John Lennon

John Winston Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, during a German air-raid over Liverpool. His father, Alf Lennon, was a seaman, who deserted his wife Julia and their infant child. Over twenty years later when Alf Lennon tried to reenter his famous son's life, Lennon did not welcome him. Unable to raise Lennon alone, Julia asked her sister and brother-in-law, Mimi and George Smith, to care for her son. Tragically, an off-duty police officer knocked down and killed Lennon's mother in 1958.

The Beatles went on to revolutionize rock music several times over. "The Beatles are a pivotal part of rock's story," wrote Tim Riley in Tell Me Why, "not just because their music can still dazzle but because their arrival as rock 'n' rollers with an endless stream of original material challenged what anyone had imagined pop could become.... They may not be responsible for everything, but nearly everything that comes after would be impossible without them." As Griel Marcus wrote in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, "What you heard was a rock and roll group that combined elements of the music that you were used to hearing only in pieces.... The Beatles combined the harmonic range and implicit equality of the Fifties vocal group, ... the flash of a rockabilly band, ... the aggressive and unique personalities of the classic rock stars, ... the homey this-could-be-you manner of later rock stars, [and] endlessly inventive songwriting.... The result was that elusive rock treasure, a new sound --and a new sound that could not be exhausted in the course of one brief flurry on the charts."

During another bed-in, in Montreal, from May 26 to June 3, Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote and recorded "Give Peace a Chance," a song that was quickly taken up by the peace movement and chanted at anti-war marches around the world. They next embarked on a stream of avant-garde productions. Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions and The Wedding Album continued the series of experimental albums. The couple took time out from their activities to accommodate sessions for the final Beatles album, Abbey Road, during the summer.