# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Now I understand what you have to do. Put your political message across with a little honey." So said John Lennon about "Imagine," the most successful single of his solo career. The song has been covered by artists in every genre, from Liza Minnelli and Stevie Wonder to Neil Young and Lady Gaga, and performed at some of the biggest events across the globe. The Olympics. New Year's Eve. Concerts for Peace. Concerts for Hunger.

The impact of the song is unquestionable. But disguised within its message of peace and love and its flowing piano melody is a collection of edgy, "dangerous" ideas that challenge society as we know it. The song that has become an anthem all over the world is actually full of controversial lyrics and radical ideas. Lennon once called it "'Working Class Hero' for conservatives," and indeed, it challenges the status quo at its most fundamental.

It only took one session to record "Imagine"

Lennon composed the song in one session, sitting at his white grand piano in his Tittenhurst Park estate in England in May 1971. His wife, Yoko Ono, watched him as he played the melody and wrote most of the lyrics. He recorded it in his home studio with help from musicians Alan White, longtime Beatle friend (and artist behind the cover of the Revolver album) Klaus Voorman, Nicky Hopkins, and producer Phil Spector, who uncharacteristically kept the track fairly simple. They experimented, at one point having Hopkins play on the same piano as Lennon, but on a higher octave. The more they added, the more they ended up stripping away.

The final mix was done at The Record Plant in New York City, a city where Lennon and Ono would soon make their home. Strings were added by members of the New York Philharmonic, called "the Flux Fiddlers" by Lennon.

The song was released on October 11, 1971. Everyone knew the song was special at the time, but couldn't have had any idea of the impact it would have on the world, both musically and politically. Paul McCartney - someone inclined to be less than generous about Lennon's early solo career, given what Lennon said about his - admitted he knew it was "a killer" the first time he heard it. Bono said it was the reason for his career. George Martin, famous for producing the Beatles' records and helping steer them to musical superstardom, says the album it's on, Imagine, is the one he most wishes he'd produced. And Jimmy Carter said, "...in many countries around the world - my wife and I have visited about 125 countries - you hear John Lennon's song 'Imagine' used almost equally with national anthems."

Critics had issues with the meaning behind the lyrics

It's this that seems ironic, given the lyrics: "Imagine there's no countries / It isn't hard to do / Nothing to kill or die for..." The song has been accepted all over the world as a song of peace and unity, as it asks us to embrace what some call anarchy and early critics labeled communism. "Imagine there's no heaven.... Imagine there's no countries.... Imagine no possessions.... And no religion, too." Sounds about as anti-American, anti-British, anti-establishment as a song can be, and yet it's a song of positivity and hope, about the possibilities of a better human existence. Feelings of peace and acceptance are swirled around lyrics suggesting we abolish some of the things people hold most dear. Even those who claim to accept the message struggle with its meaning. Lennon was approached by the World Church asking if they could use it but change the lyrics to "one religion" instead of "no religion." Lennon said no, explaining that that would defeat the whole purpose of the song. Since his death, Ono has been approached many times by groups who wanted to do the same thing, and she consistently refuses. No doubt all the world's fanatics are imagining one religion, but that's the opposite of what he was singing about.

Those weren't the only lyrics people had issues with. Many thought it was hypocritical for a man who owned a custom-painted Rolls Royce (and barely drove it) to be preaching "imagine no possessions." ( Elvis Costello, a lifelong Lennon fan, even included it in the lyrics to "The Other Side of Summer," in which he sang, "Was it a millionaire who said imagine no possessions?") Lennon, always a step ahead of everyone, was updating his lyrics in live performances. A year after the song was released, during a performance at Madison Square Garden on August 30, 1972, he'd already changed two of the lines. "Imagine no possessions / I wonder if you can" became "Imagine no possessions / I wonder if we can," and "Nothing to kill or die for / A brotherhood of man" changed to "Nothing to kill or die for / A brotherhood/sisterhood of man."

