Welcome to the Deep Dive. Our mission here is,
well, it's pretty simple. We take these sprawling
narratives, these mountains of facts around the
world's most influential people, and we try to
distill them. Right, down into the sharpest,
most illuminating insights for you. And today,
we are taking an exhaustive look at John Lennon.
A big one. It is. Our source material is dense.
Huge stack of biographies, interviews, historical
records. It covers everything. His tumultuous
personal life, the huge shifts in his music.
And of course, his incredibly high stakes political
activism. And maybe most importantly, the lasting
complexity of all those fractured relationships.
When you approach a figure like Lennon, you have
to recognize that the mythology can just completely
overshadow the man. Oh, absolutely. I mean, he
was foundational. co -creator of the most successful
songwriting partnership in history. A two -time
inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Right. But, you know, those accolades, they don't
explain the why. The real insights, the ones
that make this a true deep dive, they lie in
understanding that constant, almost self -inflicted
conflict. Internal and external. Relentlessly.
That's what fueled his creativity. He really
weaponized his own vulnerability. Okay, let's
unpack this. Our goal is to move beyond the icon
and trace that emotional lineage. We want to
understand the man who, late in his career, admitted
he just wanted to be accepted by society. But
realized he couldn't. He was... in his own words,
intrinsically incapable of being anything other
than a loudmouth lunatic poet musician. So we're
tracing that path from his really difficult,
unstable childhood straight through to the defiant
political figure who challenged the very systems
that tried to silence him to really begin to
understand that deep -seated anger, the searing
sarcasm, and that immense lifelong search for
unconditional love. We have to start at the very
beginning. We do. John Winston Lennon, born in
Liverpool in 1940. His name itself is a statement,
isn't it? A nod to his grandfather and, kind
of ironically, to Winston Churchill. Yeah, and
right away you see that pattern of instability
and absence begin to form. This absence is just.
It's the foundational trauma. It is. His father,
Alfred Lennon, was a merchant seaman, so he was
physically gone for long stretches. But what's
worse, he just stopped sending paychecks in early
1944. So the money just stopped. It just stopped.
And that quickly led to his mother, Julia Stanley,
realizing she just couldn't cope. She couldn't
handle the responsibility. And she eventually
transferred custody of young John to her elder
sister, Mimi Smith. Exactly. Who lived at Mendips,
251 Menlove Avenue. And Mimi, she provided the
structure. She provided the home. But the emotional
reality for John was one of, well, abandonment
by both parents. That dual abandonment is the
key scar, isn't it? Even though he was, as he
said later, surrounded by five incredible women,
his mother, his aunt, and his maternal aunts.
Precisely. Lennon later reflected on these five
strong, intelligent, beautiful women, and he
said they provided him with his first feminist
education. But while he respected their strength.
Right, the early trauma of not having that stable
nuclear family, the kind he saw all his friends
enjoying, it led to this profound sense of envy.
And that later fueled his rebellious streak.
He felt he had been failed by the people he should
have been able to rely on. The sources detail
this unbelievably sharp, almost traumatic moment
in 1946. John was only five. It's shocking. It's
like something out of a film. A portrait of parental
conflict? Totally. His father, Alfred, just shows
up after this long absence, takes John to Blackpool,
and is secretly plotting to emigrate with him
to New Zealand. And Julia finds out. She finds
out, follows them with her partner, Bobby Dykens,
and she forces this moment of choice. The account
that's often repeated in the Lennon lore. It
involves the five -year -old being made to choose.
Which parent he would leave with. One version
claims he chose his father twice. but then ran
crying after his mother as she started to walk
away. And while historians debate the exact,
you know, the mechanism of that choice. The takeaway
is that this little boy was put in an impossible
position. And his father, after that, just disappeared
from his life for the next 20 years. That sense
of being pulled, of instability, feeling rejected,
it seems to have manifested really early in his
academic career. He wasn't stupid. Far from it.
