9th October - Happy Birthday!

John Winston Ono Lennon
(9 October 1940 - 8 December 1980)

This good looking, cheeky face is known to all..He's THE guy from the Beatles, as someone here said. John Lennon was born and raised in Liverpool. And I was here on the 9th of October, two houses away from where he was born!!!!

Lennon was a cheeky, rebellious, iconoclastic and quick-witted bugger. He was an artist, a peace activist, an author, a husband, a father and a HERO.

This is what I know about him today.

In the BBC poll "100 Great Britons", the British public voted Lennon into eighth place.

Lennon was considered the "leader" of The Beatles, because he was the one who founded the original group, inviting Paul McCartney to join later, who in turn invited George Harrison.

Musically, Lennon most often played the "rhythm guitar" role, while George Harrison played lead guitar.. Lennon also frequently played keyboards!

Lennon abandoned his leadership role in the mid-Sixties, under the influence of LSD and Timothy Leary's book The Psychedelic Experience.

John Lennon hated the album "Let it Be"!!!!!

Lennon was the first to break the band's rule that no wives or girlfriends would attend recording sessions. He brought Yoko into the studio.

Lennon :"I started the band. I finished it."

He once wrote a song called "How do you sleep?" and it is rumoured to be an attack on Paul Mc Cartney...obviously, I'm not sure whether this is fact or fiction..but heheheh!

Of the four former Beatles, Lennon had perhaps the most varied recording career. While he was still a Beatle, Lennon and Ono recorded three albums of experimental music, and also the Wedding Album.

His first 'solo' album of popular music was in 1969(before the Beatles split up) at the Rock 'n' Roll Festival in Toronto with Plastic Ono Band(what a name!), which included Eric Clapton in it. Apparently, they learned the whole set of songs on the plane from England to Canada.

And we all know "Give Peace a chance", his anti-war anthem. His other singles were "Cold Turkey" about his struggles with heroin addiction) and "Instant Karma!"

1971 was his first solo album "Imagine", which was hugely successful!

1972 was "Some time in New York City". It was the antithesis to "Imagine". It was loud and political. Songs about British politics, Northern Ireland, racial and sexual relations.

He even released an anti-sexism song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World". It was banned almost everywhere, and the radio refused to broadcast it. It implied that just as some people of darker skin are discriminated against in some countries, women were discriminated against on a global scale! Quite the feminist he turned out to be!

1973 was "Mind Games". It was satirical. In this year, he also wrote "I'm the Greatest" for Ringo Starr's Ringo Album.

1974 saw the release of "Walls and Bridges".

1975, we got "Rock and Roll" and "Shaved Fish".

In 1980, the year he died, he released his album "Double Fantasy". It just so happens, that Lennon's first encounter with his murderer, Mark Chapman was earlier in the day, on the day of his death, when he approached John Lennon for an autograph on the cover of this very album.

On December 8th 1980 at around 11 at night, he was shot by Mark Chapman, right outside his apartment in New York City.

Three witnesses (a doorman at the entrance, an elevator operator, and a cab driver who had just dropped off a passenger) saw Chapman standing in the shadows by the arch.

The Lennons walked by, and after Ono had opened the inner door and had walked inside — when Lennon was the only person outside, Chapman called out, "Mr. Lennon!" and shot Lennon four times. According to the autopsy, two shots struck Lennon in the left side of his back and two in his left shoulder. All four caused serious internal damage and bleeding. The fatal shot pierced Lennon's aeorta.

Oh you know something eerie? Apparently, after shooting Lennon, Chapman calmly sat down on the sidewalk and waited. The doorman walked to Chapman and said, "Do you know what you've just done?" And Chapman just said, in a matter-of-fact tone, "I just shot John Lennon."

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Well, 9th October was the birthday of a legend, and I wanted to share some bits of his life that I have recently come to know about, as a tribute to the memory of one of the world's greatest and most loved musicians.