John Lennon
John Lennon, was a songwriter, activist and Harry Potter look alike, who became a driving force in the most successful band of all time: The Beatles.
Just The Facts
- John Lennon was a succesful solo artist, founding member of the Plastic Ono Band and also a guitarist/ songwriter in a small indie band called The Beatles.
- Along with Beatles bandmates, Paul Mccartney and George Harrison, Lennon led the Beatles to become the most successful band of all time,to date selling 1 billion albums. Ringo Starr also apparently contributed in some way though how and to what extent are still unknown.
- Accolades include: being half of the most successful songwriting team in history, (Lennon-Mccartney), numerous awards and honors, and working with the magical conductor from Thomas the Train engine(see Ringo Starr).
- Once at a Beatles meeting, Lennon claimed he was Jesus, a fact disproven when he was shot and killed in 1980.
With The Beatles
After meeting Paul Mccartney in 1957, John Lennon formed The Beatles, a sort of 60's version of the Jonas Brothers except with musical talent and testicles.
Not Pictured: Testicles
After having hit singles in Britian, aka funny accent land, The Beatles broke into the American music scene with their first U.S. number 1 , "I Want To Hold Your Hand". In addition to this, the Beatles made their American television premiere on the Ed Sullivan show, to an audience of 73 million people, a feat made all the more impressive when you realize that many people in the 60's still believed the television was the devil's picture box. The press soon dubbed the ensuing syncronished panty wetting of teenage girls as "Beatlemania", and the group became the biggest thing since sliced bread....Literally. Amidst the furor of "Beatlemania" Lennon managed to find time between having sex with groupies and having sex with prostitutes, in order to write two books and star by himself in the film "How I Won The War". The band would continue to have massive hit songs and albums throughout the 60's until their breakup in 1970, following Lennons contraction of a rare Japanese parasite commonly referred to as Yoko Ono.
A Rare shot of the Ono parasite in its natural enviornment.
Solo Career
After the breakup of The Beatles, Lennon began a sporadically successful solo career. His first album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, was created as a result of Lennon's partaking in Primal Scream Therapy, a form of therapy based on reliving painful past experiences in order to breakthrough the pain, much like any teenage WoW players future high school reunion. Though the album received a critical BJ for its brutal honesty and subject matter (parental abandonment, poltical disenfranchisement, and we'll just throw masturbation in there too.... its always masturbation.), most fans of the former Beatle were left confused by his new attitude. His follow up, Imagine, became his most beloved solo album as it softened John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band's harshness, and contained the anthemic title single Imagine....or so thats what people tell me. Meanwhile things between Lennon and his parasite, wife Yoko Ono, were begining to fall apart, and Ono would soon seperate from Lennon, during a time that he would dub his "Lost Weekend". During this "Lost Weekend",what he considered one of the lowest periods of his life, Lennon would record a number 1 album (Walls and Bridges), hangout with Bob Dylan and former Beatle George Harrison, and join in a cocaine fueled jam session with Stevie Wonder and Paul Mccartney, putting to shame that time your friends tried to get you over your ex by smoking weed and watching a 48 hour Spongebob marathon.
Your weed smoking has made Spongebob Emo now...nice job dumbass
After returning home to Ono, Lennon took a temporary hiatus from the music business, in order to become a househusband and raise his newborn son, Sean. He would not return to the public eye for another five years until being inspired by former bandmate Paul Mccartney's song, "Coming Up". Lennon returned to the studio in early 1980 to record his final album "Double Fantasy", three weeks later, on December 8th 1980, Lennon would be gunned down outside of his NYC apartment(The same apartment where Rosemary's Baby was filmed)by a crazed fan, Mark David Chapman.
Political Activism
Leading up to and after the Beatles breakup, Lennon became just as known for his poltical statements as his musical talents. As a famous rockstar/millionare, Lennon decided that giving money to charity would be to cliche and instead decided to do something really useful and lay in bed all day with his wife.In what was soon dubbed the Bed-in for Peace, the press descended upon Lennon and Ono expecting to see a husband and wife performing some disturbing sexual act, and were extremely disappointed to find them simply lying in bed. This brings to mind one simple question: "Why the fuck would anyone want to see Yoko Ono doing anything resembling sex?". In addition to laying around all day, Lennon took part in many peace rallies, and soon became friends with many 70's radicals including Abbie Hoffman, more commonly known today as the Flag Shirt Guy from Forrest Gump.
Momma always said...wait why the fuck is he wearing a flag?
All this peace talk eventually caught the attention of the Nixon administration and Lennon soon found himself a subject of frequent FBI wiretaps and tailings. After Lennons death, many conspiracy theories arose, including one in which the FBI killed Lennon in order to keep him from revealing that Elvis shot Tupac while faking the moon landing in Area 51.
As The All Music Guide says in their excellent Beatles biography "That it's difficult to summarize their career without restating cliches that have already been digested by tens of millions of rock fans, to start with the obvious,they were the greatest and most influential act of the rock era and introduced more innovations into popular music than any other rock band of the 20th century."
Reply"Moreover they were among the few artists of *any* discipline that were simultaneously the best at what they did *and* the most popular at what they did." THey also say as singers John Lennon and Paul McCartney were among the best and most expressive in rock.
Also on an excellent site,The Evolution of Rock Bass Playing McCartney Style by Dennnis Alstrand,Stanley Clarke,Sting,Will Lee,Billy Sheehan,George Martin and John Lennon are quoted saying what a great,melodic and influential bass player Paul has always been'
And Wilco's John Stirratt was asked in Bass Player which bass players have had the most impact on his playing and the first thing he said was, Paul McCartney is one of the greatest bass players of all time,if you listen to what he was tracking live in the studio it's unbelievable." "With his tone and musicality he was a huge influence,he covered all of his harmonic responsibilities really well but his baselines were absolutely melodic and inventive."