Not at all. Yeah. But he struggled massively
in the formal school system. Failed his O -levels,
eventually expelled from Liverpool College of
Art. Right. A notoriously difficult academic
performance. But the deeper nugget the sources
reveal is that he faced really significant challenges
because of undiagnosed dyslexia, which severely
affected his reading and writing skills. And,
you know, when someone who is highly intelligent
struggles in that kind of formal language dependent
environment, they often lash out. Or channel
that energy somewhere else. And for Lennon, that
channeling was through humor, through sarcasm,
through wordplay. Yes, exactly. If he couldn't
beat the system, he'd mock it. He quickly cultivated
this reputation as the class clown. But his clowning
is actually highly creative. The cartoon. The
comical, anti -authoritarian cartoons for his
self -made school magazine, which he brilliantly
titled The Daily Howl. That's amazing. It wasn't
just doodles. This was an early outlet for the
literary genius that would later emerge in his
published writing. That early need to translate
complex emotions into clever, often crude wordplay
was born right from that academic frustration.
It sounds like his home life with Mimi, while
it was stable, did very little to encourage this
nascent genius. Mimi provided safety, but she
was famously utilitarian. Completely skeptical
of his musical aspirations. A classic conflict.
The pragmatic guardian versus the dreamer. Totally.
It was actually Julia, his mother, who bought
him his first inexpensive guitar, a Galatone
Champion. But she had to deliver it to her own
home because she knew Mimi was just fundamentally
not supportive. And we all know the famous line
that Mimi gave him. It's the ultimate parent
quote, isn't it? She looked at this boy, who
was already struggling in school and acting out,
and she famously told him, the guitar is all
very well, John, but you'll never make a living
out of it. Wow. That skepticism, that lack of
belief from the person providing his home, it
probably just intensified his drive right to
prove her wrong. You have to think so. All of
this early instability and defiance, it culminates
in the single most defining trauma of his youth.
The sudden death of his mother, Julia, in 1958.
She was only 44. struck and killed by an off
-duty police officer driving a car. She was just
walking home after visiting Mimi's house. And
for the teenage Lennon, this was just utterly
devastating. This wasn't a slow illness. It was
sudden, violent, completely senseless. The loss
of the only parent he had any regular contact
with. And the immediate aftermath was, what,
two years of just raw, destructive behavior.
The sources describe a period consumed by blind
rage. He turned to heavy drinking. He was prone
to frequent, often violent fights. It was classic
displacement of grief. The trauma was so immense.
He spent years just trying to survive the emotion.
But when you look at his catalog later, you realize
that profound, unattressed pain became the most
intense creative fuel of his entire life. It
created a pattern, didn't it? That if he wanted
to create truly powerful art, he had to confront
his own deepest wounds. Absolutely. The memory
of Julia became this sacred source of inspiration.
It directly inspired that famous 1968 Beatles
track, Julia. Which is just a tender, almost
unbearably vulnerable piece. And you see the
cycle established right there. Profound personal
pain, confrontation of that pain, and then its
conversion into innovative, timeless art. His
entire career is built on that process. So out
of that... blind rage and that creative urgency,
the seeds of, well, the world's greatest band
were sown. Right. Lennon forms his skiffle group,
the Quarrymen, in 1956. Named after his high
school, he was looking for an outlet for all
that raw energy. And he found the perfect counterpoint,
Paul McCartney, whom he met in July 1957 at the
St. Peter's Church Garden Fet. And that meeting
changed everything. It did. Lennon, the cynical
academic failure leader, meets McCartney. the
technically proficient melody -focused enthusiast.
It immediately created this symbiotic dynamic.
They quickly added George Harrison, though. Lennon
initially dismissed him as too young. He did.
Lennon was three years older, and at first he
just saw 14 -year -old George as a kid. But McCartney
engineered the famous bus audition. Where Harrison
played raunchy. And proved his guitar skills
were just indispensable. This early period, it
cemented Lennon as the group's de facto leader.
The others, according to McCartney, absolutely
idolized him. They called him our own little
Elvis. That early idolization is so crucial because
it sets up the inevitable conflict that came
later when he gradually started to cede that
leadership role to McCartney. Especially as the
band needed more commercial structure. And that
shift began early, tested brutally during their
residencies in West Germany. Hamburg was a crucible.