Photo: Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

The second, in particular, was a big shift for someone who'd spent most of his youth as a chauvinist. He later admitted to writer David Sheff that the song had been inspired by poems from Ono's book Grapefruit, and that he should have credited the song to Lennon-Ono. (In 2017, Ono was finally given a songwriting credit.) He said he would have done that for any male artist he worked with, but at the time, he was still backwards thinking and wasn't "man enough" to do the right thing. But he wouldn't have written the song without her poem and acknowledged it publicly by putting it on the back of the Imagine album cover. His other lyrical influence was a Christian prayer book given to him by comedian/activist Dick Gregory, which touted the concept of positive prayer. The imagination, Lennon was telling us, is the most powerful tool we have.

"Imagine" is represented all over the world

Of all the songs he wrote and performed, many of which have had a tremendous impact on our culture, "Imagine" has the most resonance. While its influence reaches across the globe, there are physical representations of it in the two places that most represented home to Lennon. The Liverpool Airport, renamed the Liverpool John Lennon Airport, has the line "above us only sky" painted on the roof. Yoko's monument to her husband, in the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park, is a mosaic of the word Imagine, where fans gather to mourn him as well as to celebrate his legacy.

Photo: Lennyjjk (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

Like Lennon himself, "Imagine" is complex. At first listen, it's easy to think of it as a simple ballad, a song of peace and a piano-driven melody. But the call of peace calls for the abolition of what we often cling to most fiercely. It's not a blueprint, with instructions on how to give up some of the parameters by which we define ourselves, but a call for us to imagine something that seems unimaginable in the world we live in. It's revolutionary without calling for literal revolution and has no less relevance in the uncertain world of today than it did in 1971 when it was written. In a world of unending conflict over exactly the things he mentions in the song, we want to imagine it too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Legacy of John Lennon's Song "Imagine"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Now I understand what you have to do. Put your political message across with a little honey." So said John Lennon about "Imagine," the most successful single of his solo career. The song has been covered by artists in every genre, from Liza Minnelli and Stevie Wonder to Neil Young and Lady Gaga, and performed at some of the biggest events across the globe.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
December 8, 2016 marks 36 years since the death of legendary musician John Lennon, a member of the iconic British rock band The Beatles. Lennon helped to shape music up until his tragic death on that quiet winter day back in 1980. Crazed fan Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in front of his apartment, ending too soon the influential career of a visionary.

Have Your Voice Heard: Become an Odyssey Creator

Lennon and The Beatles had a lasting impact on the music industry. The band never took rock music for what it was. They always searched for ways to expand and change the genre, consistently incorporating innovative new ideas into their songs. They also made waves in the record player industry. An increased demand for Beatles albums led to booming business for inventors and led to the development of better products. The Beatles paved the way for music videos. The group produced a number of short films such as "Can't Buy Me Love" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" that focused on expressing the ideas of their songs visually. The Beatles used this method once they stopped touring as a way to continue sharing their music with the world. This later led to the creation of the strictly music video channel MTV that was extremely popular in the 1980s.

Lennon continued to influence music during his solo career. Many of the songs on his first albums showed the public a new side of Lennon as he expressed his emotions through music. He used his work to confront his feelings about fellow Beatle Paul McCartney spilling the news of the group's split, as well as emotional hardships that he faced throughout his life. Arguably his most successful single, "Imagine" reached audiences in the most remote parts of the world. His peaceful teachings went international with this song, inspiring those around the world like no artist had done before. He also used his work as a medium for political activism. As he vehemently spoke out against the war in Vietnam Lennon helped to sway the American opinion of the war itself, most notably by creating an anti-war symbol with the release of his song "Give Peace a Chance" in 1969. After using his peaceful 1969 anthem as an anti-Nixon campaign Lennon faced the threat of deportation on an old drug charge. He publicly fought this, helping to create the movement for the legalization of marijuana in America.

The impact of Lennon and The Beatles is still felt today. Their influence led to the creation of new technologies and new depths for not only rock, but all genres of music. Artists continue to use their music videos as extensions of the messages behind their music, and they still use their music as extensions of themselves. Recently, music has included a fight for human rights and general equality for all persons. People have taken notes from Lennon, the man who wished only to create change through his craft. In a time such as this, where social distress and protest are extremely prevalent, the fight for social change can greatly benefit from the peaceful ways of this cultural legend.

