John Lennon

Lennon assembled a skiffle group called the Quarrymen as a Liverpool schoolboy in 1956, met Paul McCartney within a year and George Harrison soon after, and by 1960 the band had become the Beatles. His contributions to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership included Help!, Norwegian Wood, Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day in the Life, Across the Universe. He had trained at Liverpool College of Art, and published two books of writing and drawings, In His Own Write (1964) and A Spaniard in the Works (1965). After the group separated he made John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, working closely with Yoko Ono. He was killed in New York in December 1980. Appointed MBE, he formed the Plastic Ono Band with Yoko Ono in 1969 and in the same year staged the two-week Bed-ins for Peace; Give Peace a Chance and Happy Xmas (War Is Over) came out of those years, and his songs were taken up as anthems by the anti-war movement. Double Fantasy, made with Ono, appeared three weeks before he was shot by Mark David Chapman.