Happy birthday, John Lennon: Celebrating a musical icon
Tracing the inspirations, friendships, and timeless songs that shaped one of the greatest songwriters in history
We’re celebrating a Beatle birthday this week, and one of music’s most enduring icons: John Lennon. Born in 1940 in Liverpool, Lennon’s beginnings were humble, even turbulent — a boy raised amid postwar austerity, sketching and strumming his way through school with a restless imagination. When he met Paul McCartney at a church fête in Woolton in 1957, neither could have imagined that their teenage jam sessions would lead to one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships in modern history.
Together with George Harrison and, later, Ringo Starr, Lennon helped define the sound of the burgeoning 60s generation and subsequent generations after it. From the smoke-filled clubs of Liverpool to the global stage, and through countless cultural movements, Lennon was in an endless pursuit of authenticity, a craftsman obsessed with feeling and truth in song.
A Rock Hero’s hero
It’s often said that great artists are born the moment they discover their heroes. For Lennon, that moment came the first time he saw Elvis Presley. “Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis,” he once told New Musical Express in 1975. “If there hadn’t been an Elvis, there wouldn’t have been the Beatles.” Presley’s performance of Heartbreak Hotel set Lennon’s musical ambitions alight. Presley’s swagger, unfiltered vocal style, and signature combination of romance and a rebellious musical edge completely changed what Lennon thought music could be.
Presley remained a lifelong influence, even as Lennon grew critical of the man Elvis became, with feelings duly reciprocated by The King himself. In a later interview, Lennon lamented that Presley had “died the day he went into the army,” but that only underscored how deeply the early image of Elvis shaped him. While it’s no secret that much of the early Beatles output was influenced by rhythm and blues, echoes of that Presley inspiration, from the blues inflections to the yearning sincerity, run through early Beatles hits like Please Please Me and Twist and Shout. In them, Lennon turned teenage longing into pop art.
Inspiration becomes influence
By 1963, Lennon’s voice had already become one of the most recognizable in the world, but it was his lyrical transformation a few years later that truly revealed his artistic depth. Songs like In My Life from the seminal 1965 album Rubber Soul marked the point where Lennon began to merge his personal history with universal sentiment.
You can hear it in every suspended chord and wistful shift of In My Life. Although the true composer of the song is disputed between Lennon and McCartney, we can still say that the melody traces memory like a film reel, each verse anchored by the quiet reflection of the Lennon-penned lyrics. The Beatles’ technical mastery by this point allowed them to paint emotion with harmony, but the heart of the song is unmistakably Lennon’s.
Released in 1967 as a worldwide anthem, All You Need Is Love exemplifies Lennon’s knack for combining social commentary with catchy, accessible melodies. Performed live on Our World, the first international satellite broadcast, Lennon crafted a message of global unity. The song’s simple chord structure makes it a fantastic choice for learners while still delivering the profound impact of its message. Lennon described the song as “a simple, universal statement of love”
As the 1960s unfolded, The Beatles began pushing past the boundaries of conventional pop, drawn toward new sounds and new ways of expressing consciousness itself. For Lennon, his lyrical output began to take on a touch of the surreal, owing to the influence of authors like Lewis Carroll and psychedelic experimentation.1967’s Strawberry Fields Forever emerged from this creative expansion — part dreamscape, part autobiography. Its origins were local (a Salvation Army home near Lennon’s boyhood home in Woolton), but its execution was cosmic. The layered Mellotron flutes, detuned orchestral arrangements, and slowed tape loops made it one of the most innovative recordings of its time.
“Strawberry Fields is real,” Lennon explained later. “It exists in Liverpool, and the song is real in the sense that it expresses how I feel. It's a psychoanalysis set to music.” (Rolling Stone, 1970). The track crystallized what Lennon and The Beatles had become by that point — not just songwriters, but sonic architects of emotion.