It really was. Starting in 1960, they were doing
these incredibly long overnight shifts, sometimes
eight hours straight. And the sources confirm
that punishing schedule led them to rely on preludin,
a stimulant which they took regularly just to
keep the energy up. And that just speaks to the
sheer physical toll required long before they
were global sensations. Once Beatlemania hit
globally in 63, the demands just escalated dramatically.
And that led to the strict managerial control
of Brian Epstein. He needed to sanitize them
for mass consumption. Which meant the clandestine
marriage to Cynthia, the secret birth of Julian.
All of it. Epstein was terrified that a married
Beatle would instantly alienate the millions
of young female fans who were driving Beatlemania.
So Lennon... the anti -establishment figure,
had to accept this conformity for the sake of
stratospheric success. He had that great line
about it. Right. He quipped, you'd wear a bloody
balloon if it made them money. But the internal
costs of that conformity, it started to surface
really quickly by 1965. He hit a massive personal
wall. He famously called it his Fat Elvis period.
He was struggling with his weight, feeling increasingly
alienated, paranoid from the constant screaming.
He was trapped. And the song Help was not just
some clever pop tune. No, it was a genuine desperate
cry for emotional assistance from a man who felt
the pressure of fame was just suffocating him.
The sources indicate he was really concerned
that the constant touring meant their actual
musicianship was suffering, the music was just
unheard over the din. Completely. And this leads
directly to the massive artistic shift that began
in 1966, fueled by an accidental and then continuous
use of drugs. The incident in March 66 is just
astounding. It is. Lennon and Harrison were unknowingly
introduced to LSD when a dentist spiked their
coffee at a dinner party. Can you imagine? That
terrifying involuntary introduction opened a
door he never fully closed. His subsequent continuous
use of LSD, particularly in 67, was so intense
that one author notes it brought him close to
erasing his identity completely. But chemically
altering his consciousness also profoundly altered
his creative output and his view of the art form
itself. Exactly. Before this, he saw the lyrics
of early pop songs as almost irrelevant. Post
-LSD, he began insisting on complex, innovative
lyricism that reflected his altered perception
of reality. And this shift is perfectly encapsulated
by the song he later said was his finest work
with the band, Strawberry Fields Forever. That
single is an absolute technical marvel, especially
for 1967. The studio work on it was a revolution.
How so? Well, it required this unprecedented
amount of editing. Lennon recorded two completely
different versions with different keys, different
tempos, and producer George Martin had to manually
slow down and speed up the tates to splice them
together. Into a single track. Right. And then
the use of the Mellotron, that keyboard that
played taped orchestral sounds, it added to this
surreal, dreamlike atmosphere. It showed that
the studio was now an instrument for Lennon,
a way to express his complex internal state.
They were moving far beyond the simple four -piece
band sound. This personal and creative explosion
was immediately overshadowed by a public relations
disaster that changed the band's trajectory forever.
The more popular -than -Jesus controversy. The
quote itself made to an Evening Standard reporter
in March 66 were more popular than Jesus now.
It was, you know, a statement of fact about cultural
prominence in England. Where it was barely even
noticed. But when it was republished in the U
.S. five months later. The cultural context was
completely different. The reaction was volcanic.
Absolutely. There was KKK activity. Religious
groups led public protests. They were burning
Beatles records. And there were explicit threats
targeting Lenin. He had to issue this quasi -apology
in Chicago just to quell the uproar. He claimed
he was just commenting on the decline of religion,
not criticizing Christ. But the ultimate consequence
was concrete and permanent. This Fuhrer... provided
the final, undeniable reason for the band to
stop touring. So was the controversy really the
only reason? Or was it just the perfect, highly
publicized exit ramp they desperately needed?
I think it was certainly the convenient catalyst.
The sources suggest the band was already deeply
unhappy and creatively constrained by the touring
schedule. The Jesus controversy just provided
an ethical and physical justification. We can't
ensure our safety, so we have to stop. Exactly.
Something the management and the band could all
agree on. Their final concert was August 29,
1966, and they never looked back. With touring
finished, they channeled all that energy into
the studio, led to State Pepper, the height of
their collaboration. But soon after, in 1967,
one of the crucial pillars of the Beatles crumbled.
