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.
With the Beatles is the second studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released in the United Kingdom on 22 November 1963 on Parlophone, eight months after the release of the band's debut album, Please Please Me. Produced by George Martin, the album features eight original compositions and six covers. The sessions also yielded the non-album single, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" backed by "This Boy". The cover photograph was taken by the fashion photographer Robert Freeman and has since been mimicked by several music groups. A different cover was used for the Australian release of the album, which the Beatles were displeased with.
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is the debut solo studio album by English musician John Lennon. Backed by the Plastic Ono Band, it was released by Apple Records on 11 December 1970 in tandem with the similarly titled album by his wife, Yoko Ono. At the time of its issue, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band received mixed reviews overall, but later came to be widely regarded as Lennon's best solo album.
Astrid Kirchherr was a German photographer and artist known for her association with the Beatles and her photographs of the band's original members – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best – during their early days in Hamburg.
Linda Louise, Lady McCartney was an American photographer and musician. She was the keyboardist and harmony vocalist in the band Wings that also featured her husband, Paul McCartney of the Beatles.
"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)", otherwise known as simply "Norwegian Wood", is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was written mainly by John Lennon, with lyrical contributions from Paul McCartney, and credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership. Influenced by the introspective lyrics of Bob Dylan, the song is considered a milestone in the Beatles' development as songwriters. The track features a sitar part, played by lead guitarist George Harrison, that marked the first appearance of the Indian string instrument on a Western rock recording. The song was a number 1 hit in Australia when released on a single there in 1966, coupled with "Nowhere Man".
Cynthia Lennon was a British artist and author, and the first wife of John Lennon.
Anthony D. Cox is an American film producer and art promoter. He is a former husband of Yoko Ono.
The Pirelli Calendar, known and trade-marked as "The Cal", is an annual trade calendar which has been published by the UK subsidiary of the Italian tyre manufacturing company Pirelli since 1964. The calendar has a reputation for its choice of photographers and models and featured glamour photography from the 1980s until the 2010s.
Norman Parkinson was an English portrait and fashion photographer. His work revolutionised British fashion photography, as he moved his subjects out of the studio and used outdoor settings. While serving as a Royal Air Force photographer in World War II, he started with Vogue magazine, discovering several famous models. He became an official royal photographer in 1969, taking photographs for Princess Anne's 19th birthday and the Investiture portrait of Charles III as Prince of Wales. Many other royal portraits included official portraits of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother for her 75th birthday. He was known for using elements of humour in his photographs. Parkinson received many honours during his life including the Royal Photographic Society's Progress Medal, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Magazine Photographers, a Google Doodle, and a British postage stamp.
Mary Elizabeth "Mimi" Smith was a maternal aunt and the parental guardian of the English musician John Lennon. Mimi Stanley was born in Toxteth, Liverpool, England, the oldest of five daughters. She became a resident trainee nurse at the Woolton Convalescent Hospital and later worked as a private secretary. On 15 September 1939 she married George Toogood Smith who ran his family's dairy farm and a shop in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool.
Maureen Diana Cleave was a British journalist. She worked for the London Evening Standard from 1958 conducting interviews with many prominent musicians of the era, including Bob Dylan and John Lennon. Over 50 years, she continued to interview people in all walks of life, in the Standard, the Telegraph Magazine, Observer Magazine, Saga magazine, Intelligent Life magazine, and elsewhere.
Julia Lennon was the mother of English musician John Lennon, who was born during her marriage to Alfred Lennon. After complaints to Liverpool's Social Services by her eldest sister Mimi Smith, she surrendered the care of her son to Mimi. She later had one daughter after an affair with a Welsh soldier, but pressure from her family made her place the baby for adoption. Later she had two daughters, Julia and Jackie, with John "Bobby" Dykins. She never divorced her husband, preferring to live as Dykins' common-law wife for the rest of her life.
In His Own Write is a 1964 nonsense book by the English musician John Lennon. Lennon's first book, it consists of poems and short stories ranging from eight lines to three pages, as well as illustrations.
Robert Freeman was an English photographer and graphic designer best known for his work with the Beatles, shooting some of the band's most recognizable images featured on several of their album covers. From 1963 to 1966, he worked extensively with the group and did the photography and design on five of their album sleeves released consecutively on the Parlophone label in the UK, as well as on several albums on Capitol Records in the US and on various labels in other countries. Freeman designed the end credit sequences for their first two films and some of the graphics and photography displayed on the films' posters and promotional materials.
Jane Katherine Lumb was an English fashion model and actress in the 1960s. She appeared in a series of advertisements for Fry's Turkish Delight.
Philip Norman is an English author, novelist, journalist and playwright. He is best known for his biographies of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Buddy Holly and Elton John. His other books include similar studies of John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton.
In February 1968, the English rock band the Beatles travelled to Rishikesh in northern India to take part in a Transcendental Meditation (TM) training course at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The visit followed the Beatles' denunciation of drugs in favour of TM and received widespread media attention. The band's interest in the Maharishi's teachings was led by George Harrison's commitment, and it changed Western attitudes about Indian spirituality and encouraged the study of TM. The visit was also the most productive period for the Beatles' songwriting.
Lennon Remembers is a 1971 book by Rolling Stone magazine co-founder and editor Jann Wenner. It consists of a lengthy interview that Wenner carried out with former Beatle John Lennon in December 1970 and which was originally serialised in Rolling Stone in its issues dated 21 January and 4 February 1971. The interview was intended to promote Lennon's primal therapy-inspired album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and reflects the singer's emotions and mindset after undergoing an intense course of the therapy under Arthur Janov. It also serves as a rebuttal to Paul McCartney's public announcement of the Beatles' break-up, in April 1970.
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.
