The World Bank Group (WBG) is a family of five international organizations that make leveraged loans to developing countries. It is the largest and best-known development bank in the world and an observer at the United Nations Development Group. The bank is headquartered in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It provided around $98.83 billion in loans and assistance to "developing" and transition countries in the 2021 fiscal year. The bank's stated mission is to achieve the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and building shared prosperity. Total lending as of 2015 for the last 10 years through Development Policy Financing was approximately $117 billion. Its five organizations are:
The first two are sometimes collectively referred to as the World Bank.
The activities of the World Bank (the IBRD and IDA) focus on developing countries, in fields such as human development (e.g. education, health), agriculture and rural development
(e.g. irrigation and rural services), environmental protection (e.g.
pollution reduction, establishing and enforcing regulations),
infrastructure (e.g. roads, urban regeneration, and electricity), large
industrial construction projects, and governance (e.g. anti-corruption,
legal institutions development). The IBRD and IDA provide loans at
preferential rates to member countries, as well as grants to the poorest
countries. Loans or grants for specific projects are often linked to
wider policy changes in the sector or the country's economy as a whole.
For example, a loan to improve coastal environmental management may be
linked to the development of new environmental institutions at national
and local levels and the implementation of new regulations to limit
pollution. Furthermore, the World Bank Group is recognized as a leading funder of climate investments in developing countries.
History
Founding
The WBG came into formal existence on 27 December 1946 following international ratification of the Bretton Woods agreements, which emerged from the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference (1–22 July 1944). It also provided the foundation of the Osiander Committee in 1951, responsible for the preparation and evaluation of the World Development Report.
Commencing operations on 25 June 1946, it approved its first loan on 9
May 1947 (USD 250M to France for postwar reconstruction, in real terms
the largest loan the bank has issued to date).
Membership
World Bank Group:
Member states of all five WBG organizations
Member states of four WBG organizations
Member states of three WBG organizations
Member states of two WBG organizations
Member states only of the IBRD
All of the 188 UN members and Kosovo
that are WBG members participate at a minimum in the IBRD. As of May
2016, all of them also participate in some of the other four
organizations (IDA, IFC, MIGA, and ICSID).
WBG members by the number of organizations in which they participate:
The IBRD and three other organizations: India, Mexico, Belize,
Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador,
Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial
Guinea, Angola, South Africa, Seychelles, Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia,
Eritrea, Djibouti, Bahrain, Qatar, Iran, Malta, Bulgaria, Poland,
Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Thailand, Laos,
Vietnam, Palau, Tonga, Vanuatu, Maldives, Bhutan, Myanmar
All five WBG organizations: the rest of the 138 WBG members
The Republic of China joined the World Bank on December 27, 1945. After the Chinese Civil War,
the government fled to Taiwan and continued its membership in the WBG
until April 16, 1980, when the People's Republic of China replaced the
ROC. Since then, it uses the name "Taiwan, China".
The World Bank Group Building in Washington, D.C.The World Bank Sign on the building
Together with four affiliated agencies created between 1957 and 1988,
the IBRD is part of the World Bank Group. The group's headquarters are
in Washington, D.C.
It is an international organization owned by member governments;
although it makes profits, they are used to support continued efforts in
poverty reduction.
Technically the World Bank is part of the United Nations system,
but its governance structure is different: each institution in the
World Bank Group is owned by its member governments, which subscribe to
its basic share capital, with votes proportional to shareholding.
Membership gives certain voting rights that are the same for all
countries but there are also additional votes that depend on financial
contributions to the organization. The president of the World Bank is
nominated by the president of the United States and elected by the
bank's Board of Governors.
As of 15 November 2009, the United States held 16.4% of total votes,
Japan 7.9%, Germany 4.5%, the United Kingdom 4.3%, and France 4.3%. As
changes to the bank's Charter require an 85% supermajority, the U.S. can
block any major change in the bank's governing structure.
Because the U.S. exerts formal and informal influence over the bank as a
result of its vote share, control over the presidency, and the bank's
headquarters location in Washington, D.C., friends and allies of the
U.S. receive more projects with more lenient terms.
the International Finance Corporation
(IFC), established in 1956, which provides various forms of financing
without sovereign guarantees, primarily to the private sector;
the International Development Association
(IDA), established in 1960, which provides concessional financing
(interest-free loans or grants), usually with sovereign guarantees;
the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
(MIGA), established in 1988, which provides insurance against certain
types of risk, including political risk, primarily to the private
sector.
The term "World Bank"
generally refers to just the IBRD and IDA, whereas the term "World Bank
Group" or "WBG" is used to refer to all five institutions collectively.
The World Bank Institute
is the capacity development branch of the World Bank, providing
learning and other capacity-building programs to member countries.
The IBRD has 189 member governments, and the other institutions have between 153 and 184. The institutions of the World Bank Group are all run by a board of governors meeting once a year.
Each member country appoints a governor, generally its minister of
finance. Daily, the World Bank Group is run by a board of 25 executive
directors to whom the governors have delegated certain powers. Each
director represents either one country (for the largest countries), or a
group of countries. Executive directors are appointed by their
respective governments or the constituencies.
The agencies of the World Bank are each governed by their
Articles of Agreement that serves as the legal and institutional
foundation for all their work.
The activities of the IFC and MIGA include investment in the private sector and providing insurance, respectively.
Presidency
Traditionally,
the bank president has been a U.S. citizen nominated by the president
of the United States, the bank's largest shareholder. The nominee is
subject to confirmation by the executive directors, to serve a
five-year, renewable term.
The
managing director of the World Bank is responsible for organizational
strategy; budget and strategic planning; information technology; shared
services; Corporate Procurement; General Services and Corporate
Security; the Sanctions System; and the Conflict Resolution and Internal
Justice System. The present managing director, Shaolin Yang, assumed
the office after Sri Mulyani resigned to become finance minister of Indonesia. The managing director and World Bank Group chief financial officer is Anshula Kant since 7 October 2019.
Extractive Industries Review
After longstanding criticisms from civil society of the bank's involvement in the oil, gas, and mining sectors, the World Bank in July 2001 launched an independent review called the Extractive Industries Review (EIR—not to be confused with Environmental Impact Report). The review was headed by an "Eminent Person", Emil Salim
(former Environment Minister of Indonesia). Salim held consultations
with a wide range of stakeholders in 2002 and 2003. The EIR
recommendations were published in January 2004 in a final report,
"Striking a Better Balance".
The report concluded that fossil fuel and mining projects do not
alleviate poverty, and recommended that World Bank involvement with
these sectors be phased out by 2008 to be replaced by investment in renewable energy and clean energy. The World Bank published its Management Response to the EIR in September 2004
after extensive discussions with the board of directors. The Management
Response did not accept many of the EIR report's conclusions, but the
EIR served to alter the World Bank's policies on oil, gas, and mining in
important ways, as the World Bank documented in a recent follow-up
report.
One area of particular controversy concerned the rights of indigenous
peoples. Critics point out that the Management Response weakened a key
recommendation that indigenous peoples and affected communities should
have to provide 'consent for projects to proceed; instead, there would
be 'consultation'. Following the EIR process, the World Bank issued a revised Policy on Indigenous Peoples.
A young World Bank protester in Jakarta, IndonesiaWorld Bank/IMF protesters smashed the windows of this PNC Bank branch located in the Logan Circle neighbourhood of Washington, D.C.
The World Bank has long been criticized by a range of non-governmental organizations and academics, notably including its former chief economist Joseph Stiglitz, who is equally critical of the International Monetary Fund, the US Treasury Department, and the US and other developed country trade negotiators. Critics argue that the so-called free market reform policies—which the bank advocates in many cases—in practice are often harmful to economic development if implemented badly, too quickly ("shock therapy"), in the wrong sequence, or in very weak, uncompetitive economies. World Bank loan agreements can also force procurements of goods and services at uncompetitive, non-free-market, prices. Other critical writers, such as John Perkins,
label the international financial institutions as 'illegal and
illegitimate and a cog of coercive American diplomacy in carrying out
financial terrorism.
Defenders of the World Bank contend that no country is forced to
borrow its money. The bank provides both loans and grants. Even the
loans are concessional since they are given to countries that have no
access to international capital markets. Furthermore, the loans, both to poor and middle-income countries, are below market-value interest rates.
The World Bank argues that it can help development more through loans
than grants because money repaid on the loans can then be lent for other
projects.
Criticism was also expressed towards the IFC and MIGA and their
way of evaluating the social and environmental impact of their projects.
Critics state that even though IFC and MIGA have more of these
standards than the World Bank, they mostly rely on private-sector
clients to monitor their implementation and miss an independent
monitoring institution in this context. This is why an extensive review
of the institutions' implementation strategy of social and environmental
standards is demanded.
