The late musician would have turned 85 today
John Lennon, who would have turned 85 today, with his wife, Yoko Ono, in 1980(Image: Getty Images)
The light in John Lennon’s old bedroom will be left on tonight to mark the late Beatles icon’s 85th birthday. The legendary musician’s family home in Mendips, Woolton, is now owned by the National Trust.
Yoko Ono bought her late husband’s family home in 2002 and donated it to the National Trust to save it from demolition and property speculators. Speaking to the ECHO in 2022, Simon Osborne, general manager of the National Trust’s Liverpool properties said: “We’re proud to care for Mendips, the childhood home of John Lennon in Liverpool.”
John lived at this address with his aunt Mim until 1963 and it was from here where he went on to change the world from. Mr Osbourne also spoke about the decision to leave the light on in the Imagine singer’s childhood bedroom each year on October 9.
He said: “We leave the light on overnight in John’s bedroom as a simple tribute to him and his cultural legacy. John’s bedroom is the place where some of the earliest Beatles hits were written, where Lennon and McCartney once sat on John’s bed to start composing songs like ‘Please Please Me’ and ‘I Call Your Name’.”
The childhood home of Paul McCartney – 13 Forthlin Road – is also owned and managed by the National Trust, with many citing it as the birthplace of The Beatles.
Happy birthday John Lennon as the light shines on in his childhood bedroom (Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
Paul and John were the driving creative force behind The Beatles. The majority of the band’s songs were written by the two and credited to Lennon-McCartney, irrespective of how collaborative the writing process was.
They began writing together after meeting at a Woolton church fete in 1957. They wrote hit after hit until The Beatles went their separate ways in 1970.
Every song written by John and Paul for The Beatles received that joint credit. In a 1980 interview with Playboy, John said about working with Paul: “(He) provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes.
“There was a period when I thought I didn’t write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock ‘n’ roll. But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs – ‘In My Life’, or some of the early stuff, ‘This Boy’ – I was writing melody with the best of them.”
John continued his incredible career until he was shot dead aged 40 in 1980 as he walked into his home at the Dakota building in New York City. Tearful crowds gathered at New York’s Roosevelt Hospital, where John had been taken, and at the Dakota itself.
Forty five years on from his murder, John’s work continues to inspire fans and the sadness of his death is still felt.
In New York’s Central Park, an area of land was renamed Strawberry Field in 1981, marking a permanent memorial to John – complete with a mosaic that reads “Imagine”.
In the recent documentary “Beatles ’64”, Paul is asked what he would say to John and George, who died in 2001, if they were still here today.
He responded: “I would say ‘I love you’ because growing up in Liverpool, you never said that.
“You never told a guy you loved him, unless he was like your brother, and they were brothers.”