Brian Epstein's death. That was the turning point
towards collapse. Lennon's immediate reaction
was incredibly revealing. He said, I knew we
were in trouble then. We fucking had it now.
Epstein, whatever his flaws, he had managed their
external life. He held the personalities together.
His absence left this massive structural and
emotional void. Paul McCartney tried to fill
that void by organizing the magical mystery tour
project. But the dynamic was already changing,
especially with the increasingly permanent presence
of Yoko Ono. Ono's presence in the studio was
the visible embodiment of that fracture. It was.
Lennon met her in November 66, and by late 68,
he insisted on her presence during recording
sessions. This violated a long -standing band
policy that prohibited wives and girlfriends
from being in the studio. And that added immense
friction during the sessions for the White Album.
It signaled that for Lennon, his relationship
with Ono had superseded his professional commitment
to the band. And that created deep resentment
among the others. It's ironic, though, that the
album recorded during this period of intense
conflict, the White Album, was one that Lennon
later particularly valued for his own songwriting.
He was fiercely proud of it because it was chaotic,
raw, and felt closer to his own creative ideals,
which were moving towards starker, more experimental
material. The tension of Ono's presence might
have been personally destructive, but creatively,
it was a liberating force for him. The end finally
came in 1969. Lennon told the others he was leaving
on September 20th, but agreed to keep it quiet.
Right. Well, they finalized contract renegotiations.
And this is where that famous rivalry with McCartney
flared up one final bitter time. When McCartney
released his solo debut in April 1970 and used
the press release to publicize his own departure.
Lennon was utterly outraged. He felt Paul had
deliberately stolen the narrative and gets all
the credit for it. It must have felt like a final
act of betrayal. It was. Lennon later summarized
his feelings with this definitive finality. I
started the band. I disbanded it. It's as simple
as that. He admitted he was a fool not to have
used his own departure for commercial gain, but
the bitterness was obvious. The end of the 60s
left him standing on a creative and emotional
cliff edge. Free from the Beatles. but deeply
scarred and searching for a way to process a
lifetime of trauma. And that sets the stage for
his radical solo work. That description of Lennon
on an emotional cliff edge is just, it's crucial.
Because once he was free of the Beatles, he didn't
run towards commercial pop. He dove headfirst
into radical personal psychological repair. Which
led to his most brutal and honest music. The
transition from the Beatles' grand orchestral
pop to the stark, minimalist sound of his solo
debut is directly tied to his decision to undergo
primal therapy. Starting in 1970. With Dr. Arthur
Yanov's radical technique, it was designed to
help patients release the deep, often repressed
emotional pain rooted in childhood trauma. Can
you elaborate on what primal therapy actually
entailed? It sounds intense. Incredibly intense.
The core idea is that neuroses are caused by
repressed emotional pain, the primal pain. So
the therapy aimed to have you re -experience
these traumatic childhood moments, especially
the feeling of abandonment in a controlled environment.
Often resulting in loud and voluntary screams.
The primal scream, exactly. Lennon and Ono spent
six months undergoing this in London and Los
Angeles. And the musical result of literally
screaming out his childhood pain was the 1970
album John Lennon Plastic Ono Band. It is pure,
unfiltered primal scream on vinyl. Musically
sparse, almost aggressively simple, so nothing
distracts from the raw emotion. Tracks like Mother.
A direct confrontation of that childhood rejection.
He's repeating the desperate line, Mother, you
had me, but I never had you. It's an auditory
exorcism of that 1946 abandonment. And then you
have Working Class Hero, which isn't just confessional.
It's a searing sociopolitical critique. That
track established his new radical voice an attack
on social systems designed to numb the public
and keep them in their place and the song's inclusion
of strong language crazy peasants resulted in
it being immediately banned by broadcasters in
the UK and US. And that just cemented his post
-Beatles identity as a genuinely radical anti
-establishment voice. He was willing to sacrifice
radio play for authenticity. Yet almost immediately
after this critically acclaimed but commercially
difficult raw album, he reversed his course for
Imagine in 1971. Well, he needed commercial success.