The World Bank Group has also been criticized for investing in projects with human rights issues.
The Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO) criticized a loan the bank made to the palm oil company Dinant after the 2009 Honduran coup d'état. There have been numerous killings of Campesinos in the region where Dinant was operating.
Other controversial investments include loans to the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam in Guatemala while it was under military dictatorship, and to Goldcorp (then Glamis Gold) for the construction of the Marlin Mine.
In 2019, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China questioned the World Bank about a loan in Xinjiang, China, that was used to buy high-end security gear, including surveillance equipment.The bank launched an internal investigation in response to the
allegation. In August 2020, U.S. lawmakers questioned the continued
disbursement of the loan.
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon;
9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter,
musician and political activist. He gained worldwide fame as the
founder, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. Lennon's songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in history.
Born in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1956, he formed the Quarrymen, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Lennon initially was the group's de facto
leader, a role he gradually seemed to cede to McCartney. Through his
songwriting in the Beatles, he embraced myriad musical influences,
initially writing and co-writing rock and pop-orientated hit songs such
as "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Help!"
then later incorporating experimental elements into his compositions in
the latter half of the Beatles' career, as his songs such as "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am the Walrus"
became known for their increasing innovation. Lennon soon expanded his
work into other media by participating in numerous films, including How I Won the War, and authoring In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works, both collections of nonsense writings and line drawings. Starting with "All You Need Is Love", his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the counterculture of the 1960s.
John Winston Lennon was born on 9 October 1940 at Liverpool Maternity Hospital, the only child of Julia (née Stanley) and Alfred Lennon. Alfred was a merchant seaman of Irish descent who was away at the time of his son's birth. His parents named him John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John "Jack" Lennon, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. His father was often away from home but sent regular pay cheques to 9Newcastle Road, Liverpool, where Lennon lived with his mother; the cheques stopped when he went absent without leave in February 1944.
When he eventually came home six months later, he offered to look after
the family, but Julia, by then pregnant with another man's child,
rejected the idea. After her sister Mimi complained to Liverpool's Social Services twice, Julia gave her custody of Lennon.
In July 1946, Lennon's father visited her and took his son to Blackpool, secretly intending to emigrate to New Zealand with him.
Julia followed them – with her partner at the time, Bobby Dykins – and
after a heated argument, his father forced the five-year-old to choose
between them. In one account of this incident, Lennon twice chose his
father, but as his mother walked away, he began to cry and followed her. According to author Mark Lewisohn,
however, Lennon's parents agreed that Julia should take him and give
him a home. Billy Hall, who witnessed the incident, has said that the
dramatic portrayal of a young John Lennon being forced to make a
decision between his parents is inaccurate. Lennon had no further contact with Alf for close to 20 years.
Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, Lennon lived at Mendips, 251Menlove Avenue, Woolton, with Mimi and her husband George Toogood Smith, who had no children of their own.
His aunt purchased volumes of short stories for him, and his uncle, a
dairyman at his family's farm, bought him a mouth organ and engaged him
in solving crossword puzzles. Julia visited Mendips on a regular basis, and John often visited her at 1 Blomfield Road, Liverpool, where she played him Elvis Presley records, taught him the banjo, and showed him how to play "Ain't That a Shame" by Fats Domino. In September 1980, Lennon commented about his family and his rebellious nature:
A part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society and not
be this loudmouthed lunatic poet/musician. But I cannot be what I am
not ... I was the one who all the other boys' parents – including Paul's
father – would say, "Keep away from him" ... The parents instinctively
recognised I was a troublemaker, meaning I did not conform and I would
influence their children, which I did. I did my best to disrupt every
friend's home ... Partly out of envy that I didn't have this so-called
home ... but I did ... There were five women that were my family. Five strong, intelligent, beautiful
women, five sisters. One happened to be my mother. [She] just couldn't
deal with life. She was the youngest and she had a husband who ran away
to sea and the war was on and she couldn't cope with me, and I ended up
living with her elder sister. Now those women were fantastic ... And
that was my first feminist education ... I would infiltrate the other
boys' minds. I could say, "Parents are not gods because I don't live
with mine and, therefore, I know."
He regularly visited his cousin Stanley Parkes, who lived in Fleetwood and took him on trips to local cinemas.
During the school holidays Parkes often visited Lennon with Leila
Harvey, another cousin, and the three often travelled to Blackpool two
or three times a week to watch shows. They would visit the Blackpool Tower Circus and see artists such as Dickie Valentine, Arthur Askey, Max Bygraves and Joe Loss, with Parkes recalling that Lennon particularly liked George Formby.
After Parkes's family moved to Scotland, the three cousins often spent
their school holidays together there. Parkes recalled, "John, cousin
Leila and I were very close. From Edinburgh we would drive up to the
family croft at Durness, which was from about the time John was nine years old until he was about 16." Lennon's uncle George died of a liver haemorrhage on 5 June 1955, aged 52.
Lennon was raised as an Anglican and attended Dovedale Primary School. After passing his eleven-plus exam, he attended Quarry Bank High School
in Liverpool from September 1952 to 1957, and was described by Harvey
at the time as a "happy-go-lucky, good-humoured, easy going, lively
lad". However, he was also known to frequently engage in fights, bully and disrupt classes. Despite this, he quickly built a reputation as the class clown and often drew comical cartoons that appeared in his self-made school magazine, the Daily Howl.
In 1956, Julia bought John his first guitar. The instrument was an inexpensive Gallotone Champion
acoustic for which she lent her son five pounds and ten shillings on
the condition that the guitar be delivered to her own house and not
Mimi's, knowing well that her sister was not supportive of her son's
musical aspirations.
Mimi was sceptical of his claim that he would be famous one day, and
she hoped that he would grow bored with music, often telling him, "The
guitar's all very well, John, but you'll never make a living out of it."
Lennon's senior school years were marked by a shift in his behaviour. Teachers at Quarry Bank High School
described him thus: "He has too many wrong ambitions and his energy is
often misplaced", and "His work always lacks effort. He is content to
'drift' instead of using his abilities." Lennon's misbehaviour created a rift in his relationship with his aunt.
On 15 July 1958, at the age of 44, Julia Lennon was struck and
killed by a car while she was walking home after visiting the Smiths'
house.
His mother's death traumatised the teenage Lennon, who, for the next
two years, drank heavily and frequently got into fights, consumed by a
"blind rage". Julia's memory would later serve as a major creative inspiration for Lennon, inspiring songs such as the 1968 Beatles song "Julia".
Lennon failed his O-level examinations, and was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art after his aunt and headmaster intervened. At the college he began to wear Teddy Boy clothes and was threatened with expulsion for his behaviour. In the description of Cynthia Powell, Lennon's fellow student and subsequently his wife, he was "thrown out of the college before his final year".
At the age of 15, Lennon formed a skiffle group, the Quarrymen. Named after Quarry Bank High School, the group was established by Lennon in September 1956. By the summer of 1957, the Quarrymen played a "spirited set of songs" made up of half skiffle and half rock and roll. Lennon first met Paul McCartney at the Quarrymen's second performance, which was held in Woolton on 6 July at the St Peter's Church garden fête. Lennon then asked McCartney to join the band.
McCartney said that Aunt Mimi "was very aware that John's friends
were lower class", and would often patronise him when he arrived to
visit Lennon. According to McCartney's brother Mike, their father similarly disapproved of Lennon, declaring that Lennon would get his son "into trouble". McCartney's father nevertheless allowed the fledgling band to rehearse in the family's front room at 20Forthlin Road. During this time Lennon wrote his first song, "Hello Little Girl", which became a UK top 10 hit for the Fourmost in 1963.
McCartney recommended that his friend George Harrison become the lead guitarist.
Lennon thought that Harrison, then 14 years old, was too young.
McCartney engineered an audition on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus,
where Harrison played "Raunchy" for Lennon and was asked to join. Stuart Sutcliffe, Lennon's friend from art school, later joined as bassist.
Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Sutcliffe became "The Beatles" in early
1960. In August that year, the Beatles were engaged for a 48-night residency in Hamburg, in West Germany, and were desperately in need of a drummer. They asked Pete Best to join them. Lennon's aunt, horrified when he told her about the trip, pleaded with Lennon to continue his art studies instead.
After the first Hamburg residency, the band accepted another in April
1961, and a third in April 1962. As with the other band members, Lennon
was introduced to Preludin while in Hamburg, and regularly took the drug as a stimulant during their long, overnight performances.
Lennon in 1964
Brian Epstein
managed the Beatles from 1962 until his death in 1967. He had no
previous experience managing artists, but he had a strong influence on
the group's dress code and attitude on stage.
