(Berklee Press). An essential guide for all songwriters and Beatles fans, this book explores John Lennon's songwriting genius with a guided tour through 25 of his Beatles-era hits. Author John Stevens explains Lennon's intuitive talent from a technical point of view, through the lens of songwriting's three basic elements: melody, harmony and lyric. He shows how Lennon fashioned songs that were at once politically and socially relevant during the '60s, yet remain ageless and timeless today. Features in-depth musical analysis of: A Hard Day's Night * Ticket to Ride * Norwegian Wood * Strawberry Fields Forever * Come Together * and more. John Stevens is a songwriting professor at Berklee College of Music. For more than 20 years, he has taught "The Music of John Lennon," one of the most popular courses in the Berklee curriculum. "You've got the Beatles' records and the John Lennon records; now with this book, you can have the Owner's Manual. This will tell you how the songs are built and how they work. Good stuff." Marshall Crenshaw, Singer/Songwriter

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Songbook). Learn songs created by one of the most successful partnerships in music! 42 full songs with piano arrangements, guitar chords and lyrics are included, each with their own plain-English performance notes detailing the wheres, whats and hows. Hits include: Across the Universe * Can't Buy Me Love * The Fool on the Hill * Good Day Sunshine * Hey Jude * I Saw Her Standing There * If I Fell * Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da * She's Leaving Home * We Can Work It Out * You've Got to Hide Your Love Away * and many more.

"Jonn Lennon's life in the years between 1970 and his tragically young death in 1980 were eventful and fascinating. He moved from stardom in the world's biggest pop group, to global peace campaigner and figurehead for radical causes. He left England for a new life in the USA with Yoko Ono. There was a bizarre interlude of 18 months - his famous 'lost weekend' - when John ran off with Yoko's secretary May Pang and descended into alcoholism. Reunited with Yoko, he abandoned publi life and retired to his New York apartment to raise their son and live the life of a recluse. In 1980 he re-emerged with a new album, but the plan to resume his career was cruelly curtailed on that fateful night outside the Dakota Building. This book recounts John's life after The Beatles in a fascinating and revealing track-by-track analysis of the stories behind each song that he wrote."--Back cover.

**NOTE: EBOOK DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY IMAGES** Every album and every song ever released by the Beatles?from "Please Please Me" (U.S. 1963) to "The Long and Winding Road" (U.S. 1970)?is dissected, discussed, and analyzed by two music historians in this lively and fully illustrated work. All the Songs delves deep into the history and origins of the Beatles and their music. This first-of-its-kind book draws upon decades of research, as music historians Margotin and Guesdon recount the circumstances that led to the composition of every song, the recording process, and the instruments used. Here, we learn that one of John Lennon's favorite guitars was a 1958 Rickenbacker 325 Capri, which he bought for £100 in 1960 in Hamburg, Germany. We also learn that "Love Me Do," recorded in Abbey Road Studios in September 1962, took 18 takes to get right, even though it was one of the first songs John and Paul ever wrote together. And the authors reveal that when the Beatles performed "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, John's microphone wasn't turned on, so viewers heard only Paul singing. All the Songs is the must-have Beatles book for the any true Beatles fan.

For the first time, John Lennon: 1980 Playlist examines the music this legendarily figure was listening to in the year of his creative rebirth, and how that music impacted his life. Reggae, new wave, blues, country, R & B, early rock and roll, ambient and gospel; John listened to it all and loved it all. Readers will learn:* What John thought about punk bands like the Clash and the new wave music so popular in 1980.* That John's eclectic musical taste made him an unlikely fan of Bing Crosby, Noel Coward, and even Morris Albert's schmaltz classic "Feelings."* How Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley each inspired John to write a new song of his own in 1980. * How songs by Queen and the B-52s inspired John to re-enter the recording studio for the first time in five years.* The event that spurred John and Yoko to return to the studio just a couple of weeks after Double Fantasy was released.* The Doobie Brothers track that lent its title to one of John's Double Fantasy songs.* The rock, disco, funk, country, and pop songs John was listening to that year.John Lennon: 1980 Playlist examines the music of an incredibly diverse list of artists that provided the soundtrack to John's final year including David Bowie, Dolly Parton, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Presley, Jermaine Jackson, the Knack, Kate Bush, Devo, B.B. King, Yoko Ono, Elvis Costello, the Vapors, Donna Summer, Tina Turner, Bobby Darin, Christopher Cross, Olivia Newton-John and the Cars, to name but a few. In John Lennon: 1980 Playlist readers will learn not only what John had to say about these artists, but how their music resonated in John's life, sometimes even influencing crucial decisions he made that year. All of this is placed in the context of the time, the turbulent year of 1980.Even the most jaded of Beatlemanics will learn something new in John Lennon: 1980 Playlist.Even the most jaded Beatlemaniacs will discover new information and insights in John Lennon: 1980 Playlist!