From Beatle to Visionary
For Lennon, innovation was never enough on its own. By the time of the dissolution of the Beatles in 1970, Lennon, then aged 30, had already spent his formative years as part of one of the biggest bands in the world, and was now forced to confront his identity outside the collective. What emerged in his solo work was raw and revealing. Working Class Hero, Jealous Guy, and Imagine stripped back the layers of pop artifice to expose an artist wrestling openly with himself in a lifelong battle between cynicism and sincerity.
Throughout the 60s and into the 1970s, in Lennon’s circle of collaborators and influences shifted wildly. In such a time of musical heavyweights, Lennon rubbed shoulders with the best of the best when it comes to pop and rock songwriting. Chief among them was Harry Nilsson, an American singer-songwriter whose surreal sense of melody and rich vocal arrangements captivated Lennon. Nilsson’s Without You and Everybody’s Talkin’ showcased a kindred experimental spirit, and Lennon became one of his biggest champions. “Nilsson’s my favorite American group,” he famously quipped in 1968 — a sly nod to the man’s uncanny ability to sound like an entire band.
The two became close friends and collaborators during Lennon’s “Lost Weekend” era in Los Angeles, recording together on Nilsson’s 1974 album Pussy Cats. Their partnership was chaotic, creative, and deeply human — two artists grappling with fame, freedom, and friendship. That same year, Lennon released Walls and Bridges, an album that balanced vulnerability with melody in a way few others could. The haunting #9 Dream remains one of his most atmospheric compositions, its lush production echoing Nilsson’s influence.
We’d also be remiss not to mention The Beach Boys as a significant influence on Lennon and The Beatles in that fertile '60s period. The Beach Boys, whose groundbreaking studio techniques and intricate harmonies pushed Lennon and the Beatles to new creative heights. Lennon and McCartney both acknowledged the mutual influence, citing Brian Wilson as a visionary whose experiments in arrangement and texture opened doors for their later work. The push and pull between influence and one-upmanship that resulted in the legendary run of albums, Rubber Soul, Pet Sounds, and Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Even as Lennon’s sound evolved, his touchstone remained emotional honesty. His final studio album, Double Fantasy (1980), recorded with Yoko Ono, was a celebration of domestic contentment and artistic renewal. It showed a Lennon at peace — or at least reaching for it — blending introspection with optimism. Tracks like Woman and revealed a songwriter who had come full circle, now embracing the simplicity he once rebelled against.
What made Lennon’s songwriting resonate wasn’t always technical complexity or sonic innovation, though he mastered that too. It was his unique ability to be tender, biting, idealistic, or contradictory, often in the same song. His catalog charts a man in flux: from the brash confidence of A Hard Day’s Night to the aching self-awareness of Isolation.
Lennon’s Lasting Influence
While Lennon himself is gone, his influence endures not only in the music that followed but in how people learn and interact with music today. Beatles and Lennon discographies have had their fair share of reissues, and we’re even due to have the Fab Four’s tale brought to the silver screen once again through Sam Mendes' lens. But a more direct way we can experience Lennon’s legacy is just by playing the songs ourselves.
Lennon’s legacy continues to inspire new generations of players, and playing his music is an invitation to feel what Lennon felt when he first discovered the power of a melody or a perfectly placed chord change and just how impactful music can be with a little imagination.
You can find many of Lennon’s songs, including those with The Beatles, as well as songs by the artists who shaped him, in the ROLI Learn app. Here’s a little playlist of songs — either written by Lennon or by artists who inspired him—that you can learn today:
The Beatles — All You Need Is Love
The Beatles — In My Life
The Beatles — Strawberry Fields Forever
John Lennon — Imagine
John Lennon — Woman
Harry Nilsson — Everybody's Talkin' (from Midnight Cowboy)
Harry Nilsson — Without You
The Beach Boys — God Only Knows
The Beach Boys — Good Vibrations
The Beach Boys — Kokomo
The Beach Boys — Wouldn't It Be Nice
Elvis Presley — Blue Christmas
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