John Lennon: What Influences Shaped the Man Behind the Music

When you think of John Lennon, you don’t just hear his songs—you feel the raw, tangled threads of his influences. His rebellious wit, spiritual curiosity, and unflinching honesty didn’t emerge from a vacuum. I’ve always been fascinated by how his mind worked, how he wove chaos and clarity into art. Let’s pull apart the seams of his genius.

## Were Elvis Presley’s Early Rock and Roll Recordings a Major Influence on You?

Of course. Elvis was the spark. When I first heard him, it was like a sexual awakening. The rawness, the rhythm—those Sun Records cuts stripped music down to its bones. I copied Elvis’s voice so much my Aunt Mimi would shout, “Stop warbling like that!” That’s where The Quarrymen (and later The Beatles) learned to perform. Without Elvis’s swagger, there’s no “Twist and Shout,” no Hamburg grit.

## How Did Bob Dylan Change Your Songwriting Approach?

Dylan taught me to write from myself, not for the radio. When we met in 1964, he asked why I’d written “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” the way I did. It shook me—I’d never thought lyrics could be personal. He handed me a joint and said, “Don’t hide behind love metaphors.” Suddenly, I was scribbling in a spiral notebook instead of chasing chord progressions.

## Did Yoko Ono’s Artistic Philosophy Alter Your Creative Perspective?

She cracked open my head. Before Yoko, art was something you made. She showed me it’s something you are. Those avant-garde pieces—screaming into microphones, staring at each other for hours—were terrifying, exhilarating. She made me see that silence is sound, that pain is poetry. “Imagine” wouldn’t exist if she hadn’t pushed me to distill everything—politics, love, spirituality—into a single, fragile idea.

## What Did You Take From Your Experiences With Maharishi Mahesh Yogi?

At first, it was peace. We arrived in India like kids chasing a fairytale, thinking mantras would fix everything. The Beatles were broken up, I’d just lost my mother again (in divorce, this time), and here was this smiling man telling us to meditate. We wrote some of our best songs there—“Dear Prudence,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” But the disillusionment? It was part of the lesson. Even gurus are human.

## How Did Your Childhood Shape the Person You Became?

Liverpool shaped my humor and my hunger. My aunt raised me with a sharp tongue and a harder heart—she called my dreams “rubbish.” But my mother, Julia… she taught me to play the banjo, drew my name in her sketchbook. She was wild and brilliant, like me. When she got hit by a car, I wasn’t just grieving her—I was grieving the part of me that believed in safety.

## Why Does It Matter to Understand These Influences Today?

Because I was a patchwork of contradictions. The tough kid who loved poetry. The peace activist who fought with his bandmates. The man who wanted to “hold your hand” but also scream “give peace a chance.” If you want to talk about it, to dig into how these threads collided—ask me yourself.

Talk to John Lennon on HoloDream.