Lennon initially resisted his attempts to encourage the band to present
a professional appearance, but eventually complied, saying "I'll wear a
bloody balloon if somebody's going to pay me." McCartney took over on bass after Sutcliffe decided to stay in Hamburg, and Best was replaced with drummer Ringo Starr; this completed the four-piece line-up that would remain until the group's break-up in 1970. The band's first single, "Love Me Do", was released in October 1962 and reached No. 17 on the British charts. They recorded their debut album, Please Please Me, in under 10 hours on 11 February 1963, a day when Lennon was suffering the effects of a cold, which is evident in the vocal on the last song to be recorded that day, "Twist and Shout".
The Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership yielded eight of its
fourteen tracks. With a few exceptions, one being the album title
itself, Lennon had yet to bring his love of wordplay to bear on his song
lyrics, saying: "We were just writing songs... pop songs with no more thought of them than that – to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant". In a 1987 interview, McCartney said that the other Beatles idolised Lennon: "He was like our own little Elvis... We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest."
The Beatles achieved mainstream success in the UK early in 1963. Lennon was on tour when his first son, Julian, was born in April. During their Royal Variety Show
performance, which was attended by the Queen Mother and other British
royalty, Lennon poked fun at the audience: "For our next song, I'd like
to ask for your help. For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your
hands... and the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewellery." After a year of Beatlemania in the UK, the group's historic February 1964 US debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show
marked their breakthrough to international stardom. A two-year period
of constant touring, filmmaking, and songwriting followed, during which
Lennon wrote two books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works. The Beatles received recognition from the British establishment when they were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1965 Queen's Birthday Honours.
McCartney, Harrison and Lennon, 1964
Lennon
grew concerned that fans who attended Beatles concerts were unable to
hear the music above the screaming of fans, and that the band's
musicianship was beginning to suffer as a result. Lennon's "Help!" expressed his own feelings in 1965: "I meant it... It was me singing 'help'". He had put on weight (he would later refer to this as his "Fat Elvis" period), and felt he was subconsciously seeking change. In March that year he and Harrison were unknowingly introduced to LSD
when a dentist, hosting a dinner party attended by the two musicians
and their partners, spiked the guests' coffee with the drug.
When they wanted to leave, their host revealed what they had taken, and
strongly advised them not to leave the house because of the likely
effects. Later, in a lift at a nightclub, they all believed it was on
fire; Lennon recalled: "We were all screaming... hot and hysterical."
In March 1966, during an interview with Evening Standard reporter Maureen Cleave, Lennon remarked, "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink... We're more popular than Jesus now – I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity." The comment went virtually unnoticed in England but caused great offence in the US when quoted by a magazine there five months later. The furore that followed, which included the burning of Beatles records, Ku Klux Klan activity and threats against Lennon, contributed to the band's decision to stop touring.
After the band's final concert on 29 August 1966, Lennon filmed the anti-war black comedy How I Won the War
– his only appearance in a non-Beatles feature film – before rejoining
his bandmates for an extended period of recording, beginning in
November. Lennon had increased his use of LSD and, according to author Ian MacDonald, his continuous use of the drug in 1967 brought him "close to erasing his identity". The year 1967 saw the release of "Strawberry Fields Forever", hailed by Time magazine for its "astonishing inventiveness", and the group's landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which revealed lyrics by Lennon that contrasted strongly with the simple love songs of the group's early years.
In late June, the Beatles performed Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" as Britain's contribution to the Our World satellite broadcast, before an international audience estimated at up to 400 million. Intentionally simplistic in its message, the song formalised his pacifist stance and provided an anthem for the Summer of Love. After the Beatles were introduced to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group attended an August weekend of personal instruction at his Transcendental Meditation seminar in Bangor, Wales.
During the seminar, they were informed of Epstein's death. "I knew we
were in trouble then", Lennon said later. "I didn't have any
misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music. I
was scared – I thought, 'We've fucking had it now.'" McCartney organised the group's first post-Epstein project, the self-written, -produced and -directed television film Magical Mystery Tour, which was released in December that year. While the film itself proved to be their first critical flop, its soundtrack release, featuring Lennon's Lewis Carroll–inspired "I Am the Walrus", was a success.
Led by Harrison and Lennon's interest, the Beatles travelled to the Maharishi's ashram in India in February 1968 for further guidance. While there, they composed most of the songs for their double album The Beatles, but the band members' mixed experience with Transcendental Meditation signalled a sharp divergence in the group's camaraderie. On their return to London, they became increasingly involved in business activities with the formation of Apple Corps, a multimedia corporation composed of Apple Records
and several other subsidiary companies. Lennon described the venture as
an attempt to achieve "artistic freedom within a business structure". Released amid the Protests of 1968, the band's debut single for the Apple label included Lennon's B-side "Revolution", in which he called for a "plan" rather than committing to Maoist revolution. The song's pacifist message led to ridicule from political radicals in the New Left press.
Adding to the tensions at the Beatles' recording sessions that year,
Lennon insisted on having his new girlfriend, the Japanese artist Yoko Ono,
beside him, thereby contravening the band's policy regarding wives and
girlfriends in the studio. He was especially pleased with his
songwriting contributions to the double album and identified it as a
superior work to Sgt. Pepper. At the end of 1968, Lennon participated in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, a television special that was not broadcast. Lennon performed with the Dirty Mac, a supergroup composed of Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell. The group also backed a vocal performance by Ono. A film version was released in 1996.
By late 1968, Lennon's increased drug use and growing preoccupation
with Ono, combined with the Beatles' inability to agree on how the
company should be run, left Apple in need of professional management.
Lennon asked Lord Beeching to take on the role but he declined, advising Lennon to go back to making records. Lennon was approached by Allen Klein, who had managed the Rolling Stones and other bands during the British Invasion. In early 1969, Klein was appointed as Apple's chief executive by Lennon, Harrison and Starr, but McCartney never signed the management contract.
Lennon and Ono were married on 20 March 1969 and soon released a series of 14 lithographs called "Bag One" depicting scenes from their honeymoon, eight of which were deemed indecent and most of which were banned and confiscated.
Lennon's creative focus continued to move beyond the Beatles, and
between 1968 and 1969 he and Ono recorded three albums of experimental
music together: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins (known more for its cover than for its music), Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions and Wedding Album. In 1969, they formed the Plastic Ono Band, releasing Live Peace in Toronto 1969. Between 1969 and 1970, Lennon released the singles "Give Peace a Chance", which was widely adopted as an anti-Vietnam War anthem, "Cold Turkey", which documented his withdrawal symptoms after he became addicted to heroin, and "Instant Karma!".
In protest at Britain's involvement in "the Nigeria-Biafra thing" (namely, the Nigerian Civil War), its support of America in the Vietnam War and (perhaps jokingly) against "Cold Turkey" slipping down the charts, Lennon returned his MBE
medal to the Queen. This gesture had no effect on his MBE status, which
could be renounced but ultimately only the Sovereign has the power to
annul the original award.The medal, together with Lennon's letter, is held at the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood.
Lennon left the Beatles on 20 September 1969,
but agreed not to inform the media while the group renegotiated their
recording contract. He was outraged that McCartney publicised his own
departure on releasing his debut solo album in April 1970. Lennon's reaction was, "Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it!" He later wrote, "I started the band. I disbanded it. It's as simple as that." In a December 1970 interview with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone
magazine, he revealed his bitterness towards McCartney, saying, "I was a
fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record."
Lennon also spoke of the hostility he perceived the other members had
towards Ono, and of how he, Harrison and Starr "got fed up with being
sidemen for Paul ... After Brian Epstein died we collapsed. Paul took
over and supposedly led us. But what is leading us when we went round in
circles?"
Solo career: 1970–1980
Initial solo success and activism: 1970–1972
Advertisement for "Imagine" from Billboard, 18 September 1971
When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the
system's game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard,
flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they've got you
violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't
know how to handle is non-violence and humor.
—John Lennon
Between 1 April and 15 September 1970, Lennon and Ono went through primal therapy with Arthur Janov
at Tittenhurst, in London and at Janov's clinic in Los Angeles,
California. Designed to release emotional pain from early childhood, the
therapy entailed two half-days a week with Janov for six months; he had
wanted to treat the couple for longer, but their American visa ran out
and they had to return to the UK. Lennon's debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
(1970), was received with praise by many music critics, but its highly
personal lyrics and stark sound limited its commercial performance. The album featured the song "Mother", in which Lennon confronted his feelings of childhood rejection, and the Dylanesque "Working Class Hero",
a bitter attack against the bourgeois social system which, due to the
lyric "you're still fucking peasants", fell foul of broadcasters.
In January 1971, Tariq Ali expressed his revolutionary political views when he interviewed Lennon, who immediately responded by writing "Power to the People".
