John Winston Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool England. In the mid 1950s he formed his first band The Quarrymen and after a series of name changes The Beatles. The Beatles were a club band that grew popularity in the early sixties with songs like "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me", and more. Then The Beatles came to America to appear on the Ed Sullivan show and were loved by all.

They had hit albums such as; Rubber Soul (wich inspired the Beach Boys Pet Sounds and Revolver after an incident with Lennon saying the Beatles are more important than Jesus and the struggles of touring the band decided to quit touring. They devoted themselves into recording releasing albums such as Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Magical Mystery Tour,and The White Album, in the late sixties John began playing and making albums with his wife Yoko Ono.

Also in the late sixties the Beatles were on the verge of breaking up and released their last albums. Abbey Road and Let It Be. In the early seventies John had a solo career with his wife he suffered a series of flop singles,and was almost deported. Yoko and John continued their legacy of world peace on various t.v. shows and marches. He also recorded his most famous song in his solo career "Imagine" He also co-wrote with David Bowie "Fame" and the musical Oh Calcutta. He quit music for a little while to become a house-husband and take care of his son Sean. When his career was coming back and on a rise, he was shot and killed

Father, with Yoko Ono, of Sean Lennon.

Father, with Cynthia Lennon, of Julian Lennon.

Assassinated by Mark David Chapman, a crazed fan.

An actor named Mark Lindsay Chapman was supposed to play the part of John Lennon in a TV-movie account of Lennon's life and death, but lost the part because he has the same name (Mark Chapman) as Lennon's killer.

When Rolling Stone magazine was launched in November 1967, Lennon made the first cover.

The first instrument he learned to play was the harmonica.

John Lennon used a number of pseudonyms in his musical work. These include Dr. Winston O'Boogie, Long John, Dr. Winston Booker Table, Dwarf McDougal, Rev. Fred Ghurkin, Dr. Winston O'Ghurkin, Musketeer Gripweed, Mel Torment, Dr. Dream, Honarary John St. John Johnson, Dr. Winston O'Reggae, John O'Cean, Joel Nohnn, Kaptain Kundalini, and Dad.

Inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Beatles January 20, 1988.

Was photographed for the cover of "Rolling Stone" magazine on the day he was assassinated.

Added "Ono" to his name in honour of wife Yoko Ono (aka Yoko Ono Lennon); he wished to drop his middle name Winston, but couldn't under British law. While he never used "Winston" again, his U.S. Resident Alien card (aka "green card") was issued to "John Winston Ono Lennon."

He was pre-occupied with the symbolism of the number nine: An avant-garde composition he recorded on the Beatles' "White Album" was "Revoltion No. 9". A solo recording of his was "Number 9 Dream", a term he gave to a state of enlightenment. He died at 11PM on December 8, 1980. In his native England, where it was five hours later, it was already December 9th.

He was given his U.S. Resident Alien registration (his "green card") on the bicentennial of the American revolution: Sunday, July 4, 1976.

Son Sean born on the same date as he, October 9. Perhaps this added to further obsession with number 9 (his date of birth, Sean's date of birth, and unfortunately his date of death December 9)

He wrote the song "Beautiful Boy" for his son Sean, who was born on his 35th birthday.

His murder was first announced to the world by U.S. sportscaster Howard Cosell during "NFL Monday Night Football (1970)".

Assassinated as he returned from the recording studio Monday, December 8, 1980, outside the Dakota, his apartment building, by Mark David Chapman, a crazed fan.

According to Frank Gifford, Lennon met Ronald Reagan when both were guests on Monday Night Football in the mid-1970s. After appearing on the show, he gave Gifford and Howard Cosell each a complete collection of Beatles albums, which he autographed.

In 1974, he and Harry Nilsson were "helped to leave" the Troubadour Club by the bouncers, after they both heckled the Smothers Brothers onstage. In the middle of his fight to stay in the US in the early 70s, an arrest would certainly have clinched his being deported. (Lennon had already been denied entry in the late 1960s because of his one arrest of record, for hashish possession in the UK; he was only allowed back into the US when he and Yoko Ono attended the Primal Institute in Los Angeles, on the grounds that he was "seeing a psychiatrist," and later for their custody fight for Yoko's daughter.) Lennon and Nilsson both sent flowers and an apology to the Smothers Brothers the next day, and Lennon replied to a columnist's speculation that he might have been using drugs, with the confirmation that they'd simply had too many Brandy Alexanders.

Two songs on his Imagine album painted Paul McCartney in a bad light.

His neighbors at the Dakota included singer Roberta Flack.

His mother, Julia, was hit by car and killed when John was 17. His best friend, and former bassist with The Beatles, Stu Sutcliffe died from a brain hemmorrhage in 1962 when John was 22.

In 2001 the Liverpool Airport was renamed the John Lennon Airport after him.

Widow Yoko Ono's photograph of John Lennon's spectacles, bloodstained from when he was fatally shot outside his Manhattan apartment building in Dece., 1980, sold at auction in London in April, 2002 for about $13,000.

