John Lennon^†

Five record labels turned the Beatles down before Parlophone signed them in 1962. Two years later, Lennon and three others walked onto The Ed Sullivan Show and played for roughly 73 million Americans. Two months after that, they held the top five spots on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously, a feat that stood unmatched for nearly six decades. Lennon didn't write polished pop from the start. The Beatles spent years playing marathon sets in Hamburg dives before any of it clicked. By the time America noticed, the work was already done.

By 1975, Lennon had stepped back from music entirely to raise his son Sean, born on Lennon's own 35th birthday. He made bread, did crosswords, and let the industry wonder if he was done. Double Fantasy, his 1980 return, was passed over by multiple labels before David Geffen signed it to his new Geffen Records. Initial reviews were lukewarm. Three weeks after release, he was shot dead outside his apartment building. The album won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1982. He didn't live to see any of it.

The first time he encountered Yoko Ono at London's Indica Gallery in 1966, she told him he'd have to pay five shillings to hammer a nail in her installation before it opened. He offered to pay an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail. She let him in. That negotiation tells you something about how both of them operated. On the night he died, he had signed a copy of Double Fantasy for his killer just hours earlier, as he and Yoko were leaving for the recording studio.

Howard Cosell broke the news on Monday Night Football while games were still being played. Lennon was cremated within 24 hours at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale; his ashes were scattered in Central Park within sight of the Dakota. Strawberry Fields, the memorial garden, was dedicated in the park in 1985. Mark David Chapman has been denied parole 14 times, most recently in September 2025.