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John Lennon by Richard Wootton.
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Lennon, John (1940-1980)
Most famed as one of the members of the Beatles as well as the co-composer of the Beatles song catalogue which includes many of the most popular rock songs ever written, John ...
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The English musician, poet, and songwriter John Winston Lennon (1940-1980) was a founder of The Beatles, the single most important and influential group in the history of rock 'n' roll music. He was m...
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Critical Essay by Francis Newton
The Beatles are an agreeable bunch of kids, quite unsinister (unlike some of the American teenage comets), with that charming combination of flamboyance and a certain ...
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Critical Essay by Alejandro Enrique Planchart
The Beatles' music, up to the time of their first movie, still belongs in the earlier tradition of rock 'n' roll. Each new album had ...
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Critical Essay by Frederic V. Grunfeld
[The] Beatles are now in a position to do anything at all and have it listened to. Their recent oeuvre, notably Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and ...
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Critical Essay by Susan Lydon
Time was when the Beatles could be viewed as the vanguard of a cultural revolution without so much as bothering their heads about politics. Just what was implicit in thei...
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Critical Essay by Tom Wolfe
September…. The Merry Pranksters are getting ready to head bombed out into the mightiest crazed throng in San Francisco history, come to see the Beatles at the Cow P...
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Critical Essay by Alfred G. Aronowitz
By the weight of the crate, The Beatles is the most ambitious album of their career. It took five months to produce through a session of doubt as Paul was changin...
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Critical Essay by John Gabree
The Beatles, ninety minutes of music on two records, is massively boring, a collection of mediocre compositions given some of the most flaccid performances of recent mont...
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Critical Essay by Ellen Sander
There are no nagging inconsistencies in Abbey Road, no finger-pointing or exasperating enigmas, just a whole mess of sublimely executed, elegantly composed Beatles music...
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Critical Essay by Michael Wood
Lennon and McCartney's early lyrics were thin and conventional. There was rain in the heart, there were stars in the sky, birds were always threatening not to sin...
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Critical Essay by Spencer C. Bennett
[The Beatles'] format is that of anonymity and role playing. Although this group is comprised of multitalented individuals, nobody thinks of them as anythin...
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Critical Essay by Russel Nye
While the Beatles' audience might be preponderantly pubescent, at the same time their musical ideas attracted and influenced serious, sophisticated, professional mu...
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Critical Essay by Jack Gould
The Beatles of Britain were seen in their first complete song on American television last night as Jack Paar presented a film of the mop-headed quartet on his variety show...
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Critical Essay by Bud Scoppa
When I first heard Ram in bits and pieces on the radio several weeks ago, I hated it. I didn't care much for the single, either. But then, feeling myself getting sw...
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Critical Essay by Albert Goldman
The history of the Beatles is pop culture's redaction of the myth of innocence and experience. When the famous four set out on their careers, they knew nothing ...
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Critical Essay by Richard Poirier
Any close listening to musical groups soon establishes the fact that as composers and performers the Beatles repay attention altogether more than does any other group...
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Critical Essay by Barbara Suczek
An interesting example of the social construction of a mystery occurred in the late months of 1969, when a strange surge of excitement spread across the country, fomen...
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Critical Essay by Bruce Harris
Since the breakup of The Beatles, Paul has had the unhappy role of playing villain, a problem that has been amplified by things John Lennon has said and sung, statements...
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Critical Essay by David R. Pichaske
Some of the lyrics of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, and Leonard Cohen are the vaguest of all pop songs except, of course, for those that degenerate in...
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Critical Essay by Wilfrid Mellers
[What] kind of world did [the Beatles] evoke in their early years, from [their] interfusion of American black blues and white rock and Country-Western, of Anglo-Irish...
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Critical Essay by Jon Landau
Band on the Run finds McCartney walking a middle ground between autobiographical songwriting and subtle attempts to mythologize his own experience through the creation of ...
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Critical Essay by Tom Wolfe
Literary London, from parlor to arty mews, has been one great wide open door for noble primitives, even though London literati still live in the mental atmosphere of the 19...
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Critical Essay by Jeff Greenfield
When the Beatles broke up in 1970 in a welter of lawsuits and recriminations, the sixties were ending as well—in spirit as well as by the calendar. Bloodshed a...
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Critical Essay by Paul Nelson
As time goes by, John Lennon's importance to the Beatles becomes more and more self-evident. The same old story we've been hearing for years—that Len...
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Critical Essay by Roy Carr and Tony Tyler
[The initial meeting between John and Paul] in the late 'fifties led to events that shook the world.
This is no exaggeration. How many of us can look a...
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Critical Essay by Lester Bangs
What has McCartney got that makes people of all ages the world over respond, that makes the media sit up and bark soon as he strolls across the pond, that makes his come...
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Critical Essay by R. Meltzer
First and foremost, Paul is still for all intents and purposes a Beatle—which automatically makes him preferable to Hubert Humphrey or Judy Garland under just about...
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Critical Essay by Greil Marcus
[The music on Meet the Bealtes] was instantly recognizable and like nothing we had ever heard. It was joyous, threatening, absurd, arrogant, determined, innocent and tou...
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Critical Essay by Nicholas Schaffner
The Beatles will be remembered not only for their considerable contribution as songwriters and recording artists, but also as the most remarkable cultural and soci...
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Critical Essay by Peter Schickele
[In His Own Write] not only has a style of its own, but at its best it has a very sure and delightful style. Moreover, it is not about the author or the group which m...
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Critical Essay by Jonathan Cott
The question is: why do we need A Hard Day's Night so much that we keep showing it as often as we do? (p. 84)
Childhood is our goal. Concomitant with being a chi...
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Critical Essay by Richard Goldstein
If being a critic were the same as being a listener I could just enjoy "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Other than one cut which I ...
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Critical Essay by Gene Lees
No album in recent years has been issued in the midst of so much 'fuss and foofaraw as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."…
The titl...
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Critical Essay by Don Heckman
That "Sgt. Pepper" is different from [the Beatles'] previous albums should surprise no one. Every edition of their work has revealed change, sometime...
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Critical Essay by Robert Christgau
The Beatles really started the whole long-haired hippie business four years ago, and who knows whether they developed with it or it developed with them? All those ho...
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One of the most notorious assassinations in our history was the death of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman on December 8, 1980. Chapman was a depressed man who had mental problems and unfortunately ...
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John Lennon's death "Rocked" the world. His death disappointed and dismayed millions of Pop lovers all over the world. His Death also captivated the inspirations of musical artists all over the world....
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John Lennon's assassination was a premeditated act by a deranged and obsessed fan. Lennon wrote many songs preaching peace and love. John was just entering a new stage in his life and his music wh...
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Lennon, John (1940-1980)
John Winston Lennon
Critical Essay by Francis Newton
Death of John Lennon
