John Lennon

John Lennon formed a rock-and-roll group with Liverpool friends in 1956. They called it The Quarrymen, because the members attended Quarry Bank High School. Paul McCartney joined in October 1957, George Harrison in 1958, while Lennon’s school friends, Pete Shotton, Eric Griffiths, etc., were going their own ways. Lennon, now with McCartney and Harrison, continued to form the core of the group, which underwent further changes (the arrival and departure of Stewart Sutcliffe for example) as it transformed itself into The Beatles. Lennon is remembered not only for his contributions as a Beatle (1960 – 1969), but for solo work including the song (and album) Imagine (1971). On December 8, 1980, a 25 year old man obsessed with the novel Catcher in the Rye, Mark David Chapman, shot and killed John Lennon in New York City. Though Chapman’s legal team planned an insanity defense, as the trial approached Chapman nixed that idea, insisting on a change of plea to guilty.