A founder member of the Beatles. He lived in the USA from 1971. Both before the band's break-up 1970 and in his solo career, he collaborated intermittently with his wife Yoko Ono (1933-...). Give Peace a Chance, a hit 1969, became an anthem of the peace movement. His solo work alternated between the confessional and the political, as on the album Imagine 1971. He was shot dead by a fan. Lennon is regarded as having tempered with cynicism and acerbic wit the tendency to sentimentality of his Beatle cowriter Paul McCartney, but idealism was evident in Lennon's life outside the Beatles, with publicity stunts like the 1969 "bed-in for peace" (he and Ono stayed in bed in an Amsterdam hotel for a week, receiving the press). His first solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band 1970, contained deeply personal songs like Mother and Working Class Hero; subsequent work, though uneven, included big hits like Whatever Gets You Through the Night 1974. He often worked with producer Phil Spector. On Rock 'n' Roll 1975 Lennon covered nonoriginal songs that the Beatles had played in the early 1960s. Double Fantasy 1980, made in collaboration with Ono, reached number one in the album charts after his death. At the height of Beatlemania, Lennon published two small books of his drawings and nonsense writings, In His Own Write 1964 and A Spaniard in the Works 1965.