"I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one" Imagine, John Lennon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Brief Reflection On The Influence Of John Lennon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
December 8, 2016 marks 36 years since the death of legendary musician John Lennon, a member of the iconic British rock band The Beatles. Lennon helped to shape music up until his tragic death on that quiet winter day back in 1980.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Various pictures and portraits 'decorate' the John Lennon Wall in Prague, which is now very popular among young artists and tourists. In the past the Lennon Wall represented not only a memorial to John Lennon and his ideas for peace, but also a monument t

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?"
― John Lennon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
John Lennon Quotes (Author of In His Own Write)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
221 quotes from John Lennon: 'You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.', 'Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.', and 'There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
John Lennon was an activist for love who became an emblem of peace. The man who co-founded the most iconic and influential pop music band of all time, The Beatles, was known as much for his talents as a singer-songwriter as for his larger-than-life presence in the public eye.

Lennon's parents were married briefly and at the age of five he was forced by his father to choose his favorite parent, only to end up living and being raised by his aunt Mimi Smith. However, his mother visited him regularly and taught him to play the banjo and the piano.

After helping create the first British band to break out big in the United States and enjoying a massive success, Lennon decided to leave the group and start a solo career with the help of his second wife, Yoko Ono. The two also invented a form of peace protest by staying in bed while being filmed and interviewed.

In 1971, Lennon released his second solo album "Imagine," which quickly became a commercial success. He belonged to a time when pop artists embraced their roles as social and cultural influencers, and used the podiums granted them by their celebrity to shape our values and vision for a better world.

Tragically, in 1980 Lennon was shot and killed outside of his apartment building in New York by a deranged fan. His death saddened millions of fans worldwide and had a major impact on pop culture.

Of all these dreamers and darers, few had a voice as passionate or powerful as John Lennon's, who continues to inspire countless millions decades after he was stolen from us before his time.

Here are 18 Powerful John Lennon Quotes to Live and Love By - and to help us remember this giant of music who always reminded us to believe in our better angels.

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

[the_ad id="678″]

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life.

Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.

I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?

Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.

We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.

Peace is not something you wish for; It's something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.

[the_ad id="678″]

I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.

When you do something beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun, every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.

It matters not who you love, where you love, why you love, when you love or how you love, it matters only that you love.

We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.

I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people.

If everyone could just be happy with themselves and the choices people around them make, the world would instantly be a better place!

Declare it. Just the same way we declare war. That is how we will have peace... we just need to declare it.

[the_ad id="678″]

Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it'll always get you the right ones.

Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.

Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground.

You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

Trying to please everybody is impossible - if you did that, you'd end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You've just got to make the decision about what you think is your best, and do it.

A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it.

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.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be...

One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside.

It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.

There are no problems, only solutions.

Love is all you need.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realized that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

For those of you in the cheap seats I'd like ya to clap your hands to this one; the rest of you can just rattle your jewelry!

How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

Nobody controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that's just barely possible.

What we've got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it we'll sink.

Everything is as important as everything else.

If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that's a problem. Peace and love are eternal.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

Only by trying on other people's clothes do we find what size we are.

Produce your own dream. It's quite possible to do anything, but not if you put it on the leaders and the parking meters.

I don't believe in killing whatever the reason!

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.

It's weird not to be weird.

Get out there and get peace, think peace, and live peace and breathe peace, and you'll get it as soon as you like.

When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.

Happiness is just how you feel when you don't feel miserable.

I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you.

If you want peace, you won't get it with violence.

Art is only a way of expressing pain.

You're all geniuses, and you're all beautiful. You don't need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are.

I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.

You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's all down to you, mate.