In his lyrics to the song, Lennon reversed the non-confrontational
approach he had espoused in "Revolution", although he later disowned
"Power to the People", saying that it was borne out of guilt and a
desire for approval from radicals such as Ali. Lennon became involved in a protest against the prosecution of Oz
magazine for alleged obscenity. Lennon denounced the proceedings as
"disgusting fascism", and he and Ono (as Elastic Oz Band) released the
single "God Save Us/Do the Oz" and joined marches in support of the
magazine.
Sample of "Imagine", Lennon's most widely known post-Beatles song.
Like "Give Peace a Chance", the song became an anti-war anthem, but its
lyrics offended religious groups. Lennon's explanation was: "If you can
imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion – not
without religion, but without this 'my god is bigger than your god'
thing – then it can be true."
Eager for a major commercial success, Lennon adopted a more accessible sound for his next album, Imagine (1971). Rolling Stone
reported that "it contains a substantial portion of good music" but
warned of the possibility that "his posturings will soon seem not merely
dull but irrelevant". The album's title track later became an anthem for anti-war movements, while the song "How Do You Sleep?" was a musical attack on McCartney in response to lyrics on Ram that Lennon felt, and McCartney later confirmed, were directed at him and Ono. In "Jealous Guy",
Lennon addressed his demeaning treatment of women, acknowledging that
his past behaviour was a result of long-held insecurity.
In gratitude for his guitar contributions to Imagine, Lennon initially agreed to perform at Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh benefit shows in New York.
Harrison refused to allow Ono to participate at the concerts, however,
which resulted in the couple having a heated argument and Lennon pulling
out of the event.
Lennon and Ono moved to New York in August 1971 and immediately embraced US radical left politics. The couple released their "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" single in December. During the new year, the Nixon administration
took what it called a "strategic counter-measure" against Lennon's
anti-war and anti-Nixon propaganda. The administration embarked on what
would be a four-year attempt to deport him. Lennon was embroiled in a continuing legal battle with the immigration authorities, and he was denied permanent residency in the US; the issue would not be resolved until 1976.
Some Time in New York City was recorded as a collaboration with Ono and was released in 1972 with backing from the New York band Elephant's Memory.
A double LP, it contained songs about women's rights, race relations,
Britain's role in Northern Ireland and Lennon's difficulties in
obtaining a green card.
The album was a commercial failure and was maligned by critics, who
found its political sloganeering heavy-handed and relentless. The NME's review took the form of an open letter in which Tony Tyler derided Lennon as a "pathetic, ageing revolutionary". In the US, "Woman Is the Nigger of the World" was released as a single from the album and was televised on 11 May, on The Dick Cavett Show. Many radio stations refused to broadcast the song because of the word "nigger".
Lennon and Ono gave two benefit concerts with Elephant's Memory and guests in New York in aid of patients at the Willowbrook State School mental facility. Staged at Madison Square Garden on 30 August 1972, they were his last full-length concert appearances. After George McGovern
lost the 1972 presidential election to Richard Nixon, Lennon and Ono
attended a post-election wake held in the New York home of activist Jerry Rubin. Lennon was depressed and got intoxicated; he left Ono embarrassed after he had sex with a female guest. Ono's song "Death of Samantha" was inspired by the incident.
"Lost weekend": 1973–1975
Publicity photo of Lennon and host Tom Snyder from the television programme Tomorrow. Aired in 1975, this was the last television interview Lennon gave before his death in 1980.
As Lennon was about to record Mind Games
in 1973, he and Ono decided to separate. The ensuing 18-month period
apart, which he later called his "lost weekend" in reference to the film of the same name, was spent in Los Angeles and New York City in the company of May Pang. Mind Games, credited to the "Plastic U.F.Ono Band", was released in November 1973. Lennon also contributed "I'm the Greatest" to Starr's album Ringo
(1973), released the same month. With Harrison joining Starr and Lennon
at the recording session for the song, it marked the only occasion when
three former Beatles recorded together between the band's break-up and
Lennon's death.
In early 1974, Lennon was drinking heavily and his alcohol-fuelled antics with Harry Nilsson made headlines. In March, two widely publicised incidents occurred at The Troubadour club. In the first incident, Lennon stuck an unused menstrual pad
on his forehead and scuffled with a waitress. The second incident
occurred two weeks later, when Lennon and Nilsson were ejected from the
same club after heckling the Smothers Brothers. Lennon decided to produce Nilsson's album Pussy Cats, and Pang rented a Los Angeles beach house for all the musicians.
After a month of further debauchery, the recording sessions were in
chaos, and Lennon returned to New York with Pang to finish work on the
album. In April, Lennon had produced the Mick Jagger
song "Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)" which was, for contractual
reasons, to remain unreleased for more than 30 years. Pang supplied the
recording for its eventual inclusion on The Very Best of Mick Jagger (2007).
Lennon had settled back in New York when he recorded the album Walls and Bridges. Released in October 1974, it included "Whatever Gets You thru the Night", which featured Elton John on backing vocals and piano, and became Lennon's only single as a solo artist to top the US Billboard Hot 100 chart during his lifetime. A second single from the album, "#9 Dream", followed before the end of the year. Starr's Goodnight Vienna (1974) again saw assistance from Lennon, who wrote the title track and played piano.
On 28 November, Lennon made a surprise guest appearance at Elton John's
Thanksgiving concert at Madison Square Garden, in fulfilment of his
promise to join the singer in a live show if "Whatever Gets You thru the
Night", a song whose commercial potential Lennon had doubted, reached
number one. Lennon performed the song along with "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Saw Her Standing There", which he introduced as "a song by an old estranged fiancé of mine called Paul".
In the first two weeks of January 1975, Elton John topped the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with his cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds",
featuring Lennon on guitar and backing vocals - Lennon is credited on
the single under the moniker of "Dr. Winston O'Boogie". As January
became February, Lennon and Ono reunited as Lennon and Bowie completed
recording of their co-composition "Fame", which became David Bowie's first US number one, featuring guitar and backing vocals by Lennon. In February, Lennon released Rock 'n' Roll (1975), an album of cover songs. "Stand by Me", taken from the album and a US and UK hit, became his last single for five years. He made what would be his final stage appearance in the ATV special A Salute to Lew Grade, recorded on 18 April and televised in June. Playing acoustic guitar and backed by an eight-piece band, Lennon performed two songs from Rock 'n' Roll ("Stand by Me", which was not broadcast, and "Slippin' and Slidin'") followed by "Imagine". The band, known as Etc., wore masks behind their heads, a dig by Lennon, who thought Grade was two-faced.
Hiatus and return: 1975–1980
Lennon's green card, which allowed him to live and work in the United States
Lennon began what would be a five-year hiatus from the music
industry, during which time, he later said, he "baked bread" and "looked
after the baby". He devoted himself to Sean, rising at 6am daily to plan and prepare his meals and to spend time with him. He wrote "Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love)" for Starr's Ringo's Rotogravure (1976), performing on the track in June in what would be his last recording session until 1980.
Sean Lennon,
Lennon's only child with Ono, was born on 9 October 1975 (Lennon's
thirty-fifth birthday), after which Lennon took on the role of
househusband. He formally announced his break from music in Tokyo in
1977, saying, "we have basically decided, without any great decision, to
be with our baby as much as we can until we feel we can take time off
to indulge ourselves in creating things outside of the family."
During his career break he created several series of drawings, and
drafted a book containing a mix of autobiographical material and what he
termed "mad stuff", all of which would be published posthumously.
Lennon emerged from his hiatus in October 1980, when he released the single "(Just Like) Starting Over". In November, he and Ono released the album Double Fantasy, which included songs Lennon had written in Bermuda.
In June, Lennon chartered a 43-foot sailboat and embarked on a sailing
trip to Bermuda. En route, he and the crew encountered a storm,
rendering everyone on board seasick, except Lennon, who took control and
sailed the boat through the storm. This experience re-invigorated him
and his creative muse. He spent three weeks in Bermuda in a home called
Fairylands writing and refining the tracks for the upcoming album.
The music reflected Lennon's fulfilment in his new-found stable family life. Sufficient additional material was recorded for a planned follow-up album Milk and Honey, which was issued posthumously, in 1984. Double Fantasy was not well received initially and drew comments such as Melody Maker's "indulgent sterility... a godawful yawn".
Wintertime at Strawberry Fields in Central Park with the Dakota in the background
In New York, at approximately 5:00 p.m. on 8 December 1980, Lennon autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Mark David Chapman before leaving The Dakota with Ono for a recording session at the Record Plant. After the session, Lennon and Ono returned to the Dakota in a limousine at around 10:50p.m.
