John Winston Lennon

John Winston Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in the Liverpool Maternity Hospital, Oxford Street, Liverpool, to Julia Lennon and Alfred (Alf, or Freddie Lennon, during the course of a German air raid in World War II. He was named after his paternal grandfather, John ‘Jack’ Lennon, and Winston Churchill.


Lennon and McCartney began writing songs together. The first song Lennon completed was “Hello, Little Girl” when he was 18 years old, which later became a hit for the Fourmost. Harrison joined the band as lead guitarist, and Stuart Sutcliffe—Lennon’s art school friend—later joined as bassist. Ringo Starr, drummer with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, later joined the Beatles. On 11 February 1963, the group recorded their first album, Please Please me.

But it was only after the breakup of the Beatles in 1970 that the figure the world now recognizes as “John Lennon” truly came into being.If he saw himself as larger than life, he also yearned for a world in which his ego managed at once to absorb everyone else and dissolve all differences among people, leaving a Zen-like tranquility and calm. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one,” he sang in “Imagine,” which has become his best-known song and an international anthem of peace. “I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”

On the night of 8 December 1980, Lennon was shot 5 times in the back in front of the Dakota by Mark David Chapman.