Personally compiled and curated by Yoko Ono, Imagine John Yoko is the definitive inside story-told in revelatory detail-of the making of the legendary album and all that surrounded it: the locations, the creative team, the artworks and the films, in the words of John & Yoko and the people who were there. Features 80% exclusive, hitherto-unpublished archive photos and footage sequences of all the key players in situ, together with lyric sheets, Yoko's art installations, and exclusive new insights and personal testimonies from Yoko and over forty of the musicians, engineers, staff, celebrities, artists and photographers who were there-including Julian Lennon, Klaus Voormann, Alan White, Jim Keltner, David Bailey, Dick Cavett and Sir Michael Parkinson. "A lot has been written about the creation of the song, the album and the film of Imagine, mainly by people who weren't there, so I'm very pleased and grateful that now, for the first time, so many of the participants have kindly given their time to 'gimme some truth' in their own words and pictures" -Yoko Ono Lennon, 2018 In 1971, John Lennon & Yoko Ono conceived and recorded the critically acclaimed album Imagine at their Georgian country home, Tittenhurst Park, in Berkshire, England, in the state-of-the-art studio they built in the grounds, and at the Record Plant in New York. The lyrics of the title track were inspired by Yoko Ono's "event scores" in her 1964 book Grapefruit, and she was officially co-credited as writer in June 2017. Imagine John Yoko tells the story of John & Yoko's life, work and relationship during this intensely creative period. It transports readers to home and working environments showcasing Yoko's closely guarded archive of photos and artifacts, using artfully compiled narrative film stills, and featuring digitally rendered maps, floorplans and panoramas that recreate the interiors in evocative detail. John & Yoko introduce each chapter and song; Yoko also provides invaluable additional commentary and a preface. All the minutiae is examined: the locations, the key players, the music and lyrics, the production techniques and the artworks-including the creative process behind the double exposure polaroids used on the album cover. With a message as universal and pertinent today as it was when the album was created, this landmark publication is a fitting tribute to John & Yoko and their place in cultural history.

In his commanding new book, the eminent NPR critic Tim Riley takes us on the remarkable journey that brought a Liverpool art student from a disastrous childhood to the highest realms of fame. Riley portrays Lennon's rise from Hamburg's red light district to Britain's Royal Variety Show; from the charmed naivetéf "Love Me Do" to the soaring ambivalence of "Don't Let Me Down"; from his shotgun marriage to Cynthia Powell in 1962 to his epic media romance with Yoko Ono. Written with the critical insight and stylistic mastery readers have come to expect from Riley, this richly textured narrative draws on numerous new and exclusive interviews with Lennon's friends, enemies, confidantes, and associates; lost memoirs written by relatives and friends; as well as previously undiscovered City of Liverpool records. Riley explores Lennon in all of his contradictions: the British art student who universalized an American style, the anarchic rock 'n' roller with the moral spine, the anti-jazz snob who posed naked with his avant-garde lover, and the misogynist who became a househusband. What emerges is the enormous, seductive, and confounding personality that made Lennon a cultural touchstone. In Lennon, Riley casts Lennon as a modernist hero in a sweeping epic, dramatizing rock history anew as Lennon himself might have experienced it.