(EST). They left the vehicle and walked through the archway of the
building. Chapman then shot Lennon twice in the back and twice in the
shoulder at close range. Lennon was rushed in a police cruiser to the emergency room of Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:15p.m. (EST).
Ono issued a statement the next day, saying "There is no funeral
for John. Later in the week we will set the time for a silent vigil to
pray for his soul. We invite you to participate from wherever you are at
the time." She requested that instead of flowers, people could donate
to Lennon's personal charitable foundation, the Spirit Foundation. "John
loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him.
Love. Yoko and Sean." His remains were cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in New York's Central Park, where the Strawberry Fields memorial was later created.
Chapman avoided going to trial when he ignored his lawyer's advice and
pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to
20-years-to-life.
In the weeks following the murder, "(Just Like) Starting Over" and Double Fantasy topped the charts in the UK and the US. "Imagine" hit number one in the UK in January 1981 and "Happy Xmas" peaked at number two. "Imagine" was succeeded at the top of the UK chart by "Woman", the second single from Double Fantasy. Later that year, Roxy Music's cover version of "Jealous Guy", recorded as a tribute to Lennon, was also a UK number-one.
Personal relationships
Cynthia Lennon
John and Cynthia Lennon sitting in an airplane on a stopover in Los Angeles in 1964
Lennon met Cynthia Powell (1939–2015) in 1957, when they were fellow students at the Liverpool College of Art. Although Powell was intimidated by Lennon's attitude and appearance, she heard that he was obsessed with the French actress Brigitte Bardot,
so she dyed her hair blonde. Lennon asked her out, but when she said
that she was engaged, he shouted, "I didn't ask you to fuckin' marry me,
did I?" She often accompanied him to Quarrymen gigs and travelled to Hamburg with McCartney's girlfriend to visit him.
Lennon was jealous by nature and eventually grew possessive, often terrifying Powell with his anger. In her 2005 memoir John, Powell recalled that, when they were dating, Lennon once struck her after he observed her dancing with Stuart Sutcliffe. She ended their relationship as a result, until three months later, when Lennon apologised and asked to reunite.
She took him back and later noted that he was never again physically
abusive towards her, although he could still be "verbally cutting and
unkind".
Lennon later said that until he met Ono, he had never questioned his
chauvinistic attitude towards women. He said that the Beatles song "Getting Better"
told his (or his peers') own story. "I used to be cruel to my woman,
and physically – any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself
and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on
about peace".
Recalling his July 1962 reaction when he learned that Cynthia was
pregnant, Lennon said, "There's only one thing for it Cyn. We'll have
to get married." The couple wed on 23 August at the Mount PleasantRegister Office in Liverpool, with Brian Epstein serving as best man. His marriage began just as Beatlemania
was taking off across the UK. He performed on the evening of his
wedding day and would continue to do so almost daily from then on.
Epstein feared that fans would be alienated by the idea of a married
Beatle, and he asked the Lennons to keep their marriage secret. Julian
was born on 8 April 1963; Lennon was on tour at the time and did not see
his infant son until three days later.
Cynthia attributed the start of the marriage breakdown to Lennon's use of LSD, and she felt that he slowly lost interest in her as a result of his use of the drug. When the group travelled by train to Bangor, Wales in 1967 for the Maharishi Yogi's
Transcendental Meditation seminar, a policeman did not recognise her
and stopped her from boarding. She later recalled how the incident
seemed to symbolise the end of their marriage. After spending a holiday in Greece, Cynthia arrived home at Kenwood to find Lennon sitting on the floor with Ono in terrycloth robes and left the house to stay with friends, feeling shocked and humiliated. A few weeks later, Alexis Mardas informed Powell that Lennon was seeking a divorce and custody of Julian.
She received a letter stating that Lennon was doing so on the grounds
of her adultery with Italian hotelier Roberto Bassanini, an accusation
which Powell denied. After negotiations, Lennon capitulated and agreed to let her divorce him on the same grounds (adultery).
The case was settled out of court in November 1968, with Lennon giving
her £100,000, a small annual payment, and custody of Julian.
The Beatles were performing at Liverpool's Cavern Club in November 1961 when they were introduced to Brian Epstein after a midday concert. Epstein was homosexual and closeted, and according to biographer Philip Norman, one of Epstein's reasons for wanting to manage the group was that he was attracted to Lennon. Later biographer Mark Lewisohn called the claim unsubstantiated and wrote:
Suggestions that it was only homoerotic fantasy that drew Brian Epstein to the Beatles are distortion...
and perform a malign disservice to both him and them. It may have been
part of the mix, but he was, above all else, simply the latest in an
ever-lengthening line of people seduced by the Beatles' singular mix of
talents.
Almost as soon as Julian was born, Lennon went on holiday to Spain
with Epstein, which led to speculation about their relationship. When he
was later questioned about it, Lennon said, "Well, it was almost a love
affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But it was a pretty
intense relationship. It was my first experience with a homosexual that I
was conscious was homosexual. We used to sit in a café in Torremolinos
looking at all the boys and I'd say, 'Do you like that one? Do you like
this one?' I was rather enjoying the experience, thinking like a writer
all the time: I am experiencing this."
Soon after their return from Spain, at McCartney's twenty-first
birthday party in June 1963, Lennon physically attacked Cavern Club
master of ceremonies Bob Wooler
for saying "How was your honeymoon, John?" The MC, known for his
wordplay and affectionate but cutting remarks, was making a joke, but ten months had passed since Lennon's marriage, and the deferred honeymoon was still two months in the future. Lennon was drunk. He later said: "He called me a queer so I battered his bloody ribs in."
Lennon delighted in mocking Epstein for his homosexuality and for the fact that he was Jewish. When Epstein invited suggestions for the title of his autobiography, Lennon offered Queer Jew; on learning of the eventual title, A Cellarful of Noise, he parodied, "More like A Cellarful of Boys".
He demanded of a visitor to Epstein's flat, "Have you come to blackmail
him? If not, you're the only bugger in London who hasn't." During the recording of "Baby, You're a Rich Man", he sang altered choruses of "Baby, you're a rich fag Jew".
Julian Lennon
Julian Lennon at the unveiling of the John Lennon Peace Monument
During his marriage to Cynthia, Lennon's first son Julian was born at the same time that his commitments with the Beatles were intensifying at the height of Beatlemania.
Lennon was touring with the Beatles when Julian was born on 8 April
1963. Julian's birth, like his mother Cynthia's marriage to Lennon, was
kept secret because Epstein was convinced that public knowledge of such
things would threaten the Beatles' commercial success. Julian recalled
that as a small child in Weybridge
some four years later, "I was trundled home from school and came
walking up with one of my watercolour paintings. It was just a bunch of
stars and this blonde girl I knew at school. And Dad said, 'What's
this?' I said, 'It's Lucy in the sky with diamonds.'" Lennon used it as the title of a Beatles song, and though it was later reported to have been derived from the initials LSD, Lennon insisted, "It's not an acid song."
Lennon was distant from Julian, who felt closer to McCartney than to
his father. During a car journey to visit Cynthia and Julian during
Lennon's divorce, McCartney composed a song, "Hey Jules", to comfort
him. It would evolve into the Beatles song "Hey Jude". Lennon later said, "That's his best song. It started off as a song about my son Julian... he turned it into 'Hey Jude'. I always thought it was about me and Yoko but he said it wasn't."
Lennon's relationship with Julian was already strained, and after
Lennon and Ono moved to New York in 1971, Julian did not see his father
again until 1973. With Pang's encouragement, arrangements were made for Julian and his mother to visit Lennon in Los Angeles, where they went to Disneyland.[214] Julian started to see his father regularly, and Lennon gave him a drumming part on a Walls and Bridges track. He bought Julian a Gibson Les Paul guitar and other instruments, and encouraged his interest in music by demonstrating guitar chord techniques.
Julian recalls that he and his father "got on a great deal better"
during the time he spent in New York: "We had a lot of fun, laughed a
lot and had a great time in general."
In a Playboy interview with David Sheff shortly before his
death, Lennon said, "Sean is a planned child, and therein lies the
difference. I don't love Julian any less as a child. He's still my son,
whether he came from a bottle of whiskey or because they didn't have
pills in those days. He's here, he belongs to me, and he always will."
He said he was trying to reestablish a connection with the then
17-year-old, and confidently predicted, "Julian and I will have a
relationship in the future." After his death it was revealed that he had left Julian very little in his will.
Lennon and Ono in 1980 by Jack MitchellLennon with Ono in 1969
Lennon first met Yoko Ono on 9 November 1966 at the Indica Gallery in London, where Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibit. They were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar.