The more real you get, the more unreal the world gets.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
18 Powerful John Lennon Quotes to Live and Love By

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
John Lennon was an activist for love who became an icon of peace, and whose voice continues to inspire decades after he was stolen from us before his time. Here are 49 Powerful John Lennon quotes to live and love by.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Yesterday marked the 44th anniversary of the release of John Lennon's goody-goody solo album Imagine, on which he softly bleats for world peace and borderless harmony. Described by Rolling Stone as Lennon's "greatest musical gift to the world," the song of the same name fantasizes about a mankind without qualities of evil and suffering, such as possessions, greed, hunger, and war. Perhaps a less ambitious dream would be of a world in which people are not as monstrous as John Lennon.

Read More: Why We Need An All-Female Music Festival Now More than Ever

It is difficult to condense the variety and scope of Lennon's treachery into a short article, and more so when you have the vague lyrics of a philandering abuser's greatest musical gift to the world stuck in your head. Starting with his first marriage, to Cynthia Powell, whom he impregnated while she was renting his childhood bedroom in Liverpool during the Beatles' Hamburg years, Lennon did many things that can only be classified as classically bad. According to the Lennons' housekeeper, Dorothy Jartlett, in a recently discovered letter written 50 years ago, the years following the birth of their son, Julian, saw Lennon as an absent father who would criticize and even smack the sensitive Julian for things like having bad table manners. (Actually, Jartlett said, "Julian's table manners were, if anything, better than average.") Throughout the marriage, Lennon slept with other women and would leave drugs "lying around the house." Things came to a head when he drunkenly told Cynthia about his affair with the Japanese artist Yoko Ono. Soon after Ono revealed she was pregnant, Lennon's divorce was finalized at the end of 1968.

Read More: Dr. Seuss Was a Philandering Bigot

Although Ono miscarried, her relationship with Lennon blossomed as they protested the Vietnam War and, as she put it in a 2012 interview with the Telegraph, "ruined" both of their careers together. Although Ono was mocked and despised for supposedly destroying the Beatles' floppy-haired camaraderie, it was Lennon who would make her accompany him to both band practices and the bathroom. (This sexist double standard is perhaps being repaid today in the form of Ono's current public image as a wise older feminist who has endured strife.) Lennon had another famous affair during his marriage to Ono, with the couple's assistant, May Pang, but Ono says the 18-month fling was a welcome break from their intense relationship and "not hurtful."

That Lennon endured intense mental suffering is undeniable; in his 1980 interview with Playboy-which was published two days before Lennon was shot and killed in front of his Upper West Side apartment building-he describes his 1965 "fat Elvis period," during which he was "fat and depressed" and wrote the song " Help!" as, yes, a cry for help. He and the other Beatles were "smoking marijuana for breakfast," and periodically Lennon would endure "deep depressions where [he] would like to jump out the window." He admits to hitting women-"any woman"-and explains, "That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace." Later in the interview, he justifies his smoking habit with his macrobiotic diet, saying, "Macrobiotic people don't believe in the big C. Whether you take that as a rationalization or not, macrobiotics don't believe that smoking is bad for you." This is not necessarily harmful to anyone but himself, but it is evidence of Lennon's God complex as well as his general self-satisfied douchiness.

Possible psychoanalytic explanations for Lennon's issues include his tumultuous relationships with his parents. Lennon's father abandoned him-which Lennon never forgave him for, despite his father's repentance-and in a 1979 audio confession, Lennon revealed that as a teen he bore sexual desires for his mother. He later regretted not having made a move on her, saying, "Presumably, she would have allowed it." There have also been rumors that Lennon conducted homosexual affairs with Paul McCartney and with the Beatles's manager Brian Epstein, which might have created tensions within and for Lennon, but of course these are not examples of the Beatle's badness, except inasmuch as they probably would have occurred during his married years.

Read More: There's a Rape Problem at Music Festivals

All of this information is widely available, much of it having come from Lennon's own mouth, yet our cultural fascination-nearing martyrdom-with the man persists. It pains me to admit that I have been culpable in the complacency, for from ages approximately 12 to 15 I owned and espoused a version of the cool-leaning-John Lennon-wearing-a-New York City-T-shirt T-shirt, in the color sky blue. That I bought it at a factory discount outlet and likely did not contribute to its profitability does little to quiet my screaming guilty conscience, but I reassure myself with the fact that at least I have never popped on the White Album during my barista shift. I like a pointy-nosed British man with cool glasses as much as the next millennial woman, but come on.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
You Don't Have to 'Imagine' John Lennon Beat Women and Children-It's Just a Fact

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Yesterday marked the 44th anniversary of the release of John Lennon's goody-goody solo album Imagine, on which he softly bleats for world peace and borderless harmony. Described by Rolling Stone as Lennon's "greatest musical gift to the world," the song of the same name fantasizes about a mankind without qualities of evil and suffering, such as possessions, greed, hunger, and war.