Widow Yoko Ono's photograph of John's spectacles, bloodstained from day he was fatally shot outside their apartment building in December 1980, sold at auction in London, April 2002 for about $13,000. At second Christie's auction later in April, 2 tape recordings of Lennon improvising songs and telling stories to his stepdaughter sold for $195,000. One tape, from summer of 1969, records Lennon making up tunes and telling 6-year-old Kyoko about a dwarf who lived in their garden. It sold for $110,000. Other tape, a 25-minute recording of Lennon working on melody and lyrics for "She Said She Said", contains lyrics never heard in the song's final "Revolver" version. It sold for $85,200.

"When real music comes to me - the music of the speres, the music that surpasseth understanding - that has nothing to do with me, cause I'm just the channel. The only joy for me is for it to be given to me, and to transcribe it like a medium... those moments are what I live for."

"Will all the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry." [At Royal Variety Performance 4th November 1963]

"God is a concept by which we measure our pain."

"My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all."

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

"We're all Christ and we're all Hitler. We are trying to make Christ's message contemporary. We want Christ to win. What would he have done if he had advertisements, T.V., records, films and newspapers? The miracle today is communication. So Let's use it."

"Love means having to say you're sorry every fifteen minutes."

"My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple."

"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that, I'm right and will be proved right. We're (the Beatles) more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don't know which will go first, rock 'n roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." (to Playboy magazine in 1965)

In 1955, young Paul McCartney joined a music group called The Quarrymen led by a rebellious teen named John Lennon. Paul's friend George Harrison joined as guitarist and the group evolved into The Beatles (named in tribute to Buddy Holly's Crickets), playing in local clubs and gaining notoriety in Hamburg, Germany, for their anti-authority attitudes and hardrocking music. By the time Ringo Starr became the group's permanent drummer, Beatlemania was on the rise in Britain and, eventually, the U.S. The Fab Four went on to change the sound of popular music, and along the way, made some enduring contributions to the movies as well. Their debut film, A Hard Day's Night (1964), was a low-budget project intended to capitalize on the quartet's early fame, nothing more. The final product stunned critics as much as it delighted audiences: a pseudofictional look at a day in the Beatles' lives, which wonderfully captured their irreverent, anarchic energy (thanks to the Beatles' on-camera presence, Alun Owen's Oscar-nominated script, and Richard Lester's direction). Help! (1965, also directed by Lester) was not quite as well received, but was still a madcap, colorful romp. The lads directed and produced their next project, Magical Mystery Tour (1967), a made-for-TV movie that was mostly improvised-and savaged by critics. Their next "appearance" was much more successful, in the imaginative, psychedelically designed ani mated feature Yellow Submarine (1968). (The Beatles did not participate in the film's production-except for an appearance at the end-and the voices for their animated characters were spoken by actors.) Their last film together was the documentary Let It Be (1970), a painful look at the group's disintegration as they worked in the studio; the film's music won an Oscar for Original Song Score.

Individually, the Beatles pursued widely varying careers. Lennon was the first to appear in a movie without the other three-in Richard Lester's dark comedy How I Won the War (1967). He and wife Yoko Ono worked together on many experimental films including Bottoms (1967, a pastiche of various human derrieres), Number 5 (1968, a slow-motion record of Lennon's facial expressions), and Fly (1971, an examination of a nude woman from a fly's point of view). Ono later provided some of this material for inclusion in the documentary Imagine: John Lennon (1988).

Ringo, hailed as the "natural" of the group, enjoyed some fame as an actor, with appearances in Candy (1968), The Magic Christian (1969), 200 Motels (1971), Son of Dracula (1974), Ken Russell's Lisztomania (1975, as the Pope), and proved himself an engaging leading man in the prehistoric comedy Caveman (1981).

Paul McCartney scored The Family Way (1966), earned an Oscar nomination (with wife Linda) for writing the title song of the James Bond movie Live and Let Die (1973), which they performed on the soundtrack, and starred in Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984), an excuse to showcase a series of musical numbers and some Beatles songs. In 1991 he asked director Richard Lester to direct a documentary of his current group's tour, which was released as Get Back

Surprisingly, it was George Harrison, the "quiet" Beatle, who made the biggest splash in the film world. His production company, HandMade Films, was originally founded to enable the Monty Python movie Life of Brian (1979) to secure a release. Since then, Harrison has served as executive producer, along with partner Denis O'Brien, on a number of unusual and eclectic films, including Time Bandits (1981), The Missionary (1982), A Private Function (1985), Mona Lisa and Shanghai Surprise (both 1986), Withnail & I (1987), How to Get Ahead in Advertising and Track 29 (both 1988). He has also made cameos in some of the aforementioned films and contributed songs to their soundtracks. In 1978 Harrison made a cameo appearance in the uproarious madefor-TV satire The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash proving that his sense of humor extended to the subject of The Beatles.

Copyright ©1994 Leonard Maltin, used by arrangement with Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.