John Lennon Biography
| John Winston Lennon was
born in Liverpool on October 9, 1940, during the height of WWII, his
father, Fred Lennon, off at sea. His father didn't turn up again
until five years later, and when he did he tried to take john away
from his mother, Julia, when she refused to restart her life with
him. Instead, he grew up in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton, with
his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George Smith, at 251 |
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| Menlove Ave, which
became nicknamed Mendips. Julia died in 1958, in an automobile
accident practically in front of Mendips, when John was seventeen.
Aunt Mimi ran a very strict household. John very quickly became
bored at school, preferring drawing and writing about his classmates
and teachers rather than his studies. Rebellious at an early age, he
had a very rough school history, sagging off from school (going AWOL
from classes) and petty stealing. His future looked bleak until Mimi
got the headmaster of the Quarrybank school to write a letter of
recommendation for John to the Liverpool Art College, because of his
drawings. It was at Liverpool Art College, in 1956, a friend played
him Elvis' Heartbreak Hotel, and John's musical interest
was piqued. Then he heard Lonnie Donegan's Rock Island Line
on Radio Luxembourg, and became part of the new Skiffle craze by
begging his Aunt Mimi until she broke down and bought him a guitar,
although she forever told him he would never get anywhere with it.
He had already learned to play the harmonica during his childhood,
and he taught himself the guitar by applying banjo chords that his
mother had taught him. In 1955 he started his own band, the
Quarrymen, with his long time pal and fellow troublemaker Pete
Shotton, singing all the popular songs, sometimes making up the
words when he couldn't get them all off the radio. Also in the
Quarrymen were Nigel Walley and Ivan Vaughan, the rest of John's
gang. It was Ivan Vaughan who introduced John to his friend, Paul
McCartney, in 1957. John married his girlfriend of four years,
Cynthia Powell, in 1962. She was pregnant with their son Julian at
the time, who was born in April, 1963. |
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