# data[].attributes.body
Died December 8th 1980

( HE WAS MURDERED )

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
John Lennon left behind an indelible legacy of music that evoked a range of emotions. Songs like "Real Love" (with the Beatles), "Jealous Guy" and "Imagine," to name a few, were a testament to his musical genius.

On December 8, 1980, Lennon was fatally shot in front of his New York City home by crazed fan Mark David Chapman. Only two months earlier, on October 9, 1980, Lennon had celebrated his 40th birthday with his wife, Yoko Ono, and five-year-old son, Sean (who coincidentally shares the same birthday). The occasion was uniquely momentous for Lennon, as Ono had surprised both her husband and son with a sky-written message above their Manhattan apartment building: "Happy Birthday John & Sean - Love Yoko." That November, Lennon and Ono had released the collaborative project Double Fantasy, and only weeks before his tragic death, Lennon had been overjoyed by the news that the record had gone gold.

In an interview with Rolling Stone on December 5 - just three days before he was killed - Lennon had shared some eerily prophetic words of wisdom: "Give peace a chance, not shoot people for peace. All we need is love. I believe it."

Lennon was in good spirits on the morning of December 8, 1980, but sadly, his life would be tragically cut short before the day's end. Below, we present a timeline of the legendary musician's final hours in detail.

11 a.m. - Rolling Stone magazine photographer Annie Leibovitz arrives at Lennon's apartment for a photo shoot. Around the same time, Lennon returns home after getting a haircut - reportedly in a 1950s Teddy Boy style - at an Upper West Side barbershop near the Dakota, the building where he and Ono live. During the shoot, Leibovitz wants to take a photograph of Lennon and Ono together, both nude, but digresses after Ono says she's uncomfortable with being completely nude. She takes a single Polaroid of a completely clothed Ono lying on her back and a naked Lennon, who's kissing and embracing his wife in a fetal-like position. Upon looking at the shot, the three know that they've created something profound. Incredibly impressed with the image, the couple tells Leibovitz, "You've captured our relationship exactly."

(The now-iconic photo would go on to be printed on Rolling Stone's cover on January 22, 1981. In 2005, it's named the "top cover of the previous 40 years" by the American Society of Magazine Editors.)

12 p.m. - Paul Goresh, a friend of Lennon's, makes small talk outside of the Dakota with a stranger he'd encountered there minutes earlier: 25-year-old Chapman. Chapman, who's holding a copy of Double Fantasy, tells Goresh that he's from Hawaii and is awaiting Lennon's exit from the building in hopes that he'll autograph his album.

Photo: Bettmann/CORBIS

12:40 p.m. - Employees from San Francisco's RKO Radio, including famed radio personality Dave Sholin, arrive at the Dakota for an interview with Lennon to promote Double Fantasy. A smiling Lennon "does a little jump in the air" and in a welcoming fashion announces, "Well, here I am, folks, the show's ready to begin!" He speaks candidly about the lost revolutionary focus of the 1960s and his advocacy for world peace and feminism. "Maybe in the '60s we were naïve and like children and later everyone went back to their rooms and said, 'We didn't get a wonderful world of flowers and peace... The world is a nasty horrible place because it didn't give us everything we cried for,'" he said. "Right? Crying for it wasn't enough." When the interview comes to a close, Lennon remarks, "I consider that my work won't be finished until I'm dead and buried and I hope that's a long, long time."

During the interview, his son Sean, accompanied by nanny Helen Seaman, returns home after spending time on Long Island.