And in an online 1977 Eric Clapton interview,Eric Clapton In His Own Words he says that there was always this guitar game between John and George,and he said partly because John was a pretty good guitar player himself.He played live with John as a member of John's 1969 Plastic Ono Band.
And there is a great online article by musician and song writer Peter Cross,The Beatles Are The Most Creative Band Of All Time and he says that many musicians besides him recognize Paul as one of the best bass guitar players ever.He too says that John and Paul are the greatest song composers and that to say that John and Paul are among 2 of the greatest singers in rock and roll is to state the obvious,and that John,Paul and George were all excellent guitarists and that George is underrated by people not educated about music but that ERic Clapton knew better,he also says that both John and Paul played great leads as well as innovative rhythm tracks.
John Lennon co-wrote,sang and played guitar on one of David Bowie's first hits Fame in 1975 and David invited John to play guitar on his version of John's beautiful Beatles song Across The Universe.Brain May,Ozzy Osbourne,and Liam Gallagher and many more call The Beatles The Greatest Band Ever.
Also on MusicRadar Tom Petty,Joe Perry and Richie Sambora in What The Beatles Mean To Me all say how cool and great they thought The Beatles were when they first saw them on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 when they were just teen boys,Richie was only 5.Tom Petty said he thought they were really really great.
Robin Zander of Cheap Trick said he's probably one of the biggest Beatles fans on the planet.Brad Whitford of Aerosmith said that a lot of that Beatles influence comes from Steven Tyler's collaborartion with Mark Hudson both whom are absolute Beatles freaks and he said I guess the goal is to try and emulate probably some of the best music of the last 50 years which has to be The Beatles.
And The Beach Boys version of Rock and Roll Music is not rocking at all but The Beatles version is and John's great rock vocal is almost as great as his rocking vocal on Money and his incredible Twist and Shout rocking vocal which he sang with a bad sore throat from a bad cold!
Also, The Beatles not only wrote so many great timeless rock songs,but so many beautiful acoustic ballads,even as early as on their great early 1964 A Hard Day's Night album,John's beautiful If I Fell, I'll Be Back and Paul's beautiful And I Love Her and Things We Said Today.
John Lennon's beautiful song Julia on The Beatles great rock album,The White album is about his mother Julia who gave him away at 5 to be raised by her older sister,and just when John was getting close to her she was killed in a hit and run car accident by a drunk off duty cop while she crossed the street in front of the house John lived in,he was at her boyfriend's house waiting for her.
Also John Lennon wrote the lyrics to the great song A Day In The Life while he was reading the coroner's report in the news paper of Tara Brown's death who was a Guiness heir and a good friend of theirs(Paul met him first in a London club and he was closest to him,and he introcuded him to John,George, and Mick Jagger,Keith Richards and Brian Jones met him through them and became friends with him too) who was killed at the age of 21 in his sports car crash in December 1966,his girlfriend was in the car and had minor injuries.He would have inherited 1 million $ if he had lived to be 25.
Also in an excellent Beatles book Ticket To Ride by Denny Somach where so many other well known popular respected rock musicians and artists are interviewed about The Beatles praising them including Jimmy Page,Brian Wilson who says he's always loved The Beatles. And Brian Wilson called John & Paul the greatest song writers of the 20th century on a 1995 Nightline Beatles tribute show,(which had on music artists from every type of music,a young black jazz musician,a middle aged black opera singer,Steve Winwood,Meatloaf,and classical violnist Isak Perleman,who said he plays his children Bach,Beethoven Mozart and The Beatles)and he played With A Little Help From My Friends on the piano and he said he just loves this song. He also said that Sgt.Pepper is the greatest album he ever heard and The All Music Guide says in their Beach Boys biography,that Brian had a nerveous breakdown after he heard it. Brian also said that when he first heard The Beatles brilliant 1965 folk rock album Rubber Soul he was blown away by it.He said all of the songs flowed together and it was pop music but folk rock at the same time and he couldn't believe they did this so great,this inspired him to make Pet Sounds.
John Lodge and Justin of The Moody Blues are interviewed in this book and Bill Wyman and Ron Wood says how The Rolling Stones became good friends with The Beatles in 1963 after John and Paul wrote 1 of their first hits,the Rock n Roll song,I Wanna Be You're Man.
Ron Wood was asked what his favorite Beatles songs and he said there are so many apart from the obvious like Strawberry Fields I Want To Hold Your Hand is one he said he used to like a lot ,and he said he really loved We Can Work It Out.He also says that The Beatles used to have a radio show every Friday where they played live and spoke and he would never miss an episode. He said infact whoever has the rights to those shows should dig them up,because they are incredible.
Justin Hayward says that the album he always really loved ,and he said it was when they started experimenting with chord structures ,was A Hard Day's Night.He says they began to move away from the standard 3 chord thing and just went into more interesting structures .He said A Hard Day's Night was the album for him and their song If I Fell was the song.He said it started in a different key to how it ended up,and it's a beautifully worked out song and that there are some songs on that album that were very emotinal and evocative. He said that for everybody just starting to wite songs as he was,it was a real turn on and eye opener.
ever hear of the photograph "Two Virgins"?
ReplyYes and it was banned because of John and Yoko's full frontal nudity on the cover.