Lennon was intrigued by Ono's "Hammer A Nail": patrons hammered a nail
into a wooden board, creating the art piece. Although the exhibition had
not yet begun, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but
Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a
millionaire! He might buy it." According to Lennon's recollection in
1980, Ono had not heard of the Beatles, but she relented on condition
that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which Lennon said he replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in." Ono subsequently related that Lennon had taken a bite out of the apple on display in her work Apple, much to her fury.
Ono began to telephone and visit Lennon at his home. When Cynthia
asked him for an explanation, Lennon explained that Ono was only trying
to obtain money for her "avant-garde bullshit".
While his wife was on holiday in Greece in May 1968, Lennon invited Ono
to visit. They spent the night recording what would become the Two Virgins album, after which, he said, they "made love at dawn". When Lennon's wife returned home she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, "Oh, hi." Ono became pregnant in 1968 and miscarried a male child on 21 November 1968, a few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was granted.
Two years before the Beatles disbanded, Lennon and Ono began public protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969, and spent their honeymoon at the Hilton Amsterdam, campaigning with a week-long bed-in. They planned another bed-in in the United States, but were denied entry, so held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance". They often combined advocacy with performance art, as in their "Bagism", first introduced during a Vienna press conference. Lennon detailed this period in the Beatles song "The Ballad of John and Yoko". Lennon changed his name by deed poll on 22 April 1969, adding "Ono" as a middle name. The brief ceremony took place on the roof of the Apple Corps building, where the Beatles had performed their rooftop concert
three months earlier. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon
thereafter, some official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono
Lennon. The couple settled at Tittenhurst Park at Sunninghill in Berkshire.
After Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a
king-size bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on the
Beatles' album, Abbey Road.
Ono and Lennon moved to New York, to a flat on Bank Street, Greenwich Village. Looking for somewhere with better security, they relocated in 1973 to the more secure Dakota overlooking Central Park at 1West72nd Street.
May Pang
May Pang in 1983
ABKCO Industries was formed in 1968 by Allen Klein as an umbrella company to ABKCO Records. Klein hired May Pang
as a receptionist in 1969. Through involvement in a project with ABKCO,
Lennon and Ono met her the following year. She became their personal
assistant. In 1973, after she had been working with the couple for three
years, Ono confided that she and Lennon were becoming estranged. She
went on to suggest that Pang should begin a physical relationship with
Lennon, telling her, "He likes you a lot." Astounded by Ono's
proposition, Pang nevertheless agreed to become Lennon's companion. The
pair soon left for Los Angeles, beginning an 18-month period he later
called his "lost weekend".
In Los Angeles, Pang encouraged Lennon to develop regular contact with
Julian, whom he had not seen for two years. He also rekindled
friendships with Starr, McCartney, Beatles roadie Mal Evans, and Harry Nilsson.
In June, Lennon and Pang returned to Manhattan in their newly
rented penthouse apartment where they prepared a spare room for Julian
when he visited them.
Lennon, who had been inhibited by Ono in this regard, began to
reestablish contact with other relatives and friends. By December, he
and Pang were considering a house purchase, and he refused to accept
Ono's telephone calls. In February 1975, he agreed to meet Ono, who
claimed to have found a cure for smoking. After the meeting, he failed
to return home or call Pang. When Pang telephoned the next day, Ono told
her that Lennon was unavailable because he was exhausted after a
hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared at a joint
dental appointment; he was stupefied and confused to such an extent that
Pang believed he had been brainwashed. Lennon told Pang that his
separation from Ono was now over, although Ono would allow him to
continue seeing her as his mistress.
Sean Ono Lennon was born on 9 October 1975, his father's 35th birthday. Ono had previously suffered three miscarriages
in her attempt to have a child with Lennon. After Ono and Lennon were
reunited, she became pregnant again. She initially said that she wanted
to have an abortion but changed her mind and agreed to allow the
pregnancy to continue on the condition that Lennon adopt the role of househusband, which he agreed to do.
Following Sean's birth, Lennon's subsequent hiatus from the music
industry would span five years. He had a photographer take pictures of
Sean every day of his first year and created numerous drawings for him,
which were posthumously published as Real Love: The Drawings for Sean.
Lennon later proudly declared, "He didn't come out of my belly but, by
God, I made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and to how
he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish."
While Lennon remained consistently friendly with Starr during the
years that followed the Beatles' break-up in 1970, his relationships
with McCartney and Harrison varied. He was initially close to Harrison,
but the two drifted apart after Lennon moved to the US in 1971. When
Harrison was in New York for his December 1974 Dark Horse
tour, Lennon agreed to join him on stage but failed to appear after an
argument over Lennon's refusal to sign an agreement that would finally
dissolve the Beatles' legal partnership.
Harrison later said that when he visited Lennon during his five years
away from music, he sensed that Lennon was trying to communicate, but
his bond with Ono prevented him. Harrison offended Lennon in 1980 when he published I, Me, Mine, an autobiography that Lennon felt made little mention of him. Lennon told Playboy, "I was hurt by it. By glaring omission... my influence on his life is absolutely zilch... he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I'm not in the book."
Lennon's most intense feelings were reserved for McCartney. In addition to attacking him with the lyrics of "How Do You Sleep?",
Lennon argued with him through the press for three years after the
group split. The two later began to reestablish something of the close
friendship they had once known, and, on one occasion in 1974, even
recorded music together (later bootlegged as A Toot and a Snore in '74)
before eventually growing apart once more. During McCartney's final
visit in April 1976, Lennon said that they watched the episode of Saturday Night Live in which Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 offer to get the Beatles to reunite on the show.
According to Lennon, the pair considered going to the studio to make a
joke appearance, attempting to claim their share of the money, but they
were too tired.
Lennon summarised his feelings towards McCartney in an interview three
days before his death: "Throughout my career, I've selected to work with... only two people: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono... That ain't bad picking."
Along with his estrangement from McCartney, Lennon always felt a
musical competitiveness with him and kept an ear on his music. During
his career break from 1975 until shortly before his death, according to
Fred Seaman, Lennon and Ono's assistant at the time, Lennon was content
to sit back as long as McCartney was producing what Lennon saw as
mediocre material. Lennon took notice when McCartney released "Coming Up"
in 1980, which was the year Lennon returned to the studio. "It's
driving me crackers!" he jokingly complained, because he could not get
the tune out of his head.
That same year, Lennon was asked whether the group were dreaded enemies
or the best of friends, and he replied that they were neither, and that
he had not seen any of them in a long time. But he also said, "I still
love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo
go on."
Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon as a bed-in at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel; the March 1969 event attracted worldwide media ridicule. During a second bed-in three months later at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal,
Lennon wrote and recorded "Give Peace a Chance". Released as a single,
the song was quickly interpreted as an anti-war anthem and sung by a
quarter of a million demonstrators against the Vietnam War in Washington, DC, on 15 November, the second Vietnam Moratorium Day.
In December, they paid for billboards in 10 cities around the world
which declared, in the national language, "War Is Over! If You Want It".
During the year, Lennon and Ono began to support efforts by the family of James Hanratty to prove his innocence.
Hanratty had been hanged in 1962. According to Lennon, those who had
condemned Hanratty were "the same people who are running guns to South
Africa and killing blacks in the streets ... The same bastards are in
control, the same people are running everything, it's the whole bullshit
bourgeois scene." In London, Lennon and Ono staged a "Britain Murdered Hanratty" banner march and a "Silent Protest For James Hanratty", and produced a 40-minute documentary on the case. At an appeal hearing more than thirty years later, Hanratty's conviction was upheld after DNA evidence was found to match, validating those who condemned him.
Lennon and Ono showed their solidarity with the ClydesideUCS workers' work-in of 1971 by sending a bouquet of red roses and a cheque for £5,000. On moving to New York City in August that year, they befriended two of the Chicago Seven, Yippie peace activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Another political activist, John Sinclair, poet and co-founder of the White Panther Party, was serving ten years in prison for selling two joints of marijuana after previous convictions for possession of the drug. In December 1971 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 15,000 people attended the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally", a protest and benefit concert with contributions from Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, and others. Lennon and Ono, backed by David Peel and Jerry Rubin, performed an acoustic set of four songs from their forthcoming Some Time in New York City album including "John Sinclair", whose lyrics called for his release. The day before the rally, the Michigan Senate
passed a bill that significantly reduced the penalties for possession
of marijuana and four days later Sinclair was released on an appeal
bond. The performance was recorded and two of the tracks later appeared on John Lennon Anthology (1998).