4:30 p.m. - Lennon and Ono have exited the Dakota with the RKO Radio crew and are awaiting a ride to take them to the Record Plant studio in Midtown where they plan to work on a new single, "Walking On Thin Ice." During this time Chapman, his Double Fantasy copy still in hand, approaches Lennon and extends the album. When the former Beatle asks the stranger if he wants him to sign it, Chapman nods timidly. Standing nearby and camera in hand, Goresh takes a couple of photos of the two men. RKO's limo arrives shortly thereafter, and Sholin offers to give Lennon and Ono a lift to the studio.

5 p.m. - Lennon and Ono arrive at Record Plant, where they begin working with producer Jack Douglas on their new song, the lyrics of which would later prove strangely prescient: Walking on thin ice/ I'm paying the price/ For throwing the dice in the air/ Why must we learn it the hard way/ And play the game of life with your heart? ... I may cry some day/ But the tears will dry whichever way/ And when our hearts return to ashes/ It'll be just a story/ It'll be just a story. Lennon plays a guitar piece for the track-his last musical recording-before the jovial couple exits the studio.

10:50 p.m. - Husband and wife leave the studio and head home to the Dakota. After exiting their limo, Lennon makes eye contact with the awkward young man he'd met hours earlier: Chapman. With his now-signed album in hand, he's after more than an autograph this time. Seconds later, Chapman pulls out a .38 handgun and fires five shots at the musician, hitting Lennon four times in the back and chest. Lennon somehow manages to continue walking, eventually collapsing in the front vestibule of the Dakota. Strewn around him are a number of cassettes that he'd been holding.

A terrified Ono enters the building screaming, "John's been shot!" Seconds later, building worker Jay Hastings alerts the police. Officer Steve Spiro arrives at the scene within minutes and Lennon is taken to Roosevelt Hospital, near Central Park on 59th Street.

11:15 p.m. - After doctors in Roosevelt's emergency room spend several frantic minutes trying to save Lennon, Ono is approached by the head ER doctor. He informs her that the medical staff was unable to resuscitate her husband. Lennon is officially pronounced dead. Ono is hysterical for several minutes afterward. "She refused to accept or believe that," Lynn recalled in a 2005 interview with the Washington Post. "For five minutes, she kept repeating, 'It's not true. I don't believe you. You're lying.'" After regaining her composure, Ono asks Lynn to wait to publicly announce the news so that she can tell Sean.

ABC's Howard Cosell is first to break the news that Lennon has died, interrupting a Monday Night Football game between the New England Patriots and Miami Dolphins. Cosell also announces that a special edition of Nightline will air 30 minutes after the game, providing additional information on the musician's death.

Photo: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

Following the report - and continuing for several days thereafter - thousands of Lennon fans unite near the Dakota to mourn the late musician. The public response to Lennon's murder is noted as the first of its magnitude since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Vigils are held in numerous locations worldwide.

Events are held around the world each December to commemorate the rock icon's death and everlasting impact.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
John Lennon's Death: A Timeline of Events

