John Lennon

John Lennon (1969)

John Lennon (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980)
was a singer, songwriter, guitarist, political activist, humorist, painter and writer.

Note: all song lyrics are still copyrighted.

"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."
"We don't really have an act. We’ll just do what we do. Stand there, sing and twitch."

"If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'."

"Well, I just want him to grow up happy. That's the main thing"."
- Talking about his son, Julian Lennon.

"Just love, that's the main thing you know. He's just going to be happy and know he's wanted. I'm not having any of that boarding school or sending him away. He's going to be with us all the time"
- Talking about his son Julian's childhood.

"Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry."
- During the November 4, 1963 Royal Variety Performance in London, attended (among others) by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret. Note: John meant to say "fucking jewelry". He was persuaded against doing so by Paul McCartney and the group's manager Brian Epstein.

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
- From Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) off the 1980 "Double Fantasy" album.

"All that business was awful, it was a fuckin' humiliation. One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were, and that's what I resent. I didn't know, I didn't foresee. It happened bit by bit, gradually, until this complete craziness is surrounding you, and you're doing exactly what you don't want to do with people you can't stand - the people you hated when you were ten."
- Quoted in Rolling Stone, Jan. 7 1971, 34, and requoted in The Sociology of Rock by Simon Frith, 1978, ISBN 0094602204

"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it."

"I was the Walrus, now I'm John" -- From the song God (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band)

"God is a concept by which we measure our pain." -- From the song God (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band)

"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."
- Possibly the most controversial quote Lennon ever made. This quote was published in England's Evening Standard newspaper on March 4, 1966 as part of an interview with writer Maureen Cleave. Rather than a blatant attack on Christianity, Lennon was sympathising with the current state of religion, saying it was a shame that the Beatles had become more important than religion. Religion held no interest for the youth of the time. This single quote (taken out of context - Lennon was often misquoted as stating the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus") was to spark protests across the Bible Belt in America. Beatles records were burned en masse, and the Ku Klux Klan burned a Beatles effigy and nailed Beatles albums to a burning cross.

"I suppose if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I would have gotten away with it. I'm sorry I opened my mouth. I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion. I wasn't knocking it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact and it's true more for England than here. I'm not saying that we're better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this."
- News conference in Chicago, where he apologized for the above statement, which was accepted by the Vatican. (11 August 1966)

"If I'd lived in Roman times, I'd have lived in Rome. Where else? Today America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself."
- "New York is what Rome used to be." he told biographer Ray Coleman.

"He's not even the best drummer in The Beatles"
- When asked whether or not he believed Ringo Starr to be the best drummer in the world. He was refering to Paul McCartney, who played drums on "Back in the USSR" from the White Album, as well as some other recordings, when Ringo wasn't available.
"If all politicians were like Pierre Trudeau, there would be world peace."

"When I was 12, I used to think I was a genius and nobody had noticed. If there is such a thing as a genius, I am one, and if there isn't, then I don't care."

"That's part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously, because I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humor. You know, and we are humorous, we are, what are they, Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot."

"I'll probably be popped off by some loony."
- His reply when asked in the 1960's how he expected he would die. His response became chillingly accurate.