John Lennon: A Life in

John Lennon: A Life in Art, a Life in Controversy John Lennon is widely considered one of the greatest and most controversial musicians of the 20th century. His lyrics had a poetic simplicity and force that lifted the Beatles' music above mere pop music and created profound, soul-searching works of art.

With "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band" Lennon and the other Beatles created what many consider the first 'rock concept album.' The splashy 'trippy' music seems quintessentially 60s in parts, particularly "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," which celebrates the Beatles experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD. But other tracks, like "A Day in the Life" still seem touchingly relevant today.

"A Day in the Life" chronicles urban despair, beginning with an image of suicide -- "he blew his mind out in a car." Its music gives the impression that, like life, the song is never ending, a blaring chord into infinity. Lennon's "inspired, brutally honest confessional songwriting and melodic song craft" sears the listener's consciousness, just as it did when "Sergeant Pepper" was first released ("John Lennon," VH1.com, 2007).

Lennon was a musical innovator until the end of his career, and his blended tracks of profound lyrics, music and noise such as "I Am the Walrus" and "Strawberry Fields" brought elements of postmodernism into popular music. But his alliance with Yoko Ono controversially caused tensions within the Fab Four, and eventually the group dissolved, leaving Lennon to pen his own tunes like "Imagine." "Imagine" asks the listener to imagine a utopia without religion, heaven, hell, countries, or past or future, simply a present-day purity of living in the moment.

Where Paul McCartney was content to be a rock star, Lennon dabbled in everything from revolutionary politics to the television talk-show circuit during the early '70s" ("John Lennon," VH1.com, 2007).Lennon's music always 'said' something, and even away from the recording studio, Lennon always had a great deal to say. He was a vocal pacifist and opponent of the Vietnam War.

As well as releasing the song "Give Peace a Chance," he and Yoko staged numerous performance art pacifist demonstrations, including "bed-ins, happenings, [and] full page ads declaring 'War Is Over!' - that spread their message of peace" ("John Lennon," Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame, 1994). Lennon's political activities put him on Nixon's famous 'enemies list,' and although the Beatles during their heyday were welcomed with screaming and adoring fans in America, Lennon eventually had to fight the U.S.

government to avoid being deported from his beloved city of New York, because of his opposition to the administration. "A campaign of harassment by Nixon-era conservatives...was overturned by the courts in 1976" ("John Lennon," Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame, 1994). Today, the blending of entertainment and politics is accepted, but when Lennon first spoke out, it was unheard of, especially in Cold War America. Artists were supposed to back away from any strong stances, especially unpopular ones.

As early as 1966, a reader could hear the sentiments espoused later in "Imagine" in an interview with Maureen Cleave in the London Evening Standard. Lennon said: "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. it's them twisting it that ruins it for me" (Coleman.