8 days of beatles - day 8

[jaebility]

John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940 to Julia and Alf Lennon. When he was 16 he formed The Quarreymen. At a concert at a church fete, 15-year-old Paul McCartney saw them and through a friend was introduced to John. He was considerable younger than the cynical John, but eventually John buckled and invited him to join. Paul brought in his friend George Harrison, who could play "Raunchy" better than anyone else. In 1960 they went to Hamburg to play as a club band; they were eventually deported but came back for two more tours in 1961 and 1962. Later in 1962 they hired Brian Epstein as their manager and ushered in significant changes: suits instead of leather, Ringo Starr instead of Pete Best, and Paul on bass. In 1963 Julian Lennon was born, just as their popularity in England was increasing. Beatlemania began and in 1964 they brought it to the United States. They were the first band to garner such success across the ocean - And in 1965 they sold out Shea Stadium. By mid 1966 they'd stopped touring and toward the end of the year began Sgt Pepper. Albums before it had been basically a list of songs that they were playing live; Sgt Pepper was a full studio album, allowing the Beatles to explore music in ways that hadn't been possible when they were expected to play the songs at concerts. Brian Epstein's death in 1967 left the band confused and lost, and 1968 they went to India in an attempt to rediscover meaning in their career. Out of that came the White Album. In 1969 they released Let It Be and Abbey Road... And then stopped.

John and Paul had always been the leaders; once they "divorced" each other, the band had to break apart too. The members worked on their solo careers, occasionally drifting together again, but never at a scale that could be called a reunion. John focused on his family, starting over in New York with Yoko Ono and their son Sean. In 1980 he began working on a come-back. In December of that year he was killed.

"Sometimes you wonder, I mean really wonder. I know we make our own reality and we always have a choice, but how much is preordained? Is there always a fork in the road and are there two preordained paths that are equally preordained? There could be hundreds of paths where one could go this way or that way -- there's a choice and it's very strange sometimes... And that's a good ending for our interview." John Lennon, in an interview for Rolling Stone on December 5, 1980 (from Beatles Interviews Database.)