John Lennon was both the Nowhere Man and the Eggman, he contained multitudes, 'I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together', and of these, one and all, he wove the song of himself ...

It was a song that included anthems, ' Give Peace A Chance ' and dream collages ' Revolution 9 ', portraits ' Mean Mr.Mustard ' and statements ' I Want You ', meditations ' Strawberry Fields Forever ' and calls to action ' Power To The People '.

It was a song of contrasting states of feeling and emotion - weariness ' I'm So Tired ' and wakefulness ' Instant Karma ', need ' Help! ' and independence ' Good Morning, Good Morning ', depression ' You've Got To Hide Your Love Away ' and elation ' Whatever Gets You Thru The Night ', reflectiveness ' In My Life ' and anger ' How Do You Sleep ', pain ' Yer Blues ' and pleasure ' I Feel Fine ', toughness ' Run For Your Life ' and gentleness ' Julia '.

It was a song featuring different modes of expression - irony ' Happiness Is A Warm Gun ', primal screaming ' Mother ', sermons ' The Word ', political protest ' John Sinclair ' and nonsense ' I Am The Walrus '. And it was a song manifesting different states of being - the tragic ' Isolation ', the comic ' Polythene Pam ' and the cosmic ' Across The Universe '.

The Beatles' Albums

PLEASE PLEASE ME 1963
WITH THE BEATLES 1963
A HARD DAY'S NIGHT 1964
BEATLES FOR SALE 1964
HELP 1965
RUBBER SOUL 1965
REVOLVER 1966
A COLLECTION OF BEATLES OLDIES [BUT GOLDIES] 1966
SGT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND 1967
MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR 1967
THE BEATLES 1968
YELLOW SUBMARINE 1968
ABBEY ROAD 1969
LET IT BE 1970

LOVE SONGS 1973
BEATLES [1962 – 1966 ] 1973
BEATLES [1967 – 1970 ] 1973
ROCK N ROLL MUSIC 1976
LIVE AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL 1977
RARITIES 1979
THE BEATLES BOX 1980
LIVE IN HAMBURG AT THE STAR CLUB 1981
GREATEST HITS 1982
PAST MASTERS VOL 1 1988
PAST MASTERS VOL 2 1988
LIVE AT THE BBC 1994
ANTHOLOGY 1 1995
ANTHOLOGY 2 1995
ANTHOLOGY 3 1995
THE NO 1 ALBUM 2000
LET IT BE - NAKED 2003

The Solo Albums

Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins (1968)
Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With the Lions (1969)
Wedding Album (1969)
The Plastic Ono Band - Live Peace in Toronto 1969)
John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band (1970)
Imagine (1971)
Some Time in New York City (1972)
Mind Games (1973)
Walls and Bridges (1974)
Rock 'n' Roll (1975)
Shaved Fish (1975)
Double Fantasy (1980)
The John Lennon Collection (1982)
Heart Play (1983)
Milk and Honey (1984)
Live in New York City (1986)
Menlove Avenue (1986)
Imagine: John Lennon (Music From the Motion Picture) (1988)
Lennon (4 CD Boxed Set) (1990)
Lennon Legend: the Very Best of John Lennon (1998)
John Lennon Anthology (4 CD Boxed Set) (1998)
Wonsaponatime (1998)
Acoustic (2004)
Working Class Hero - Definitive Lennon (2005)

The Solo Singles

Give Peace a Chance / Remember Love (July, 1969)
Cold Turkey / Don't Worry Kyoko (October, 1969)
Instant Karma! (We All Shine on) / Who Has Seen the Wind? (February, 1970)
Mother / Why (December, 1970)
Power to the People / Open Your Box (March, 1971)
Power to the People / Touch Me (March, 1971)
Imagine / It's So Hard (October, 1971)
Happy Xmas (War is Over) / Listen, the Snow is Falling (December, 1971)
Woman is the Nigger of the World / Sisters, O Sisters (April, 1972)
Mind Games / Meat City (October, 1973)
Whatever Gets You Thru the Night / Beef Jerky (September, 1974)
# 9 Dream / What You Got (December, 1974)
Stand By Me / Move Over Ms. L (March, 1975)
Stand By Me / Woman is the Nigger of the World (April, 1977)
(Just Like) Starting Over / Kiss Kiss Kiss (October, 1980)
Woman / Beautiful Boys (January, 1981)
Watching the Wheels / Yes, I'm Your Angel (March, 1981)
(Just Like) Starting Over / Woman (July, 1981)
Watching the Wheels / Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) (November, 1981)
Happy Xmas (War is Over) / Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) (November, 1982)
Nobody Told Me / O' Sanity (January, 1984)
I'm Stepping out / Sleepless Night (March, 1984)
Borrowed Time / Your Hands (May, 1984)