Following the Bloody Sunday incident in Northern Ireland in 1972, Lennon said that given the choice between the British army and the IRA he would side with the latter. Lennon and Ono wrote two songs protesting British presence and actions in Ireland for their Some Time in New York City album: "The Luck of the Irish" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday". In 2000, David Shayler,
a former member of Britain's domestic security service MI5, suggested
that Lennon had given money to the IRA, though this was swiftly denied
by Ono. Biographer Bill Harry records that following Bloody Sunday, Lennon and Ono financially supported the production of the film The Irish Tapes, a political documentary with an Irish Republican slant. In February 2000 Lennon's cousin Stanley Parkes stated that the singer had given money to the IRA during the 1970s. After the events of Bloody Sunday Lennon and Ono attended a protest in London while displaying a Red Mole newspaper with the headline "For the IRA, Against British Imperialism".
Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think
we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to
be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about
it.
—John Lennon
According to FBI surveillance reports, and confirmed by Tariq Ali in 2006, Lennon was sympathetic to the International Marxist Group, a Trotskyist group formed in Britain in 1968.
However, the FBI considered Lennon to have limited effectiveness as a
revolutionary, as he was "constantly under the influence of narcotics".
In 1972, Lennon contributed a drawing and limerick titled "Why Make It Sad to Be Gay?" to Len Richmond and Gary Noguera's The Gay Liberation Book. Lennon's last act of political activism was a statement in support of
the striking minority sanitation workers in San Francisco on 5 December
1980. He and Ono planned to join the workers' protest on 14 December.
Deportation attempt
Lennon with Ono in 1969
Following the impact of "Give Peace a Chance" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"
on the anti-war movement, the Nixon administration heard rumours of
Lennon's involvement in a concert to be held in San Diego at the same
time as the 1972 Republican National Convention and tried to have him deported. Nixon believed that Lennon's anti-war activities could cost him his reelection; Republican Senator Strom Thurmond suggested in a February 1972 memo that "deportation would be a strategic counter-measure" against Lennon. The next month the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) began deportation proceedings, arguing that his 1968 misdemeanour
conviction for cannabis possession in London had made him ineligible
for admission to the United States. Lennon spent the next 3+1⁄2
years in and out of deportation hearings until 8 October 1975, when a
court of appeals barred the deportation attempt, stating "the courts
will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political
grounds". While the legal battle continued, Lennon attended rallies and made television appearances. He and Ono co-hosted The Mike Douglas Show for a week in February 1972, introducing guests such as Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale to mid-America. In 1972, Bob Dylan wrote a letter to the INS defending Lennon, stating:
John and Yoko add a great voice and drive to the
country's so-called art institution. They inspire and transcend and
stimulate and by doing so, only help others to see pure light and in
doing that, put an end to this dull taste of petty commercialism which
is being passed off as Artist Art by the overpowering mass media. Hurray
for John and Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The
country's got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!
On 23 March 1973, Lennon was ordered to leave the US within 60 days. Ono, meanwhile, was granted permanent residence. In response, Lennon and Ono held a press conference on 1 April 1973 at the New York City Bar Association, where they announced the formation of the state of Nutopia; a place with "no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people".
Waving the white flag of Nutopia (two handkerchiefs), they asked for
political asylum in the US. The press conference was filmed, and
appeared in a 2006 documentary, The U.S. vs. John Lennon. Soon after the press conference, Nixon's involvement in a political scandal came to light, and in June the Watergate hearings began in Washington, D.C.. They led to the president's resignation 14 months later. In December 1974, when he and members of his tour entourage visited the White House, Harrison asked Gerald Ford, Nixon's successor, to intercede in the matter.
Ford's administration showed little interest in continuing the battle
against Lennon, and the deportation order was overturned in 1975. The
following year, Lennon received his green card certifying his permanent residency, and when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president in January 1977, Lennon and Ono attended the Inaugural Ball.
Confidential (here declassified and censored) letter by J. Edgar Hoover about FBI surveillance of John Lennon
After Lennon's death, historian Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information Act request for FBI files that documented the Bureau's role in the deportation attempt.
The FBI admitted it had 281 pages of files on Lennon, but refused to
release most of them on the grounds that they contained national
security information. In 1983, Wiener sued the FBI with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. It took 14 years of litigation to force the FBI to release the withheld pages. The ACLU, representing Wiener, won a favourable decision in their suit against the FBI in the Ninth Circuit in 1991. The Justice Department appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in April 1992, but the court declined to review the case. In 1997, respecting President Bill Clinton's
newly instigated rule that documents should be withheld only if
releasing them would involve "foreseeable harm", the Justice Department
settled most of the outstanding issues outside court by releasing all
but 10 of the contested documents.
Wiener published the results of his 14-year campaign in January 2000. Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files
contained facsimiles of the documents, including "lengthy reports by
confidential informants detailing the daily lives of anti-war activists,
memos to the White House, transcripts of TV shows on which Lennon
appeared, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police on drug
charges". The story is told in the documentary The US vs. John Lennon.
The final 10 documents in Lennon's FBI file, which reported on his ties
with London anti-war activists in 1971 and had been withheld as
containing "national security information provided by a foreign
government under an explicit promise of confidentiality", were released
in December 2006. They contained no indication that the British
government had regarded Lennon as a serious threat; one example of the
released material was a report that two prominent British leftists had
hoped Lennon would finance a left-wing bookshop and reading room.
Writing
Beatles biographer Bill Harry
wrote that Lennon began drawing and writing creatively at an early age
with the encouragement of his uncle. He collected his stories, poetry,
cartoons and caricatures in a Quarry Bank High School exercise book that
he called the Daily Howl. The drawings were often of crippled
people, and the writings satirical, and throughout the book was an
abundance of wordplay. According to classmate Bill Turner, Lennon
created the Daily Howl to amuse his best friend and later Quarrymen bandmate Pete Shotton, to whom he would show his work before he let anyone else see it. Turner said that Lennon "had an obsession for Wigan Pier. It kept cropping up", and in Lennon's story A Carrot in a Potato Mine,
"the mine was at the end of Wigan Pier." Turner described how one of
Lennon's cartoons depicted a bus stop sign annotated with the question,
"Why?" Above was a flying pancake, and below, "a blind man wearing
glasses leading along a blind dog – also wearing glasses".[293]
Lennon's love of wordplay and nonsense with a twist found a wider audience when he was 24. Harry writes that In His Own Write
(1964) was published after "Some journalist who was hanging around the
Beatles came to me and I ended up showing him the stuff. They said,
'Write a book' and that's how the first one came about". Like the Daily Howl
it contained a mix of formats including short stories, poetry, plays
and drawings. One story, "Good Dog Nigel", tells the tale of "a happy
dog, urinating on a lamp post, barking, wagging his tail – until he
suddenly hears a message that he will be killed at three o'clock". The Times Literary Supplement
considered the poems and stories "remarkable ... also very funny ...
the nonsense runs on, words and images prompting one another in a chain
of pure fantasy". Book Week reported, "This is nonsense writing, but one has only to review the literature of nonsense
to see how well Lennon has brought it off. While some of his homonyms
are gratuitous word play, many others have not only double meaning but a
double edge." Lennon was not only surprised by the positive reception,
but that the book was reviewed at all, and suggested that readers "took
the book more seriously than I did myself. It just began as a laugh for
me".
In combination with A Spaniard in the Works (1965), In His Own Write formed the basis of the stage play The Lennon Play: In His Own Write, co-adapted by Victor Spinetti and Adrienne Kennedy. After negotiations between Lennon, Spinetti and the artistic director of the National Theatre, Sir Laurence Olivier, the play opened at The Old Vic in 1968. Lennon and Ono attended the opening night performance, their second public appearance together. In 1969, Lennon wrote "Four in Hand", a skit based on his teenage experiences of group masturbation, for Kenneth Tynan's play Oh! Calcutta! After Lennon's death, further works were published, including Skywriting by Word of Mouth (1986), Ai: Japan Through John Lennon's Eyes: A Personal Sketchbook (1992), with Lennon's illustrations of the definitions of Japanese words, and Real Love: The Drawings for Sean (1999). The Beatles Anthology (2000) also presented examples of his writings and drawings.
Art
In 1967, Lennon, who had attended art school, funded and anonymously participated in Ono's art exhibition Half-A-Room that was held at Lisson Gallery. Following his collaborating with Ono in the form of The Plastic Ono Band that began in 1968, Lennon became involved with the Fluxus art movement. In the summer of 1968, Lennon began showing his painting and conceptual art at his You Are Here art exhibition held at Robert Fraser Gallery in London. The show, that was dedicated to Ono, included a six foot in diameter round white monochrome painting called You Are Here (1968). Besides the white monochrome
paint, its surface contained only the tiny hand written inscription
"you are here". This painting, and the show in general, was conceived as
a response to Ono's conceptual art piece This is Not Here (1966) that was part of her Fluxus installation of wall text pieces called Blue Room Event (1966). Blue Room Event
consisted of sentences that Ono wrote directly on her white New York
apartment walls and ceiling. Lennon's You Are Here show also included
sixty charity collection boxes, a pair of Lennon's shoes with a sign
that read "I take my shoes off to you", a ready made black bike (an apparent homage to Marcel Duchamp and his 1917 Bicycle Wheel), an overturned white hat labeled For The Artist, and a large glass jar full of free-to-take you are here white pinbadges. A hidden camera secretly filmed the public reaction to the show.