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
John Lennon left behind an indelible legacy of music that evoked a range of emotions. Songs like "Real Love" (with the Beatles), "Jealous Guy" and "Imagine," to name a few, were a testament to his musical genius. On December 8, 1980, Lennon was fatally shot in front of his New York City home by crazed fan Mark David Chapman.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Come Together - The Beatles (Across the Universe) Lyrics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
JEALOUS GUY. (Ultimate Mix, 2020) - John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band (w the Flux Fiddlers)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
IMAGINE. (Ultimate Mix, 2020) - John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band (with the Flux Fiddlers) HD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The interview took place at John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's temporary basement flat in London - a flat where Jimi Hendrix, Ringo Starr, and William Burroughs, among others, have stayed. But the flat seemed as much John's and Yoko's as the Indian incense which took over the living room. The walls were covered with photos of John, of Yoko, a giant Sgt. Pepper ensign, Richard Chamberlain's poster collage of news clippings of the Stones bust, the Time magazine cover of the Beatles.
We arrived at five on the afternoon of September 17, said hello to Robert Fraser, who arranged the interview, to John and Yoko, sitting together, looking "tres bien ensemble." We sat down around a simple wooden table, covered with magazines, newspapers, sketch paper, boxes, drawings, a beaded necklace shaped in the form of a pentangle. John said he had to be at a recording session in a half hour, so we talked for a while about John's show at the Fraser gallery. John wrote some reminders to himself in the wonderfully intense and absorbed way that a kid has painting the sun for the first time. As a philosopher once remarked: "Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness." When we arrived the next afternoon, Sept. 18, John was walking around the room, humming what sounded like "Hold Me Tight"- just singing the song to the air. Old '50's forty-fives were scattered about the floor, and John played Rosie and the Originals' version of "Give Me Love." We talked about the lyrics of Gene Vincent's "Woman Love." In spite of having slept only two hours, John asked us to sit down on the floor and begin the interview. Any suspicions that John would be ornery, mean, cruel, or brutish - feelings attributed to him and imagined by press reports and various paranoic personalities - never arose even for the purpose of being pressed down. As John said simply about the interview: "There's nothing more fun than talking about your own songs and your own records. I mean you can't help it, it's your bit, really. We talk about them together. Remember that." It's impossible to recapture in print John's inflections and pronunciations of words like "ahppens," for example. Wish you had been there.
-Jonathan Cott

I've listed a group of songs that I associate with you, in terms of what you are or what you were, songs that struck me as embodying you a little bit: "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "Strawberry Fields," "It's Only Love," "She Said She Said," "Lucy in the Sky," "I'm Only Sleeping," "Run for Your Life," "I Am the Walrus," "All You Need Is Love," "Rain," "Girl."
Ah, yeh! I agree with some of them, you see. Things like "Hide Your Love Away," right, I'd just discovered Dylan really. "It's Only Love" - I was always ashamed of that 'cause of the abominable lyrics you know - they're probably all right. George just came and talked about it last night. He said, remember we always used to cringe when the guitar bit came on, when we did that blamm blam blam-blam-blam, we liked it but there was something wrong.

And "She Said She Said" - yeh, I dug that cause I was going through a bad time writing then and so I couldn't hear it, but then I heard it and so I dug it. "Lucy in the Sky," all right. "Sleeping," it's like that. "Run for Your Life" I always hated, you know. "Walrus," yeah, "Girl," yeah, "All You Need Is Love" - hah, you know that's sort of natural.

The ones that really meant something to me - look, I don't know about "Hide Your Love Away," that's so long ago - probably "Strawberry Fields," "She Said," "Walrus," "Rain," "Girl," there are just one or two others, "Day Tripper," "Paperback Writer," even. "Ticket to Ride" was one more, I remember that. It was a definite sort of change . . . "Norwegian Wood" - that was the sitar bit. Definitely, I consider them moods or moments.

I feel you in these songs more than in a song like "Michelle," for example.
Yeh, right, they're me touch. Well the thing is, I don't know how they'd work out if I recorded them with other people, it would be entirely different. But it's my music with my band when it's me singing it, and it's Paul's music with his band. Sometimes it's halvey-halvey you know. When we write them together, they're together. But I'm not proud of all of my songs. "Walrus," "Strawberry Fields," you know - I'll sort of stick my name on them, the others are a bit . . . I think they're more powerful.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
John Lennon: The Rolling Stone Interview

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
John Lennon opens up about his songwriting process, Bob Dylan, India, and that infamous "Two Virgins" cover

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
John Lennon (born October 9, 1940, Liverpool, England-died December 8, 1980, New York, New York, U.S.) was a leader or coleader of the British rock group the Beatles, author and graphic artist, solo recording artist, and collaborator with Yoko Ono on recordings and other art projects.

Lennon's fun-loving working-class parents married briefly and late and declined to raise their quick, sensitive, gifted son. Separated traumatically from each of them by age five, he was raised strictly (in Woolton, a Liverpool suburb) by his maternal aunt, Mimi Smith, whose husband died during Lennon's adolescence, as did his biological mother, who had taught him to play the banjo. Such circumstances were not uncommon in the wake of World War II, but in Lennon they generated anger that he sublimated with brilliance and difficulty and an intense need for human connection. At age 21 he married the supportive, traditional Cynthia Powell, whom he divorced in 1968. At age 28 he married the independent, unconventional Yoko Ono. And much earlier, at age 16, he founded a skiffle band that evolved into the Beatles, the most important musical group of the second half of the 20th century.

