John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon, MBEwas an English singer and songwriter who co-founded the Beatles, the most commercially successful band in the history of popular music. With fellow member Paul McCartney, he formed a lucrative songwriting partnership...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth9 October 1940
scene accents
After The Beatles came on the scene everyone started putting on a Liverpudlian accent.
school giving people
You'd have to give people free rein to attack the local councils or to destroy the school authorities, like the students who break up the repression in the universities. It's already happening, though people have got to get together more.
running kids hair
There are a lot of people walking around with long hair now and some trendy middle class kids in pretty clothes. But nothing changed except that we all dressed up a bit, leaving the same bastards running everything.
war thinking america
We went to America a few times and [Brian] Epstein always tried to waffle on at us about saying nothing about Vietnam. So there came a time when George [Harrison] and I said 'Listen, when they ask next time, we're going to say we don't like that war and we think they should get right out.' That's what we did.
song simple interesting
I must say the more interesting songs to me were the black ones because they were more simple.
song writing people
I felt an obligation even then to write a song that people would sing in the pub or on a demonstration. That is why I would like to compose songs for the revolution.
jesus kids america
The second political thing I did was to say 'The Beatles are bigger than Jesus.' That really broke the scene, I nearly got shot in America for that. It was a big trauma for all the kids that were following us.
political paper papers
I always read the papers, the political bits.
trying young should
We should be trying to reach the young workers because that's when you're most idealistic and have least fear.
girl kings real
It's pretty hard when you are Caesar and everyone is saying how wonderful you are and they are giving you all the goodies and the girls, it's pretty hard to break out of that, to say 'Well, I don't want to be king, I want to be real.'
dream cocoons chance
I'd always felt repressed. We were all so pressurised that there was hardly any chance of expressing ourselves, especially working at that rate, touring continually and always kept in a cocoon of myths and dreams.
humble records albums
When we came along there was only Decca, Philips and EMI who could really produce a record for you. You had to go through the whole bureaucracy to get into the recording studio. You were in such a humble position, you didn't have more than 12 hours to make a whole album, which is what we did in the early days.
mother father splits
My father and mother split and I never saw my father until I was 20, nor did I see much more of my mother.
father style communism
In Western-style Communism we would have to create an almost imaginary workers' image of themselves as the father-figure.