IT'S JOHNNY'S BIRTHDAY - GEORGE HARRISON
HAPPY TRAILS - JANIS JOPLIN
HEY JOHN - BLOSSOM DEARIE
ALL THOSE YEARS AGO - GEORGE HARRISON
THE IMMIGRANT - NEIL SEDAKA
REST IN PEACE - JUAN HERNANDEZ
LIFE IS REAL (SONG FOR JOHN) - QUEEN
MOONLIGHT SHADOW - MIKE OLDFIELD
NOT NOW JOHN - PINK FLOYD
SCANDINAVIAN SKIES - BILLY JOEL
IT CAME TO ME IN A DREAM - JOSE FELICIANO
EMPTY GARDEN (HEY HEY JOHNNY) - ELTON JOHN
THE MAN WHO NEVER DIED - ELTON JOHN
HERE TODAY - PAUL McCARTNEY
MUCH MISSED MAN - PHIL BOARDMAN
JOHN WINSTON - THE QUARRYMEN
TOO LATE FOR GOODBYES - JULIAN LENNON
NOW YOU'RE IN HEAVEN - JULIAN LENNON
HEY JOHN - PUHDYS
THE DAKOTA - CHRISTINE LAVIN
SGT. PEPPER'S BAND - JOAN BAEZ
THE LATE GREAT JOHNNY ACE - PAUL SIMON
21ST CENTURY MAN - ELO

JOHN LENNON'S FAMILY

THAT'S MY LIFE, MY LOVE AND HOME - FREDDIE LENNON (John's father)
SHIPS OF THE MERSEY - CHARLIE LENNON (John's uncle)

Revolution 9

The slow version of ' Revolution ' on the album went on and on and on and I took the fade-out part, which is what they sometimes do with disco records now, and just layered all this stuff over it. It was the basic rhythm of the original ' Revolution ' going on with some twenty (tape) loops we put on, things from the archives of EMI. We were cutting up classical music and making different-size loops, and then I got an engineer tape on which some test engineer was saying, ' Number nine. ' All those different bits of sound and noise are all compiled. There were about ten (tape) machines with people holding pencils on the loops, some only inches long and some a yard long. I fed them all in and mixed them live. I did a few mixes until I got one I liked. Yoko was there for the whole thing and she made decisions about which loops to use. It was somewhat under her influence, I suppose. Once I heard her stuff, not just the screeching and the howling but her sort of word pieces and talking and breathing and all this strange stuff, I thought, My God, I got intrigued, so I wanted to do one. I spent more time on ' Revolution 9 ' than I did on half the songs I ever wrote. It was a montage.

Strawberry Fields Forever

Strawberry Fields is a real place. After I stopped living at Penny Lane, I moved in with my auntie who lived in the suburbs... not the poor slummy kind of image that was projected in all the Beatles stories. Near that home was Strawberry Fields, a house near a boys' reformatory where I used to go to garden parties as a kid with my friends Nigel and Pete. We always had fun at Strawberry Fields. So that's where I got the name. But I used it as an image. Strawberry Fields Forever. ' Living is easy with eyes closed. Misunderstanding all you see. ' It still goes, doesn't it? Aren't I saying exactly the same thing now? The awareness apparently trying to be expressed is, let's say in one way I was always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was different from the others. I was different all my life. The second verse goes, ' No one I think is in my tree. ' Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius, ' I mean it must be high or low, ' the next line. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn't see. I thought I was crazy or an egomaniac for claiming to see things other people didn't see. I always was so psychic or intuitive or poetic or whatever you want to call it, that I was always seeing things in a hallucinatory way. Surrealism had a great effect on me, because then I realized that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity; that if it was insane, I belong in an exclusive club that sees the world in those terms. Surrealism to me is reality. Psychic vision to me is reality. Even as a child. When I looked at myself in the mirror or when I was 12, 13, I used to literally trance out into alpha. I didn't know what it was called then. I found out years later there is a name for those conditions. But I would find myself seeing hallucinatory images of my face changing and becoming cosmic and complete. It caused me to always be a rebel. This thing gave me a chip on the shoulder; but, on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted. Part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society and not be this loudmouthed lunatic musician. But I cannot be what I am not.

I Am The Walrus

The first line was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in after I met Yoko. Part of it was putting down Hare Krishna. All these people were going on about Hare Krishna, Allen Ginsberg in particular. The reference to ' Element'ry penguin ' is the elementary, naive attitude of going around chanting, ' Hare Krishna, ' or putting all your faith in any one idol. I was writing obscurely, a la Dylan, in those days. It's from ' The Walrus and the Carpenter. ' ' Alice in Wonderland. ' To me, it was a beautiful poem. It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, ' I am the carpenter. ' But that wouldn't have been the same, would it? (singing) ' I am the carpenter... '

John Lennon 1980.