The Beatles were essentially a joint venture between practical pop adept Paul McCartney and alienated rock-and-roll rebel Lennon, but, as a disruptive cultural force, they always bore Lennon's stamp. Musically, just two of countless examples are the forthright candour his vocal added to Smokey Robinson's vulnerable "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" in 1964 and the "I used to be cruel to my woman" bridge he added to McCartney's positive-thinking " Getting Better" in 1967. Culturally too, Lennon assumed the role of the candid provocateur. All four Beatles were witty, all four irreverent. But only Lennon would have observed "We're more popular than Jesus now" or boiled the story of youth culture down to "America had teenagers and everywhere else just had people."

Lennon's genius encompassed writing and the visual arts, the only field in which he received formal training. His natural gifts in both were considerable, but in the end he proved a minor humorist and a casual if indelible cartoonist. In music, he had less inborn facility, though his paternal grandfather worked for years as a blackface minstrel. But music was where he put his substance. Lennon was one of the great rock rhythm guitarists, his signature a nervous rest-one-two-and-rest that complicated his foursquare attack, and his strong, nasal singing overshadowed McCartney's more physically capable rocking and crooning. Declarative where the rockabilly singers he admired were frantic, almost a blues shouter in spirit if not in timbre, Lennon often undercut the masculinity of this approach with a canny, playful high voice deployed to humorous and even campy effect.

Such layered, contradictory meanings typified the Beatles, part of whose power lay in the multiplicity and collectivity they projected. But as Lennon began to withdraw from the Beatles, a process accelerated as of 1968 by his relationship with Ono, his declarative side took over. This dovetailed with the artistic ideas of Ono, a well-born Japanese avant-gardist seven years his senior. Lennon was first fascinated and then influenced by her terse, sometimes paradoxical directives, such as: "Count all the words in the book instead of reading them" ("Number Piece 1," from the book Grapefruit [1964]). Much of the music Lennon recorded after 1968-from "Yer Blues" and "I'm So Tired" on The Beatles (1968) through the solo debut Plastic Ono Band (1970) through his half of Double Fantasy (1980)-reflects Ono's belief in art without artifice. Whether or not they actually eschewed artifice, that was one impression they strove to create.

Until Double Fantasy, most of the films and recordings Lennon created with Ono were of limited public usefulness. But the stark Plastic Ono Band is generally considered a masterpiece, and the more conventional Lennon album that followed, Imagine (1971), is a major work keynoted by its beloved title track, a hymn of hope whose concept he attributed to Ono. Like the earlier "Give Peace a Chance," " Imagine" is living proof of the political orientation that dominated Lennon's public life with Ono, which came to a head in 1972 with the failed agitprop album Some Time in New York City and the defeat of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern by incumbent Pres. Richard Nixon, whose administration was attempting to deport Lennon, a vocal and adamant opponent of the Vietnam War.

Lennon's most enduring political commitment was to feminism. When he and Ono separated in the fall of 1973, he spent a "lost weekend" of more than a year drinking and making highly uneven music in Los Angeles. When the couple reunited, they soon conceived a son, Sean, born on Lennon's birthday in 1975. Lennon retreated from music and became a reclusive househusband, leaving his business affairs to Ono. The details of this very private period are unclear, although it is unlikely that the couple's domestic arrangements were as idyllic as they pretended. Nevertheless, as a piece of art, their marriage projected as powerful an image as their activism had. It ended as fact when Lennon was shot to death by a deranged fan, Mark David Chapman, in front of his Manhattan apartment building on December 8, 1980. But it continues as part of Lennon's legend, which remains undiminished.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
John Lennon | Biography, Songs, Albums, Death, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
John Lennon (1940−80) was the coleader of the British rock group the Beatles, solo recording artist, and collaborator with Yoko Ono on various art projects.