Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer and thirty-eighth greatest artist of all time. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

In 1982, Lennon was honoured with the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. Double Fantasy, his best-selling album, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. He was shot and killed in the archway of his Manhattan apartment building by a Beatles fan, Mark David Chapman, three weeks after the album's release.Īs a performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In 1975, Lennon disengaged from the music business to raise his infant son Sean and, in 1980, returned with the Ono collaboration Double Fantasy. After moving to New York City in 1971, his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a three-year attempt by the Nixon administration to deport him. In 1969, he held the two week-long anti-war demonstration Bed-Ins for Peace.

Starting with 1967's ' All You Need Is Love', his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture.įrom 1968 to 1972, Lennon produced more than a dozen records with Ono, including a trilogy of avant-garde albums, his first solo LP John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and the international top 10 singles ' Give Peace a Chance', ' Instant Karma!', ' Imagine' and ' Happy Xmas (War Is Over)'. In the mid-1960s, he had two books published: In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works, both collections of nonsense writings and line drawings. Lennon was characterised for the rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews. He was initially the group's de facto leader, a role gradually ceded to McCartney.

In 1956, he formed his first band, the Quarrymen, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Lennon continued his career as a solo artist and as Ono's collaborator.īorn in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1969, he started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, Yoko Ono. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in history. John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as co-lead vocalist, co-songwriter and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles as well as one of the founders of the group.

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