He was clear about that. He adopted a much more
accessible sound for Imagine, making the radical
political messages more palatable for a wider
audience. And he succeeded commercially, although
critics like Rolling Stone initially worried
that his posturings will soon seem not merely
dull, but irrelevant. A critique that proves
spectacularly wrong, largely because of the title
track. Imagine, the undisputed anthem of peace.
But a controversial one, just like his earlier
comments on religion. Oh, yeah. The sheer reach
of Imagine as an anti -war anthem is impossible
to overstate. However, its radical plea for a
world with no religion offended a lot of fundamentalist
groups. But he clarified that, didn't he? He
did. He was quick to say he wasn't attacking
spirituality, but the divisive dogmatic structures
that lead to conflict, that my God is bigger
than your God mentality. And his early activism
was incredibly effective at mobilizing opinion.
I mean, you look at give peace a chance. That
track. Famously recorded during the Montreal
Bed -In, was instantaneously adopted as the anti
-Vietnam protest song. Within months, a quarter
million demonstrators were singing it at a massive
protest in Washington, D .C. It showed their
power to provide a simple, powerful slogan that
could unite a movement. Their activism was relentless
and highly publicized. They used their honeymoon
for the two -week anti -war demonstration, the
Bed -In, first Amsterdam, then Montreal. They
also introduced Beigeism. Pageism was a brilliant
piece of conceptual performance art. First unveiled
at a Vienna press conference, it involved them
wearing giant bags over their entire bodies,
symbolizing equality and anonymity. The message
being, you should judge people by their ideas,
not their appearance. Exactly. Using absurdity
to make a serious point about prejudice. Lenin
was also willing to make these grand, symbolic
political statements against the British government
itself. He returned his MBE in 1969, his member
of the most excellent order of the British Empire
medal. And the stated reasons were threefold.
Right. In protest at Britain's role in the Nigerian
Civil War, the Nigeria by Afro thing, as he called
it, their support for the U .S. and Vietnam.
And in a typical flash of cynicism, he joked
he was also protesting his single. Cold turkey
slipping down the charts. A move that officially
severed his connection to the establishment.
But when he moved to New York City in 1971, the
stakes immediately became much, much higher.
Absolutely. Moving to New York allowed him and
Ono to immediately embrace the U .S. radical
left. They befriended highly visible anti -war
activists like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.
And Lenin's criticism of the Vietnam War and
crucially of President Nixon, it became louder
and more effective. Reaching millions of young
people. And this political effectiveness put
a huge target on his back, which led the Nixon
administration to take a strategic countermeasure.
A phrase straight out of a spy novel. It was
political persecution, plain and simple. The
Nixon administration, nervous about Lenin's ability
to mobilize young voters against the war, initiated
this relentless four -year attempt to deport
him. And their legal justification was a 1968
cannabis conviction he had in London. Exactly.
They weren't interested in immigration enforcement.
They were interested in silencing a highly effective
political dissident. They tried to cloak it in
bureaucratic language, but internal memos, especially
one from Senator Strom Thurmond, confirmed the
political intent. He suggested deportation would
be a necessary strategic countermeasure. This
intense political battle consumed years of his
life. And significant financial resources. But
this high stakes legal fight went all the way
to the courts, thankfully. It did. The deportation
attempt was finally barred in 1975. A court of
appeals issued this landmark ruling. They explicitly
stated that the courts will not condone selective
deportation based upon secret political grounds.
It confirmed beyond a doubt that the whole campaign
had been politically motivated from the start.
And the scale of the government's interest was
later revealed. Yes. Posthumous legal efforts.
fought for 14 years to release the FBI files
on Lennon. What was revealed confirmed the paranoia.
The FBI had amassed 281 pages of files on him.
Documenting his political activities, surveillance,
they saw him as a genuine threat. They did. And
how did Lennon and Ono respond while they were
fighting it? In the most absurd and artistic
way possible. In response to the initial deportation
order in 73, they announced the formation of
the conceptual state of Newtopia. Not a real
country. But a place with no land, no boundaries,
no passports, only people. And they treated the
announcement as a genuine diplomatic event. Absolutely.
