John Winston Ono Lennon was an English singer, songwriter and musician. He gained worldwide fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. His work included music, writing, drawings and film. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in history as the primary songwriters in the Beatles.
Derek Wyn Taylor was a British journalist, writer, publicist and record producer. He is best known for his role as press officer to the Beatles, with whom he worked in 1964 and then from 1968 to 1970, and was one of several associates to earn the moniker "the Fifth Beatle". Before returning to London to head the publicity for the Beatles' Apple Corps organisation in 1968, he worked as the publicist for California-based bands such as the Byrds, the Beach Boys and the Mamas and the Papas. Taylor was known for his forward-thinking and extravagant promotional campaigns, exemplified in taglines such as "The Beatles Are Coming" and "Brian Wilson Is a Genius". He was equally dedicated to the 1967 Summer of Love ethos and helped stage that year's Monterey Pop Festival.
"Revolution" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. Three versions of the song were recorded and released in 1968, all during sessions for the Beatles' self-titled double album, also known as the "White Album": a slow, bluesy arrangement included on the album; an abstract sound collage that originated as the latter part of "Revolution 1" and appears on the same album; and the faster, hard rock version similar to "Revolution 1", released as the B-side of "Hey Jude". Although the single version was issued first, it was recorded several weeks after "Revolution 1", intended for release as a single. A music video for the song was shot using the backing track from the single version, their appearances reflecting the song's atmosphere, along with live-sung lyrics that more closely resemble the album version.
The Marxist–Leninist Party, USA (MLP) was an anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist communist party arising out of a series of communist and workers' groups that began in 1967 and lasted until 1993 when it dissolved. It was founded as the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist–Leninist) in the 1960s as a Maoist organization allied with the Canadian Communist Party of Canada (Marxist–Leninist), CPC (M-L). During its history, it became a Hoxhaist group, before turning away from backing Albania, then rejecting Maoism and subsequently Stalinism as being revisionist. After its dissolution, the majority of its members who remained active formed the Communist Voice Organization. Its main publication was the paper Workers Advocate.
"Revolution 9" is a sound collage from the Beatles' 1968 self-titled double album. The composition, credited to Lennon–McCartney, was created primarily by John Lennon with assistance from Yoko Ono and George Harrison. Lennon said he was trying to paint a picture of a revolution using sound. The composition was influenced by the avant-garde style of Ono as well as the musique concrète works of composers such as Edgard Varèse and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The New Communist movement (NCM) was a diverse left-wing political movement during the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The NCM were a movement of the New Left that represented a diverse grouping of Marxist–Leninists and Maoists inspired by Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions. This movement emphasized opposition to racism and sexism, solidarity with oppressed peoples of the third-world, and the establishment of socialism by popular revolution. The movement, according to historian and NCM activist Max Elbaum, had an estimated 10,000 cadre members at its peak influence.
"I'll Cry Instead" is a song written by John Lennon, and recorded by the English rock band the Beatles for their third studio album, A Hard Day's Night (1964), a part-studio and part-soundtrack album to their film of the same name (1964). In the United States, the song originally appeared in the US version of A Hard Day's Night before it was released as a single backed with "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" along with the US album Something New.
"Do You Want to Know a Secret" is a song by English rock band the Beatles from their 1963 album Please Please Me, sung by George Harrison. In the United States, it was the first top ten song to feature Harrison as a lead singer, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard chart in 1964 as a single released by Vee-Jay, VJ 587. In the UK, Billy J. Kramer released a cover of the song as his debut single, reaching No. 1 on the NME singles chart and No. 2 on the Record Retailer chart.
"I'll Get You" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and released by the Beatles as the B-side of their 1963 single "She Loves You". The song was initially titled "Get You in the End".
"More popular than Jesus" is part of a remark made by John Lennon of the Beatles in a March 1966 interview in which he argued that the public were more infatuated with the band than with Jesus, and that Christianity was declining to the extent that it might be outlasted by rock music. His opinions drew little controversy when originally published in the London newspaper The Evening Standard, but drew angry reactions from Evangelical Christian communities when republished in the United States that July.
"Power to the People" is a song written by John Lennon, released as a single in 1971, credited to John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. It was issued on Apple Records and charted at #6 on the British singles chart, at number 10 on the Cashbox Top 100, and at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 The song's first appearance on album was the 1975 compilation Shaved Fish.
Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now is a 1997 biography of Paul McCartney by Barry Miles. It is the "official" biography of McCartney and was written "based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews undertaken over a period of five years", according to the back cover of the 1998 paperback edition. The title is a phrase from McCartney's song "When I'm Sixty-Four", from the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The book was first published in the United Kingdom in October 1997 by Secker & Warburg.
The Beatles were a rock group from Liverpool, England. This timeline chronicles their activities.
The International Marxist Group (IMG) was a Trotskyist group in Britain between 1968 and 1982. It was the British Section of the Fourth International. It had around 1,000 members and supporters in the late 1970s. In 1980, it had 682 members; by 1982, when it changed its name to the Socialist League, membership had fallen to 534.
Tariq Ali is a Pakistani-British political activist, writer, journalist, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books. He studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Exeter College, Oxford.
Peter Doggett is an English music journalist, author and magazine editor. He began his career in music journalism in 1980, when he joined the London-based magazine Record Collector. He subsequently served as the editor there from 1982 to 1999, after which he continued in the role of managing editor. He has also contributed regularly to magazines such as Mojo, Q and GQ.
The Beatles: The Authorised Biography is a book written by British author Hunter Davies and published by Heinemann in the UK in September 1968. It was written with the full cooperation of the Beatles and chronicles the band's career up until early 1968, two years before their break-up. It was the only authorised biography of the Beatles written during their career. Davies published revised editions of the book in 1978, 1982, 1985, 2002, 2009, and 2018.
The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution is a 2017 book written by activist and Trotskyist Tariq Ali, which focuses on the life of Russian Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.
7 Days was a radical socialist weekly photo newspaper published in the United Kingdom. It was in circulation from 22 October 1971 until 22 March 1972, with a final special edition in May 1972. The paper covered left-wing political events of the period including the 'Mangrove Nine Trial', 'Bloody Sunday' in Northern Ireland, industrial disputes, and the Angry Brigade campaigns. The paper also aligned itself with feminist, anti-racism, and anti-homophobia movements of the early 1970s.
