John Lennon would have turned 75 on October 9. His music had a profound impact on the trajectory of popular culture, and his outspoken pleas for global peace remain as potent as ever, 35 years after his death.
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John Lennon's life in 11 songs
Beatle legend John Lennon would have turned 75 on October 9. Here's a look at what his songs reveal about the man.
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'Hello Little Girl'
Born John Winston Lennon on October 9, 1940, the native Liverpudlian kicked off his music career at 15 with The Quarrymen. At the band's second gig, Lennon met the young Paul McCartney and invited him to join the group. Lennon soon wrote his first song: "Hello Little Girl." 14-year-old George Harrison joined the band, followed by Stuart Sutcliffe in 1960. The Beatles were born.
The band, then featuring Pete Best on drums, decamped to Hamburg for a 48-night residency - honing its live show and experiencing first-hand the city's drug culture and liberal attitudes toward sex. "I might have been born in Liverpool - but I grew up in Hamburg," Lennon said. Returning to England, Lennon penned his first hit: "Please Please Me," the title track of their 1963 debut album.
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'A Hard Day's Night'
Lennon was a keen drawer and actor. In 1964 he wrote the title track for "A Hard Day's Night" - the band's debut film. Capturing the crescendo of Beatlemania, it proved a lasting influence over cinema. Lennon also starred in Richard Lester's 1967 black comedy "How I Won the War." In 2009, director Sam Taylor-Wood released "Nowhere Boy" (pictured), a film based on Lennon's adolescence.
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'The Ballad of John and Yoko'
Lennon met Cynthia Powell at Liverpool Art Collage in 1957. They married in 1962, and their son Julian was born in 1963. After meeting Japanese visual artist Yoko Ono in 1966, the two officially became a couple in 1968. The media's obsession with the notorious pair set the tone for The Beatles' 1969 No. 1 single "The Ballad of John and Yoko." It was the band's last number No. 1 hit in the UK.
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'Julia'
Lennon had a troubled relationship with women and publically admitted to having physically abused Cynthia. His relationship with Yoko was famously tempestuous. He also had a strained relationship with his mother Julia (portrayed here in "Nowhere Boy" by Anne-Marie Duff). John Lennon largely grew up with an aunt, and Julia was killed in an accident in 1958. "Julia" from 1968 was dedicated to her.
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'Tomorrow Never Knows'
By the mid-1960s, Lennon had become increasingly fascinated by countercultural guru Timothy Leary, Eastern mysticism and psychedelics. "Tomorrow Never Knows" was Lennon's own transcendental paean to LSD: inviting listeners to "turn off your mind, relax and float downstream." Many wrongly assumed that Lennon's surrealist "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was also a loosely veiled acronym for LSD.
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'Revolution 1'
He never shied away from attacking the establishment. With its wailing riff, "Revolution 1" of 1968 became an anti-establishment anthem. By stating that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus in 1966, Lennon caused global controversy, which led to public burnings of Beatles albums. In 1970's "God," Lennon sang: "I don't believe in Jesus…I don't believe in Beatles! I just believe in me. Yoko and me."
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'All You Need is Love'
Despite his rebellious image, Lennon became the most public advocate for world peace at the height of the Vietnam and Cold Wars. Released in 1967, "All You Need Is Love" became the hymn of the "Summer of Love." He and Ono staged a "bed-in" peace protest in Canada in 1969 (pictured), from where Lennon penned one of the most iconic peace anthems of all time, "Give Peace a Chance."
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'How Do You Sleep?'
The Beatles split acrimoniously in 1970. In 1971, Paul McCartney wrote "Too Many People" - a swipe at John and Ono's righteous political grandstanding. Deeply insulted, Lennon retaliated that year with "How Do You Sleep" - suggesting the only decent song McCartney ever wrote was "Yesterday." Lennon remained on friendly terms with Ringo Starr and George Harrison and later reconciled with McCartney.
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'Just Like (Starting Over)'
In 1975, Lennon decided to take a break from music. He'd reunited with Ono after an 18-month separation - what he called his "lost weekend" - and their child Sean was born on October 9, Lennon's 35th birthday. After five years of blissful domestic obscurity, Lennon returned to music with the symbolic single "(Just Like) Starting Over" on October 20, 1980. Nearly two months later, he was murdered.
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'Imagine'
Despite Lennon's death, his songs have been kept alive by his legion of fans - and peace monuments have been named in his honor in Reykjavik, New York, Lima, Havana, Liverpool, and beyond. "Imagine," his most enduring and defining song, has been covered by everyone from Madonna to Stevie Wonder and Elton John - and is consistently ranked as one of the greatest and most-played songs of all time.
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It wasn't a happy beginning. Born in war-time Liverpool in 1940, John Lennon's parents - Julia and Alfred Lennon - soon separated. His father, a merchant seaman, returned with the intention of taking the young John with him to New Zealand, and the boy was forced to choose between his two parents, eventually going with his mother.
Julia proved to have a profound influence on his life - introducing him to the seminal music of Fats Domino and Elvis Presley, and teaching him to play the banjo. But it was a strained relationship, and Lennon largely grew up with his aunt, Mimi Smith. He largely lost contact with his father, and his mother died after being hit by a car in 1958.
A new beat
Lennon started his first band, The Quarrymen, in 1956 at the age of 15. It was the genesis of arguably the greatest rock group of all time: The Beatles. Both Paul McCartney and George Harrison were drafted into its ranks, alongside bassist Stuart Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best. Sutcliffe eventually left the Beatles while they were in Germany (remaining in Hamburg after falling in love with German photographer Astrid Kirchherr), and Pete Best was later replaced by Ringo Starr.
There are very few careers to parallel that of The Beatles. From complete obscurity in 1960, within three years they were being touted as the next big thing - something they fulfilled with an all-conquering tour of the US in 1964. A reported 34 percent of the entire US population witnessed the band's performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" that year.
The band came to dominate the 1960s both musically and culturally, releasing such seminal albums as "A Hard Day's Night" (1964), "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1967) and "Abbey Road" (1969). In total, The Beatles released 12 landmark full-length albums in only eight years. They remain the best-selling band in history, having sold up to one billion albums worldwide.
The Beatles in 1963Image: Getty Images
But despite the success, cracks were appearing. Frustrated with the public hysteria, the band had stopped playing live by the mid-60s and - as the key songwriters - McCartney and Lennon were growing more openly competitive. Lennon's partnership with Japanese artist Yoko Ono also proved divisive. During the recording of "Let It Be" in 1969, frustrations boiled over. By 1970, The Beatles were no longer.
Working class hero
Lennon went on to enjoy a successful solo career, with his songs taking on a more potent political and social tenor. Songs like "Working Class Hero" endeavored to shake off the glitz of The Beatles by harking back to his gritty Liverpool roots. And in 1971, he released the song that came to define his career: "Imagine."
In 1980, with the album "Double Fantasy," Lennon returned to the music business after a five-year hiatus. For his return single Lennon symbolically chose the song "(Just Like) Starting Over." On December 8, a young man approached Lennon outside his New York apartment and asked him to sign a copy of "Double Fantasy" - then returned hours later to shoot Lennon four times in the back. The killer, Mark Chapman, remains in a US prison.
