Word: lennon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...John Lennon is murdered in New York City...
...debates a few months ago over the relative influence of world leaders--Lenin over Stalin, Reagan over Kennedy, Ho Chi Minh over Che Guevara--involved a lot of learned discourses conducted as if we were sipping sherry in a faculty lounge. But the shift from Lenin to Lennon was wrenching. Indeed, the fights we had over artists and entertainers involved a lot of passionate diatribes conducted as if we were swigging tequila at all-night bull sessions in a sophomore dorm. In order to rationalize the process (somewhat), we divided the world of arts into 20 categories, ranging from writer...
Actually, of course, they hailed from Liverpool, a semi-grim seaport on the northwestern coast of England. John Lennon, born there in 1940, never knew the seagoing father who had deserted his mother; mainly a doting aunt raised the boy. He grew up arty and angry--and musical, it turned out, after his mother bought him the traditional cheap kid guitar (the label inside said GUARANTEED NOT TO SPLIT), and he quickly worked out the chords to the Buddy Holly hit That...
Paul McCartney, born in 1942 and destined to become Lennon's songwriting soul mate, seemed a sunnier type: well mannered, level-headed, all that. But he had weathered trauma of his own, losing his mother to breast cancer in his early teens. McCartney encountered Lennon in the logical way, given the times and the two boys' musical interests: on the skiffle scene...
Skiffle music--a sort of jug-band clatter ideally suited to inexpensive and homemade instruments--was all the rage, and in 1957 Lennon formed a band called the Quarrymen. By the following year, the group had been joined by McCartney and his school friend George Harrison, then just 14. In 1960, calling themselves the Silver Beatles, and with drummer Pete Best in tow, they sailed to Germany to play the riotous red-light-district bars of Hamburg, drink Herculean quantities of beer and gulp down handfuls of illicitly energizing pills to keep them stage ready seven nights a week...