1967 was a transition period for The Beatles. Following the release of Revolver in 1966, the music that powered out of Abbey Road Studios in St. John's Wood, London was vibrantly new and unequivocally revolutionary. 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has consistently been voted the greatest rock 'n roll album of all time by Rolling Stone and the like. From there, the Fab Four moved up into a broader stratosphere of music and meaning, knocking the barriers down of what a rock song could be and expanding the range of popular music. The results are legendary. But it all started with a man named John and his guitar.
John Winston Lennon was born on October 9, 1940 in the district of Merseyside in northwestern England, in the dirty and bombed-out port city of Liverpool. Born into the rage of Hitler's Blitz on England during World War II, John was quite lucky to make it through his first few years of life. From his early years on, John led a troubled life, beginning with an incredibly dysfunctional family that split when he was just four years old. At this tender age of four, John was asked to choose who he wanted to spend his life with, his mum or his dad. Though he initially chose his father, who would have taken John to live with him in New Zealand (an alternate history if there ever was one), he changed at the last minute and ran to his mother, Julia. It was at this point that Julia's older sister, Mimi, intervened and took the distraught boy. Julia didn't put up much of a fight and took up with another man and had two daughters. Mimi, Aunt Mimi as John called her, raised John until he was seventeen years old and had an incredibly important impact on John's life and by extension his love affair with music.
This was just the beginning of John's confusion growing up. Mimi, though loving in her own way, was a very harsh mother figure to grow up with. John's almost chronic need to rebel (from cutting school to riding atop buses around Liverpool) clashed magnificently at times with Mimi's pre-war British mindset. But at the same time, Julia lived just a couple hours' walk away in Blackpool with her new family. When she chose to reenter John's life when he was just sixteen, John was caught between two families that more closely resembled warring factions. Conservative Mimi, who still had trouble forgiving her younger sister for virtually abandoning her toddler son, and the free spirit of Julia pulled John in two different directions, leaving an empty vacuum within him that would only be filled by music.
Julia's appalling parenting skills aside, her influence on John was extraordinary. She provided the music legend's first encounter with music, teaching him the Liverpool folk song, "Maggie Mae" on the banjo. She took John to see Elvis Presley on screen, giving him that first taste of rock n' roll, a taste that would never be satiated. She gave John the freedom he always wanted but never got from the rigid life of living with Aunt Mimi at Mendips. It's pivotal that Julia's reappearance in John's life, at such a malleable point in his life, coincides with his meeting of a boy from Woolton, Liverpool who was about two years younger, but could rock harder on the guitar than anyone he had ever met.
John met Paul McCartney at a church fete in St. Paul's Church on a bright summers day in 1957. John had transitioned to the guitar at this point (a guitar that Mimi had bought him) and had gotten his first gig with his high school band, The Quarrymen. Paul, a quiet and well-dressed fifteen-year-old happened to have a mutual friend with the frontman of the band. It's really thanks to Ivan Vaughan, an obscure figure in Beatles history, that John and Paul even met. Paul impressed and intimidated John with his skills on the guitar and his singing, and later that week half of what would become The Beatles was practicing barre chords on John's back porch.
As if the stars had aligned, Paul's schoolfriend George Harrison could also play the guitar, better, Paul told John, than anyone he knew. George famously tried out for the role of lead guitar by playing "Raunchy" on the top deck of a bus late at night in Liverpool after hearing the Quarrymen play a gig. Though only fourteen, George's skill on the guitar earned him a rightful place in the band and three-fourths of the Beatles were together.
But just as everything was matching up for the first time in John's life, it took a turn for the worst. John had repaired his relationship with Mimi, one of the people who cared most passionately for him, and Julia and was beginning to see a future with both of them in it. On her way back from Mendips in 1958, Julia was struck by a speeding car and killed instantly. For a time, it seemed that the dream of starting a band that would be as big as Elvis was over. For the incredibly important relationship that John and Paul had, both personally and musically, Julia's death deeply cemented their friendship and connection. Paul's mother, Mary (yes, Mother Mary in 1970's "Let It Be") had died of breast cancer when Paul was just twelve. Paul and John comforted each other in their times of trouble and grief.
Overcoming his grief of losing his mother twice, John, Paul, George, and Pete Best (their original drummer) ferried over to Hamburg, Germany to play their first gig at the Indra Club in the St. Pauli district. The Silver Beetles at this point, their time while in Hamburg served as a sort of baptism-by-fire and greatly tightened their skills as a performing group. The late teens would work full days and nights, taking pills to stay awake but performing sets that they would play later on in the 1960s. But Hamburg is significant for other reasons. It was the place where they first met the last member that would make the Fab Four (much to the detriment of poor Pete Best), Ringo Starr. Already a member of a more popular Merseyside band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Ringo filled in for Pete when he was too ill to perform. Paul remembers that when Ringo would play with the three of them, it just seemed to click. By the time the band was ready to return to Liverpool and begin playing sets at the famed Cavern Club, Pete was not matching up to par.
Other than Abbey Road Studios and Hamburg, the Cavern Club is easily the most significant Beatles location, and still serves as a pilgrimage site for Beatles fans the world over. John, Paul, George, and Pete were playing at the steamy, underground night club when a little known record store owner, Brian Epstein, was asked if he had any Beatles records in stock. Curious, he sought out The Beatles and watched them perform in the Cavern. What he saw when he descended down the winding staircase and into the overcrowded club, we can only imagine. Four young lads decked out all in black leather and cowboy boots rocking out to Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally" must have been a sight. But it electrified Epstein and he chose to abandon his family's record store and offer his services as manager of The Beatles. It is thanks to Epstein that George Martin, EMI Records producer, even agreed to meet with them. But by August 1962, Ringo Starr had officially replaced Pete Best as drummer and the Fab Four were headed to Abbey Road Studios in London to cut their first single, "Love Me Do" and later record, Please Please Me.
From the start, John felt the need to be the head of The Beatles, even over Epstein. As the one who started the group, John saw it as his band. But the point, Epstein and Martin maintained, was that unlike other guitar groups of the day, The Beatles were all the head of the band, equal members that contributed equally to group (at least appearance-wise). They were the Fab Four, not Gerry and the Pacemakers. This often led to conflict with John and Epstein, who clashed over the suits that they were made to wear and the bowing they did after every show.
Touring took a toll on John, like the others. Epstein, a brilliant public relations man, created a relentless touring schedule for The Beatles, spanning the globe. But by 1966, The Beatles were ready to move away from the screaming fans and into the quiet creativity of Abbey Road Studios. John and Paul's artistic tension blossomed during this period. When John wrote "Strawberry Fields Forever," Paul would respond with "Penny Lane," and so forth. John's songwriting was very much characterized by responses to Paul's happy-go-lucky style, a deep attachment to introspection (though "I Am the Walrus" might be an exception), and the taking of inspiration from the environment around him.
After The Beatles broke up in 1970, John led a troubled and brief life. After divorcing his first wife Cynthia, John married the Japanese artist, Yoko Ono and had one son, Sean in 1975. As for his three best friends, George, Paul, and Ringo, he never played or recorded with them again. Their friendship was only repaired a year or so before tragedy struck. On December 8, 1980 at 11:50 pm, John Lennon was shot by Mark David Chapman outside the Dakota Building in New York City. He died on the scene. It was a senseless ending to a complicated and beautiful life.
Through all of the problems that John had growing up, music always made sense for his life. Music put right the chaotic world of John Lennon and the turbulent 1960s. His contributions to music cannot be understated and it's on his 74th birthday that we remember his life. Happy birthday, John.
JOHN LENNON 1940-1980