At the press conference, they waved the white
flag of Utopia, which was two white handkerchiefs,
and declared themselves ambassadors. The national
anthem of Utopia on his Mind Games album was
Three Seconds of Silence. A brilliant, absurdist
way of using performance art to protest real
political oppression. We've talked about Lennon
the artist and activist, but we have to turn
to Lennon the man in relationships. Right. Which
were defined by, well, extreme turbulence, a
constant desire for stability. And, initially,
a profound chauvinistic attitude that caused
deep pain. His personal life reads like a series
of dramatic attempts to find the stability he
lacked in childhood, often marred by his own
deep -seated insecurities and anger issues. Look
at his first marriage to Cynthia Lennon in 1962.
It had to be clandestine, hidden by Brian Epstein
to protect that Beatlemania image. And that secrecy
extended even to the birth of their son, Julian,
in 1963. Yes, which set a terrible precedent.
This environment of secrecy, combined with Lennon's
volatility, made the marriage incredibly difficult.
Cynthia recounted a particularly disturbing incident
early on. Where she struck her. After seeing
her dancing with his friend, Stuart Sutcliffe,
she ended the relationship temporarily because
of the assault. It's a painful truth, the sources
confirm. The man who sang Give Peace a Chance
was capable of physical violence toward women.
It highlights the massive contradiction at the
heart of his identity. However, Lennon later
had this moment of intense public self -reflection
about this behavior. He confessed that until
he met Ono, he never questioned his own deeply
ingrained chauvinistic attitude. He stated bluntly,
he said, I used to be cruel to my woman and physically
any woman. I was a hitter. That is why I am always
on about peace. That statement is so critical.
He recognized that his advocacy for peace wasn't
just external political posturing, but an internal
reckoning with his own past violence. It suggests
that the primal rage that fueled his early behavior
was something he spent years trying to process
and reform. He even saw songs like The Beatles'
Getting Better as a reflection of his own struggle
to improve himself. The marriage ended violently
and suddenly for Cynthia. Finding Lennon with
Yoko Ono at their home left her shocked and humiliated.
And that abrupt transition led directly into
one of the most famous and chaotic periods of
his life, The Lost Weekend. The 18 -month separation
from Ono from 73 to 75, and the detail about
how that separation began is truly astounding.
It is perhaps the most bizarre arrangement in
rock history. Ono, who had initiated the separation,
suggested that her personal assistant, May Pang,
should begin a physical relationship with Lennon.
She reportedly told Pang that Lennon likes you
a lot. Can you imagine? Pang was understandably
astounded by this assignment. But she agreed.
And they embarked on what Lennon Leder called
his lost weekend. And while it was chaotic, marked
by heavy drinking and infamous public antics.
Like scuffling with a waitress at the Troubadour
with Harry Nilsson. The period was also surprisingly
fruitful creatively. It was a massive creative
burst, almost like a period of temporary artistic
freedom from the intensity of the Ono relationship.
He produced Harry Nilsson's Pussycats album.
And he scored his first genuine solo number one
hit in the U .S. Whatever Gets You Through the
Night, a collaboration with Elton John. He also
worked with David Bowie on Fame, Bowie's first
U .S. number one, where Lennon used the pseudonym
Dr. Winston Oboogie. The sources revealed that
May Pang played a critical role in repairing
a far more important relationship during this
chaos, the one with his eldest son, Julian. This
is perhaps the most redeeming aspect of the entire
lost weekend. Lennon had been really neglectful
of Julian. especially after moving to the U .S.
Pang actively encouraged Lennon to develop regular
contact. And this led to a significantly better,
more involved relationship between them. They
started taking trips together, including to Disneyland.
Julian even contributed musically, playing drums
on a track for Lennon's Walls and Bridges album.
Julian later recalled that they got on a great
deal better during this period. For the first
time, Lennon was consistently present for his
son, a direct contrast to his own absent father.
The lost weekend ended in February 1975, and
the reconciliation with Ono was conditioned upon
a fundamental change in Lennon's lifestyle. Yes.
