John Lennon

The Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership is one of the best-known and most successful musical collaborations in history. Between 1962 and... 1969, the partnership published approximately 180 jointly credited songs, of which the vast majority were recorded by The Beatles and form the bulk of their catalogue. Unlike many songwriting partnerships that comprise separate lyricist and composer, both John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote words and music. Sometimes, especially early on, they would collaborate extensively when writing songs, working "eyeball to eyeball". Later, it became more common for one of the two credited authors to write all or most of a song with limited input from the other. However, by an agreement made before the Beatles became famous, Lennon and McCartney agreed to share equal writing credit on songs that either one of them wrote while their partnership lasted. Lennon–McCartney compositions have been the subject of numerous cover versions. According to Guinness World Records, "Yesterday" has been recorded by more artists than any other song.
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The Quarrymen were a British skiffle and rock and roll group, formed by John Lennon in Liverpool in 1956, which eventually evolved into The Beatles... in 1960. Originally consisting of Lennon and several schoolfriends, The Quarrymen took their name from a line in the school song of Quarry Bank High School, which they attended. Lennon's mother, Julia Lennon, taught her son to play the banjo and then showed Lennon and Eric Griffiths how to tune their guitars in a similar way to the banjo, and taught them simple chords and songs. Lennon started a skiffle group that was very briefly called the Blackjacks, but changed the name before any public performances. Some accounts credit Lennon with choosing the new name. Other accounts credit his close friend Pete Shotton with suggesting the name. The Quarrymen played at parties, school dances, cinemas and amateur skiffle contests before Paul McCartney joined the band in October 1957. George Harrison joined the band in early 1958 at McCartney's recommendation, though Lennon initially resisted because he felt Harrison to be too young.
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The Plastic Ono Band is a conceptual supergroup formed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969 before the dissolution of the Beatles. Among the various... other members of the band were Eric Clapton, artist Klaus Voormann, future Yes drummer Alan White, Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, & friends, the Who's drummer Keith Moon, New York band Elephant's Memory, Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins, Phil Spector, drummer Jim Keltner, and, in a 2009 revival, Sean Lennon. In 2010, Yoko Ono discussed the origin of the Plastic Ono Band name: "As I was asked to do a show in Berlin before John and I got together, I wanted to use four plastic stands with tape recorders in each one of them, as my band. I told that story to John, and he immediately coined the phrase PLASTIC ONO BAND." On record labels it appeared variously alone or as John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band, etc., and later with further variations as described below. In 1968, John Lennon began his personal and artistic relationship with Yoko Ono by collaborating on the experimental album Two Virgins. After a second volume, Unfinished Music No.
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Geffen Records is an American record label, owned by Universal Music Group, and operated as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group. Geffen Records was founded in 1980 by music industry businessman David Geffen who, in the early 1970s, had founded Asylum Records. Geffen stepped... down from Asylum in 1975, when he crossed over to film and was named a vice-president of Warner Brothers Pictures. He was fired from Warner circa 1978, but remained locked in a 5-year contract, preventing him from working elsewhere. He returned to work in 1980 and struck a deal with Warner Bros. Records to create Geffen Records. Warner provided 100 percent of the funding for the label's operations and distributed the label's releases in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom - CBS/Epic Records handled distribution in the rest of the world until 1985, when Warner Bros. also took over those territories. However, in the United Kingdom the label switched distribution from Warner Bros. to CBS in 1981. Profits were split 50/50 between Geffen and the respective distributors.
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The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a British multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and was one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a... major publishing arm, EMI Music Publishing – also based in London with offices globally. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but since February 2011 it has been wholly owned by Citigroup . EMI is a member of the RIAA & IFPI. In November 2011 Citigroup announced a tentative deal to sell off pieces of the company with the music arm going to Vivendi's Universal Music Group for $1.9 billion and the publishing business going to a Sony/ATV consortium for around $2.2 billion. Other members of the Sony consortium include Blackstone and Abu Dhabi-owned investment fund Mubadala. Both before and after the sale announcement, Universal Music Group pledged to sell off EMI assets to the value of half a billion Euros.
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Capitol Records is a major United States–based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but as of 2011 operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine. It is a... wholly owned subsidiary of EMI. The Capitol Records Company was founded by songwriter Johnny Mercer in 1942, with the financial help of fellow songwriter and film producer Buddy DeSylva and the business acumen of Glenn Wallichs , owner of Music City, at the time the biggest record store in Los Angeles. Johnny Mercer first suggested the idea of starting a record company while he was golfing with Harold Arlen and Bobby Sherwood. He told them, "I’ve got this idea of starting a record company. I get so tired of listening to the way everyone treats music. I keep feeling they’re selling out. And I don’t like the way artists are treated either. Bing Crosby isn’t the only one who can make records. I don’t know, I think it would be fun." By 1941, Mercer was not only an experienced songwriter, but a singer with a number of records to his name.
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Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has... its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources. Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.
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