoko Ono: possession of posters,” Bed-in ” In their hotel rooms-and an ever-growing interest in US political instances (the couple moved to the USA). From Yoko Ono, which Lennon himself will define his “Lost Weekend”, during which the albums “Mind Games” and “Walls And Bridges”, good quality but not excellent works, are released.

John Lennon, the House-Husband

The reconciliation with Yoko Ono, the birth of their only son Sean and a certain disaffection for music lead John to devote themselves almost exclusively to private life, and to the growth of little Sean. His absence from the scenes, during which he himself will say that he has as “home” assets, will last almost five years. Not that Lennon has completely neglected the music: it continues to record domestic auditions, which will see the light postuMi (we will talk about it later).

John Lennon, the return to music

A new record contract with the Geffen label is the opportunity, for Lennon, to recur on the scenes of the music industry. The disc, “Double Fantasy“, It contains half songs written and sung by John and half songs written and sung by Yoko Ono. It is a somewhat old -fashioned album, without experimental presumptions, often romantic and sentimental songs (” Just like Starting Over “,” Woman “,” Beautiful Boy “). The very first welcoming criticisms are warm, but everything will change after 8 December 1980.

John Lennon, the assassination

On the evening of December 8, 1980 John and Yoko are returning to their apartment in Dakota Building when a person who had set out nearby – a 25 -year -old man named Mark David Chapmanborn in Texas but residing in Hawaii – approaches Lennon behind him and shoots him several times with a gun. Despite the prompt intervention of the ambulances, the wounds prove too serious and on arrival in the Lennon hospital is declared dead. Just a few hours before dying, Lennon had autographed a copy of the album to his killer. In 2003 this autographed copy was sold for 525,000 dollars, becoming the most precious disc ever.

John Lennon, after death

Dying young, and possibly of violent or dramatic death, is an infallible marketing move (James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, John Kennedy …) and transforms you into icon. After John’s death, the wave of emotion and condolence was so high and powerful all over the world that it also forget the many defects of the man John Lennon and to transform it into a musical hero – not that Lennon has not had great merits, just think of songs such as “Help!”, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “I am the walrus”, which are far from Qualitative of the Beatles repertoire, but in the anxiety of celebrating John’s merits he often exaggerated in diminishing the contribution of Paul (and also of George and Ringo) to the success of the Beatles.

Lennon’s death, however, marked the end of the dream, that fans had never stopped caressing, a possible meeting of the Beatles. Without him, the Beatles could no longer be the Beatles. At least until 1994 …

John Lennon “resurrected” for new Beatles songs

On an unspecified day of the early nineties, Yoko Ono agreed to deliver four songs in the form of John’s audition to the three survivors. Three of these have been published in the following years, after being subjected to treatments for cleaning and improving the quality of the item (originally recorded on audiocassette). The three songs are “Free As A Bird”, “Real Love” and “Now and then”completed with the contribution of Paul, George and Ringo and sung by John’s voice of decades earlier. Not all fans approved the operation, but the three songs still became part of the “Beatlesian canon”.

John Lennon, today

Almost 45 years after his death, John Lennon was not forgotten. Airports (in Liverpool), public gardens (in New York), roads (also in Italy) were named after him. Of course his solo production is not all of a high level; But the commitment of his son Sean is proposing it in expanded editions, Deluxe, in the box. In 2024 a Superdeluxe edition of the album was released “Mind games”whose wider configuration counts eight discs; While on 10 October, a super deluxe edition entitled “Power to the People”12 discs for an “exhaustive collection of 123 tracks, including 90 unpublished songs, which tells the most political era of John and Yoko”, taking up the album “Some Time in New York City” and two concerts by John and Yoko from 1972. A few controversy, even justified, was raised by the fans who have not liked the exclusion from the tracklist of a song of “Some Time in New York in New York City “entitled” Woman is the Nigger of the World “, considering it an undue to the original album project and a transfer to the fear of disputes of the Woke brand. What is certain is that if John was still alive that song would not have been cassata by the project …

Five songs by John Lennon who absolutely must be known

Help!

Strawberry Fields Forever

Image

Happy Xmas (War is over)

(Just Like) Starting over