Ono, who had suffered three miscarriages, agreed
to continue the pregnancy that resulted in Sean.
Born on Lennon's 35th birthday, October 9th,
1975. Only if Lennon agreed to completely retire
from the public eye and become a house husband.
And he embraced this domesticity completely.
The famous five -year hiatus. It was a total
commitment. He famously said he baked bread and
looked after the baby. He was the primary caregiver
up at 6 a .m. daily. The sources even know he
took photos of Sean every single day of his first
year. He said, he didn't come out of my belly,
but by God, I made his bones. This period was
his sustained search for the stable home life
he never had. And his return to music in 1980
was prompted by, what was it? A sailing trip
to Bermuda. The journey, the solitude, it reinvigorated
him creatively. And it led directly to the material
for the Double Fantasy album. Which was so focused
on domestic bliss and partnership, a direct reflection
of those five years of peace he'd finally achieved.
Right. And before we move on, we should just
touch on his post -Beatles dynamics with the
other members. That musical competitiveness with
McCartney clearly continued well into the 70s.
Oh, they argued through the press, took jabs
at each other in their songs. They did. But they
eventually reestablished a fragile friendship.
They even spent time together, recorded a bootleg
session in 74, and Lennon seemed to find some
peace with it, concluding near the end of his
life that he'd selected to work with only two
people, Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. That ain't
bad pickin'. But the relationship with George
Harrison soured late in life. It did. In 1980,
Harrison published his autobiography, I, Me,
Mine. And Lennon was genuinely hurt by what he
saw as a glaring omission of his own influence
on Harrison's life. It showed how easily those
bonds could still be fractured by ego and perceived
slights. Even after all that time. We've focused
so heavily on Lennon the songwriter, but we have
to recognize Lennon the artist. The man who went
to art school and maintained a fascination with
non -traditional art forms his whole life. He
was a visual artist and a writer first. His literary
works... in his own right from 64 and a spaniard
in the works from 65, are these fantastic collections
of nonsense writing, poetry, line drawings, filled
with that satirical wordplay and cynical humor
that started back in his daily Owl School magazine.
The fact that he was dyslexic just makes the
mastery of that sophisticated wordplay even more
remarkable. It's a phenomenal achievement. I
mean, the Times Literary Supplement, an incredibly
highbrow publication, took his nonsense writing
completely seriously. They called the works remarkable
and very funny. And Lennon was genuinely surprised.
That his satirical anti -establishment humor
was being analyzed as genuine literary output.
His art became genuinely provocative once he
collaborated with Ono, who was immersed in the
conceptual art movement known as Fluxus. Right.
And understanding Fluxus is key here. It was
an international interdisciplinary movement focused
on challenging the concept of what art fundamentally
is. It emphasized process over product, anti
-commercialism. So Ono's involvement meant Lenin
was exposed to and actively participated in these
profoundly non -traditional projects. What are
some of the most striking examples of this provocative
work? Well, there are collaborations like funding
Ono's 1967 Half a Room exhibition where everything
in the room was cut in half. But they also went
far darker and more confrontational. Like the
1969 film Self -Portrait. A single sustained
40 minute shot of Lennon's penis. I mean, it's
impossible to be more provocative about celebrity
and vulnerability. And his bag one lithographs
led directly to a brush with the law. Yes. The
1970 collection of lithographs depicted erotic
imagery from their honeymoon. They were so controversial
that the police raided the exhibition, confiscating
eight of the 14 pieces on the grounds of indecency.
He clearly enjoyed pushing those societal boundaries.
Shifting back to his music, let's explore the
technical dimensions of his vocal style, instantly
recognizable, incredibly powerful. His voice
was his emotional weapon, deeply influenced by
early rock and roll shouters like Little Richard.
Critics described it as a brassy northern roar
flecked with bluesy moans. He could reign from
that extreme vulnerability you hear on Julia
or Mother to a hard, abrasive rasping style.
That rasping style is best demonstrated on the
recording of Twist and Shout. A legendary session.
