John Winston Lennon was born in England, October 9th, 1940. He was raised really in a kind of classical British upbringing, he did not have very much money growing. And what’s interesting about John Lennon is that—all of the Beatels, and we forget this, but they really started out kind of slumming in Liverpool, which was not London and which was certainly not the nicest place to grow up. What makes John Lennon really, really interesting in later life is not even necessarily his collaboration with the Beatels, but for all of the songs that he wrote despite the fact that Lennon and McCartney are always on all the Beatels albums or put together as co-songwriters, a lot of the more introspective songs were actually written by John Lennon, songs that really ask people to think and songs that really ask people to go outside themselves.

John Lennon certainly was no stranger to controversy, probably the most famous incident was at one point in 1966 where he was dumb enough to say—literally just ingest, the Beatels were more popular than Jesus Christ, and this lead to a horrible backlash against the Beatels, people were burning albums and people were going crazy. But n truth, really, Lennon just spent that, you know, that everybody knew who they were and he couldn’t believe it, it was more of conscious statement on his part going, “What’s wrong with you people, that we’re more important that Jesus?” Which a lot of people don’t realize about John, he is actually a very caring man and a very spiritual man.

His first marriage with his wife Cynthia didn’t work out al that well and his oldest Julian will tell you that his father weren’t around and off a lot, although, a lot of that has just to do with musical career at the time. Hi second marriage was certainly a lot stranger to the public, but John, it seemed to be a perfect match. His marriage to Yoko Ono who was an artist and she was really out on the fringe. He created a lot of music with her that his original Beatels fans didn’t understand. But we also need to remember that during his period with Yoko Ono, he decides producing a son Shawn and really being happier than he had within the long time.

John Lennon wrote songs like Imagine when he was with Yoko and she made him really think outside that box. And when John says, “Imagine there is no heaven, it’s easy if you try. No hell below us.” He is really taking a punch against religion and a lot of people don’t realize how at the time that was a huge big deal, but his underlying message of course again with Yoko was to give peace a chance. And despite the fact that he did some strange thing in the 70’s, like his bed-in in Montreal where he and Yoko literally sat in bed promoting love for a week, peace, love and unity and you can get footage of it and it seems very strange. They’re sitting in bed, they’re not getting out of bed, there’s hearts everywhere, you’re going, “What are you people doing?” But, I mean, you realize, I mean, they were really the ones who pioneer this movement.

I’d like to leave you with an interesting anecdote about John Lennon. We all know the way that he died, he was tragically murdered outside his building, Dakota, New York in 1980 by a deranged fan and who basically believed that he and Lennon couldn’t co-exist on the universe at the same time. I mean, it’s really tragic not only that his life was cut short, but what he could have produced was cut short because John Lennon was such an amazing model of music of course, but really, he made people think to open to their minds. So I would like to end with an anecdote about John Lennon in what I would say his Beatels heyday that really kind of emphasize his mojo.

John Lennon was the type of guy who even, when things were really rough, he never lost touch of himself and where he came from. And famously in the 1960’s, the Beatels were putting on of their first performance and with the most aristocratic people in British society there, including the Queen of England and John Lennon gets up on stage and he says to the audience, “All of you in the sits up there, clap your hands. The rest of you can just rattle through your jewelry.” And everybody just burst out laughing and John was just one of those people who is able to make everybody at ease and he was able to say, okay, this is a ridiculous situation, but we’re going to take it and we’re just going to go with it. And that’s a man with mojo.

So, here is to John Lennon, another man on our man with mojo.