After the Beatles disbanded, Lennon released his solo debut John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and the international top-10 singles "Give Peace a Chance", "Instant Karma!

[15] His aunt purchased volumes of short stories for him, and his uncle, a dairyman at his family's farm, bought him a mouth organ and engaged him in solving crossword puzzles.

They would visit the Blackpool Tower Circus and see artists such as Dickie Valentine, Arthur Askey, Max Bygraves and Joe Loss, with Parkes recalling that Lennon particularly liked George Formby.

[23] After passing his eleven-plus exam, he attended Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool from September 1952 to 1957, and was described by Harvey at the time as a "happy-go-lucky, good-humoured, easy going, lively lad".

[65] In March that year he and Harrison were unknowingly introduced to LSD when a dentist, hosting a dinner party attended by the two musicians and their partners, spiked the guests' coffee with the drug.

[77] After the Beatles were introduced to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group attended an August weekend of personal instruction at his Transcendental Meditation seminar in Bangor, Wales.

[83] While there, they composed most of the songs for their double album The Beatles,[84] but the band members' mixed experience with Transcendental Meditation signalled a sharp divergence in the group's camaraderie.

[89] By late 1968, Lennon's increased drug use and growing preoccupation with Ono, combined with the Beatles' inability to agree on how the company should be run, left Apple in need of professional management.

[91] Lennon and Ono were married on 20 March 1969 and soon released a series of 14 lithographs called "Bag One" depicting scenes from their honeymoon,[92] eight of which were deemed indecent and most of which were banned and confiscated.

Between 1969 and 1970, Lennon released the singles "Give Peace a Chance", which was widely adopted as an anti-Vietnam War anthem,[95] "Cold Turkey", which documented his withdrawal symptoms after he became addicted to heroin,[96] and "Instant Karma!".

Designed to release emotional pain from early childhood, the therapy entailed two half-days a week with Janov for six months; he had wanted to treat the couple for longer, but their American visa ran out and they had to return to the UK.

[110] Lennon's debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), was received with praise by many music critics, but its highly personal lyrics and stark sound limited its commercial performance.

[111] The album featured the song "Mother", in which Lennon confronted his feelings of childhood rejection,[112] and the Dylanesque "Working Class Hero", a bitter attack against the bourgeois social system which, due to the lyric "you're still fucking peasants", fell foul of broadcasters.

[137] After George McGovern lost the 1972 presidential election to Richard Nixon, Lennon and Ono attended a post-election wake held in the New York home of activist Jerry Rubin.

Released in October 1974, it included "Whatever Gets You thru the Night", which featured Elton John on backing vocals and piano, and became Lennon's only single as a solo artist to top the US Billboard Hot 100 chart during his lifetime.

"[201] Soon after their return from Spain, at McCartney's twenty-first birthday party in June 1963, Lennon physically attacked Cavern Club master of ceremonies Bob Wooler for saying "How was your honeymoon, John?"

Julian's birth, like his mother Cynthia's marriage to Lennon, was kept secret because Epstein was convinced that public knowledge of such things would threaten the Beatles' commercial success.

[231] After Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-size bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on the Beatles' album, Abbey Road.

[258] Another political activist, John Sinclair, poet and co-founder of the White Panther Party, was serving ten years in prison for selling two joints of marijuana after previous convictions for possession of the drug.

[259] In December 1971 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 15,000 people attended the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally", a protest and benefit concert with contributions from Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, and others.

[260] Lennon and Ono, backed by David Peel and Jerry Rubin, performed an acoustic set of four songs from their forthcoming Some Time in New York City album including "John Sinclair", whose lyrics called for his release.

[264] After the events of Bloody Sunday Lennon and Ono attended a protest in London while displaying a Red Mole newspaper with the headline "For the IRA, Against British Imperialism".

They inspire and transcend and stimulate and by doing so, only help others to see pure light and in doing that, put an end to this dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as Artist Art by the overpowering mass media.

In response, Lennon and Ono held a press conference on 1 April 1973 at the New York City Bar Association, where they announced the formation of the state of Nutopia; a place with "no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people".

The Times Literary Supplement considered the poems and stories "remarkable ... also very funny ... the nonsense runs on, words and images prompting one another in a chain of pure fantasy".

[300] After moving to New York City, from 18 April to 12 June 1970, Lennon and Ono presented a series of Fluxus conceptual art events and concerts at Joe Jones's Tone Deaf Music Store called GRAPEFRUIT FLUXBANQUET.

For The Complete Yoko Ono Word Poem Game, Lennon took the portrait photo of himself that was included in the packaging of the 1968 The Beatles LP (aka The White Album) and cut it into 134 small rectangles.

[314][315] Double Fantasy producer Jack Douglas claimed that since his Beatle days Lennon habitually tuned his D-string slightly flat, so his Aunt Mimi could tell which guitar was his on recordings.

"[329] Music critic Robert Christgau called this Lennon's "greatest vocal performance ... from scream to whine, is modulated electronically ... echoed, filtered, and double tracked.

Under the terms of the agreement, Downtown represents Lennon's solo works, including "Imagine", "Instant Karma (We All Shine On)", "Power to the People", "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)", "Jealous Guy", "(Just Like) Starting Over" and others.