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John Winston Lennon was born in Liverpool
on October 9, 1940, during the height of WWII, his father, Fred Lennon,
off at sea. His father didn't turn up again until five years later, and
when he did he tried to take John away from his mother, Julia, when she
refused to restart her life with him. Instead, he grew up in the Liverpool
suburb of Woolton, with his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George Smith, at 251
Menlove Ave, which became nicknamed Mendips. Julia died in 1958, in an
automobile accident practically in front of Mendips, when John was
seventeen.
Aunt Mimi ran a very strict household. John very quickly became bored
at school, preferring drawing and writing about his classmates and
teachers rather than his studies. Rebellious at an early age, he had a
very rough school history, sagging off from school (going AWOL from
classes) and petty stealing. His future looked bleak until Mimi got the
headmaster of the Quarrybank school to write a letter of recommendation
for John to the Liverpool Art College, because of his drawings. In 1955 he started his own band, the Quarrymen, with his long time pal and fellow troublemaker Pete Shotton, singing all the popular songs, sometimes making up the words when he couldn't get them all off the radio. Also in the Quarrymen were Nigel Walley and Ivan Vaughan, the rest of John's gang. It was Ivan Vaughan who introduced John to his friend, Paul McCartney, in 1957. John married his girlfriend of four years, Cynthia Powell, in 1962. She was pregnant with their son Julian at the time, who was born in April, 1963.
Biographical info from the book Shout! by Philip Norman, The Love You Make by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, and The Beatles A To Z by Sue Weiner.
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John Lennon is a trademark owned by Yoko Ono Lennon, Artwork Copyright 1996 Yoko Ono