171]

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Musicianship


Instruments played

Further information: John Lennon's musical instruments and List of The Beatles' instruments

Lennon played a number of instruments, including percussioninstruments and the flute. His first instrument as a child was thebanjo. His mother taught him how to play, then bought him an acousticguitar. His playing on the mouth organ during a bus journey to visithis cousin in Scotland caught the driver's ear. Impressed, the drivertold Lennon of a harmonica he could have if he came to Edinburgh thefollowing day, where one had been stored in the bus depot since apassenger left it on a bus.[173]The professional instrument quickly replaced Lennon's toy. He wouldcontinue to play harmonica, often using the instrument during TheBeatles' Hamburg years, and it became a signature sound in the group'searly recordings.

At 16, he played acoustic guitar with The Quarrymen.[174] As his career progressed through the 1960s and 1970s, he played a variety of electric guitars, predominantly the Rickenbacker 325, Epiphone Casino and Gibson J-160E, and, from the start of his solo career, the Gibson Les Paul Junior.[175][176]His other instrument of choice was the piano, on which he composed manysongs, including "Imagine", described as his best-known solo work.[177] His jamming on a piano with McCartney in 1963 led to the creation of The Beatles' first US number one, "I Want to Hold Your Hand". Occasionally he played a six-string bass guitar, the Fender Bass VI, providing bass during Beatles numbers that occupied McCartney with another instrument.[178]

[edit] Vocal style

From his earliest days with The Beatles, Lennon's singing voice wasrecognized as distinctive, versatile, and variable. Recording "Twist and Shout", the final track during the mammoth one-day session that captured the band's 1963 debut album Please Please Me,his voice, already compromised by a cold, came close to giving out.Lennon said, "I couldn't sing the damn thing, I was just screaming." Inthe words of biographer Barry Miles, "Lennon simply shredded his vocalcords in the interests of rock 'n' roll."[179] The Beatles' producer, George Martin,tells how Lennon "had an inborn dislike of his own voice which I couldnever understand. He was always saying to me: 'DO something with myvoice! ... put something on it ... Make it different.'"[180]Martin obliged, often using double-tracking and other techniques. Musiccritic Robert Christgau says that Lennon's "greatest vocal perfomance... from scream to whine, is modulated electronically ... echoed,filtered, and double tracked."[181]

As his Beatles era segued into his solo career, his singing voicefound a widening range of expression. Biographer Chris Gregory writesthat Lennon was "tentatively beginning to expose his insecurities in anumber of acoustic-led 'confessional' ballads, so beginning the processof 'public therapy' that will eventually culminate in the primalscreams of 'Cold Turkey' and the cathartic John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band." [182]David Stuart Ryan notes Lennon's ability to range from "extremevulnerability, sensitivity and even naivety" in his vocal delivery to ahard, "rasping" style.[183] Wiener too describes contrasts, saying the singer's voice can be "at first subdued; soon it almost cracks with despair"[184] In all the singing styles he employed, Lennon communicated emotion. Music historian Ben Urish recalls hearing The Beatles' Ed Sullivan Show performance of "This Boy"played on the radio a few days after Lennon's murder: "As Lennon'svocals reached their peak ... it hurt too much to hear him scream withsuch anguish and emotion. But it was my emotions I heard in his voice.Just like I always had."[185]


Legacy

Lennon's impact on popular music culture was far-reaching. Musichistorians Schinder and Schwartz, writing of the transformation inpopular music styles that took place between the 1950s and the 1960s,say that The Beatles' influence cannot be overstated: having"revolutionized the sound, style, and attitude of popular music andopened rock and roll's doors to a tidal wave of British rock acts", thegroup then "spent the rest of the 1960s expanding rock's stylisticfrontiers". [186] Liam Gallagher, his group Oasisamong the many who acknowledge the band's influence, identifies Lennonas a hero; in 1999 he named his first child Lennon Gallagher in tribute.[187] Lennon's iconic songs came to inspire and symbolize the ideals of the masses.[188] On National Poetry Day in 1999, after conducting an extensive poll to identify the UK's favourite song lyric, the BBC announced "Imagine" the winner.[189]Lennon's life was one of searching, confronted with the paradoxicaljuxtaposition of his ideals and his own human temperament. According tomusic historians Urish and Bielen, "What remains the most intriguingand ultimately significant effort are the self-portraits Lennon left inhis songs. In holding the mirror up to himself and detailing what hesaw for the public, Lennon went beyond himself, both inwardly andoutwardly. That was the gift given to him as an artist, and that is thegift he gave to the public." Expressing both his experiences and hisideals through his lyrics, they write that Lennon was able to"transform the intensely personal into the deeply universal (as well asthe reverse), often with humor and pointed insight. His songs spoke to,for, and about, the human condition."[

Awards and sales


See also: List of awards and nominations received by The Beatles
Statue in John Lennon Park, Havana, Cuba

The Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership is acknowledged as one of the most influential and successful of the 20th century.[191] As performer, writer or co-writer Lennon is responsible for 27 number one singles on the US Hot 100 chart.a His album sales in the US alone stand at 14 million units.[1] Double Fantasy, released shortly before his death, and his best-selling studio album at three million shipments in the US,[192] won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year.[193] The following year, the BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music went to Lennon.[194] Participants in a 2002 BBC poll voted him eighth of "100 Greatest Britons".[195]Rolling Stone recognized Lennon in several reviews of artists and music, ranking him fifth of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time"[196] and 38th of "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time",[197] and his albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, 22nd and 76th respectively of "The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".[197][198] He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)[35] He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987[199]Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.[78] Between 2003 and 2008, with the other Beatles in 1965. and into the

[edit] Monuments

Liverpool John Lennon Airport