For the 1 July opening, Lennon, dressed all in white (as was Ono),
released 365 white balloons into the city sky. Each ballon had attached
to it a small paper card to be mailed back to Lennon at the Robert
Fraser Gallery at 69 Duke Street, with the finder's comments.
After moving to New York City, from 18 April to 12 June 1970, Lennon and Ono presented a series of Fluxus conceptual art events and concerts at Joe Jones's Tone Deaf Music Store called GRAPEFRUIT FLUXBANQUET. Performances included Come Impersonating John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Grapefruit Banquet and Portrait of John Lennon as a Young Cloud by Yoko + Everybody. That same year, Lennon also made The Complete Yoko Ono Word Poem Game (1970): a conceptual art poem collage that utilized the cut-up (or découpé) aleatory technique typical of the work of John Cage and many Fluxus artists. The cut-up technique can be traced to at least the Dadaists of the 1920s, but was popularized in the early 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs. For The Complete Yoko Ono Word Poem Game, Lennon took the portrait photo of himself that was included in the packaging of the 1968 The Beatles LP (aka The White Album)
and cut it into 134 small rectangles. A single word was written on the
back of each fragment, to be read in any order. The portrait image was
meant to be reassembled in any order. The Complete Yoko Ono Word Poem Game was presented by Lennon to Ono on 28 July in an inscribed envelope for her to randomly assemble and reassemble at will.
Lennon made whimsical drawings and fine art prints on occasion until the end of his life. For example, he drew a 1968 comic for the macrobiotic magazine Harmony and one printed inside the sleeve of his Wedding Album (1969). Lennon exhibited at Eugene Schuster's London Arts Gallery his Bag Onelithographs in an exhibition that included several depicting erotic
imagery. The show opened on 15 January 1970 and 24 hours later it was
raided by police officers who confiscated 8 of the 14 lithos on the
grounds of indecency. The lithographs had been drawn by Lennon in 1969 chronicling his wedding and honeymoon with Yoko Ono and one of their bed-ins staged in the interests of world peace.
In 1969, Lennon appeared in the Yoko Ono Fluxus art film Self-Portrait, which consisted of a single forty-minute shot of Lennon's penis. The film was premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. In 1971, Lennon made an experimental art film called Erection that was edited on 16 mm film by George Maciunas, founder of the Fluxus art movement and avant-garde contemporary of Ono. The film uses the songs "Airmale" and "You" from Ono's 1971 album Fly, as its soundtrack.
Lennon played a mouth organ during a bus journey to visit his cousin
in Scotland. Impressed, the driver told Lennon of a harmonica he could
have if he came to Edinburgh the following day, where one had been
stored in the bus depot since a passenger had left it on a bus.
The professional instrument quickly replaced Lennon's toy; he often
used the instrument during the Beatles' Hamburg years, and it became a
signature sound in the group's early recordings. His mother taught him
how to play the banjo, later buying him an acoustic guitar. At 16, he
played rhythm guitar with the Quarrymen.
As his career progressed, he played a variety of electric guitars, predominantly the Rickenbacker 325, Epiphone Casino and Gibson J-160E, and, from the start of his solo career, the Gibson Les Paul Junior. Double Fantasy
producer Jack Douglas claimed that since his Beatle days Lennon
habitually tuned his D-string slightly flat, so his Aunt Mimi could tell
which guitar was his on recordings. Occasionally he played a six-string bass guitar, the Fender Bass VI, providing bass on some Beatles numbers ("Back in the U.S.S.R.", "The Long and Winding Road", "Helter Skelter") that occupied McCartney with another instrument.
His other instrument of choice was the piano, on which he composed many
songs, including "Imagine", described as his best-known solo work. His jamming on a piano with McCartney in 1963 led to the creation of the Beatles' first US number one, "I Want to Hold Your Hand".[320] In 1964, he became one of the first British musicians to acquire a Mellotron keyboard, though it was not heard on a Beatles recording until "Strawberry Fields Forever" in 1967.
In 2024, a guitar of Lennon's that was thought to have been lost was found in an attic and auctioned at Julien's Auctions for $2.9 million (2.68 million euros)
Vocal style
Lennon's vocal style was heavily influenced by Little Richard, Larry Williams and Little Willie John; the British music writer Ian MacDonald
noted that "no white singer" had been able to imitate them successfully
before Lennon and McCartney. MacDonald contrasted Lennon's singing
voice, a "brassy northern roar flecked with bluesy moans", with the "conventionally glamorous" voices of earlier artists such as Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard. The British critic Nik Cohn
observed of Lennon, "He owned one of the best pop voices ever, rasped
and smashed and brooding, always fierce." Cohn wrote that Lennon,
performing "Twist and Shout", would "rant his way into total incoherence, half rupture himself". When the Beatles recorded the song, the final track during the one-day session that produced the band's 1963 debut album, Please Please Me,
Lennon's voice, already compromised by a cold, came close to giving
out. Lennon said, "I couldn't sing the damn thing, I was just
screaming." In the words of biographer Barry Miles, "Lennon simply shredded his vocal cords in the interests of rock 'n' roll." The Beatles' producer, George Martin,
tells how Lennon "had an inborn dislike of his own voice which I could
never understand. He was always saying to me: 'DO something with my
voice! ... put something on it... Make it different.'" Martin obliged, often using double-tracking and other techniques.
As his Beatles era segued into his solo career, his singing voice
found a widening range of expression. Biographer Chris Gregory writes
of Lennon "tentatively beginning to expose his insecurities in a number
of acoustic-led 'confessional' ballads, so beginning the process of
'public therapy' that will eventually culminate in the primal screams of
'Cold Turkey' and the cathartic John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band."[330] Music critic Robert Christgau called this Lennon's "greatest vocal performance... from scream to whine, is modulated electronically... echoed, filtered, and double tracked."
David Stuart Ryan described Lennon's vocal delivery as ranging from
"extreme vulnerability, sensitivity and even naivety" to a hard
"rasping" style. Wiener too described contrasts, saying the singer's voice can be "at first subdued; soon it almost cracks with despair". Music historian Ben Urish recalled hearing the Beatles' Ed Sullivan Show performance of "This Boy" played on the radio a few days after Lennon's murder: "As Lennon's vocals reached their peak...
it hurt too much to hear him scream with such anguish and emotion. But
it was my emotions I heard in his voice. Just like I always had."
Music historians Schinder and Schwartz wrote of the transformation in
popular music styles that took place between the 1950s and the 1960s.
They said that the Beatles' influence cannot be overstated: having
"revolutionised the sound, style, and attitude of popular music and
opened rock and roll's doors to a tidal wave of British rock acts", the
group then "spent the rest of the 1960s expanding rock's stylistic
frontiers". On National Poetry Day in 1999, the BBC conducted a poll to identify the UK's favourite song lyric and announced "Imagine" as the winner.
Two home recording demos by Lennon, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love", were finished by the three surviving members of the Beatles when they reunited in 1994 and 1995. Both songs were released as Beatles singles in conjunction with The Beatles Anthology compilations. A third song, "Now and Then", was also worked on but not released until 2023 whereupon it was dubbed "the last Beatles song", topping the UK charts.
In 1997, Yoko Ono and the BMI
Foundation established an annual music competition programme for
songwriters of contemporary musical genres to honour John Lennon's
memory and his large creative legacy. Over $400,000 have been given through BMI Foundation's John Lennon Scholarships to talented young musicians in the United States.
In a 2006 Guardian
article, Jon Wiener wrote: "For young people in 1972, it was thrilling
to see Lennon's courage in standing up to [US President] Nixon. That
willingness to take risks with his career, and his life, is one reason
why people still admire him today."
For music historians Urish and Bielen, Lennon's most significant effort
was "the self-portraits ... in his songs [which] spoke to, for, and
about, the human condition." Writing for El País in 2024, Amaia Odriozola described Lennon's Windsor glasses as being "known all over the world" and credited him with pioneering glasses as a "style statement" for musicians.
The Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership is regarded as one of the
most influential and successful of the 20th century. As performer,
writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number one singles in the US Hot 100
chart. His album sales in the US stand at 14 million units. Double Fantasy was his best-selling album, at three million shipments in the US. Released shortly before his death, it won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. That year, the BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music was given to Lennon.
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