John Lennon

John Lennon had, and still has, a huge political impact, influence and importance over his lifetime. Although John Lennon was assassinated over 25 years ago, his political influence and symbolic importance have only grown; moreover, his music, of course, will also live forever. However, his music, in the years after the Beatles split up in 1970, his music was made up merely of a restless voice of change and independent thought. John Lennon had many ways of making an impact, but the major method behind this was his music. John Lennon had written, or at least contributed to writing, about 200 songs when he was with the Beatles in the 1960’s. The music was good, and had an impact on the people, but there was no real influence or importance of the Beatles’ music. Lennon had written about 50 songs in his solo years after the split-up of the Beatles, most of which had a political impact and influence, and all of which had political importance. An example of one of Lennon’s most important songs is Happy Xmas. As we all know, its influence is evident, as we still hear this song every winter holiday season, its impact is evident through television commercials [which play the song] promoting the act of donating to funds for less wealthy children in third world countries. However, this is merely a single example of John Lennon’s political impact, influence and importance.

John Lennon’s impact was extraordinary, not only musically, but politically too. Lennon was the main start of The Beatles, but it started farther back than just The Beatles. It all started in 1957, when John formed his first band, the Quarry Men, which eventually would lead to one of the greatest, if not the greatest, musical group of all time. The next year, Lennon met Paul McCartney, and McCartney joined the Quarry Men. Another year later, they meet up with George Harrison, and, upon McCartney’s request, he joins their band. Still amateurs, they change their band name to Johnny and the Moondogs; they also changed their band name numerous times over the year to “The Beatals”, the “Silver Beetles”, then the “Silver Beatles” and finally “The Beatles”. Not long after changing their band name to it’s final one, they meet Ringo Star at their debut in Hamburg. Over the years to come, The Beatles became more and more popular; they were an award winning group, everyone loved them, and everyone knew them. It is safe to say that their popularity in society, alone, is enough to prove their impact to the world. However, although Lennon created the group, the Beatles success alone is not enough to prove Lennon’s impact. But just to show the Beatles impact, and how popular they were, here is a quote from John Lennon, “We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.” This goes to show how popular the Beatles actually were. Moreover, Lennon compared themselves to Jesus, one of the most well-known [or "heard of"] people. But Lennon’s impact in his solo years was important, yet odd. In 1970, the Beatles split up, and announced it world-wide, ending the Beatles. Here is another quote from John Lennon, stating his opinion, “You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.” This quote goes to show that Lennon had bad views on his former band, which, ultimately, led to the split-up of the Beatles. However, each former member of the Beatles carried on solo [or with different people] though, and all stayed fairly popular. Unsurprisingly, John Lennon was the only one of them, who still had such a large impact on the world. Lennon was the most talented of them, in my opinion at least, which is why he remained so popular world-wide. His impact never ended, it led to an influence.