It was the very last track recorded for their
first album, Please Please Me. Lennon was battling
a severe cold. Producer George Martin knew they
only had one shot. And Lennon performed it by
nearly screaming. He almost shredded his vocal
cords right there in the studio. That raw, destructive
energy became one of his vocal hallmarks. But
despite that raw power, the sources consistently
note he had this major insecurity about his own
voice. A profound one. George Martin said Lennon
had an inborn dislike of his own voice and was
constantly asking him to make it different. Which
led Martin to employ various studio techniques,
double tracking, reverb, echo. Constantly modifying
Lennon's sound to satisfy his discomfort. As
for his instruments. What were his main creative
tools outside of his role as the Beatles rhythm
guitarist? Well, while he played rhythm guitar
as a Beatle, most famously the Rickenbacker 325
and the Epiphone Casino, the piano was his essential
creative anchor. He composed so many of his famous
songs on it, including Imagine. There's also
that wonderful personal detail that producer
Jack Douglas claimed about his guitar playing.
That he habitually tuned his D strings slightly
flat. Why would he do that? Douglas claimed he
did it so that his Aunt Mimi... who was skeptical
of his career but listened devoutly, could tell
which guitar was his on the recordings. It's
a small detail, but it speaks volumes about his
need to connect his adult success back to his
difficult childhood home. It really does. Finally,
we have to acknowledge the tragic end of this
complex life. The events of December 8th, 1980,
outside the Dakota. It's a moment seared into
collective memory. An unbelievable tragedy. At
5 p .m. that day, he autographed a copy of Double
Fantasy for Mark David Chapman. When Lennon returned
home around 10 .50 p .m., Chapman was waiting.
And he shot him four times, twice in the back,
twice in the shoulder. Lennon was pronounced
dead shortly after at 11 .15 p .m. The immediate
aftermath saw a massive outpouring of grief,
but also a final, profound, posthumous commercial
success for his last work. The tragedy spurred
immense sales and recognition. Double Fantasy
won the 1981 Grammy for Album of the Year. His
singles dominated the charts globally in the
following weeks, just like starting over Imagine
Woman. His musical legacy was instantly and permanently
cemented, and his honors reflect that enduring
global impact across culture, art, even astronomy.
Ranked the fifth greatest singer, 38th greatest
artist of all time by Rolling Stone. Imagine
voted the UK's favorite song lyric in a 1999
BBC poll. His name graces the Liverpool John
Lennon Airport, ensuring that connection to his
roots is permanent. And yes, there's even a crater
of mercury named after him. As one historian
summarized, his legacy endures because of his
profound willingness to take risks with his career
and his life. So this deep dive, it really reveals
a life defined by extremes. by contradictions.
The early abandonment created the rebellious
nonconformist. Who then masterfully leveraged
his enormous commercial success, not for quiet
retirement, but to pursue highly confrontational
avant -garde art and become this high -stakes,
effective political figure. And the final years,
that search for lasting domestic peace, the life
of baking bread and raising Sean, was tragically
cut short just as he was re -emerging with double
fantasy. We've navigated the layers. The angry
young man who confessed to his former chauvinism.
and matured into a self -aware advocate for peace.
The academic failure who became a genuinely praised
literary genius, the global music icon who constantly
fought the system, enduring a four -year political
siege from the Nixon White House. He was never
afraid to be loud, to be controversial, or to
be painfully honest. And that commitment to activism
never faded. The source material shows that his
final act of political solidarity, a statement
supporting striking minority sanitation workers
in San Francisco, was delivered just days before
his death. He was planning to join their protest
shortly after he was killed. So what does this
all mean? We know Lenin's political voice was
effective, loud, constantly challenging established
power, leading directly to FBI files and deportation
attempts. He was prepared to sacrifice his comfortable
life. his radical beliefs. Right. So given his
history of anti -establishment and anti -imperialist
criticism and his final planned act of solidarity
with working class strikers, what would Lenin's
voice have sounded like in the conservative political
landscape of the 1980s and beyond? If he had
successfully maintained that domestic stability
he sought. Could the man who advocated for a
world with no possessions have remained politically
effective when the world moved towards globalized
capitalism? It's a compelling question and one
for you to consider and explore.