John Lennon Google Doodle: Imagine All The People
John Lennon Google Doodle
The Google doodle team celebrated what would have been the 70th birthday of pop icon John Lennon on October 8th 2010 with a John Lennon Google Doodle. The celebrations were a day early but the John Lennon Google Doodle was impressive nonetheless. The John Lennon Google Doodle, which was created by talented doodler Mike Dutton appeared globally on the search engine’s homepage. The John Lennon Google Doodle can still be viewed with its accompanying blog by clicking here.
When users visited the search engine’s homepage they were met by a simplistic black and white doodle, with a YouTube style play button comprising the “E” of the logo. The John Lennon Google Doodle featured a landscape with a cartoon depiction of John Lennon, whose glasses comprised the double “O” section of the Google logo. Upon pressing play Lennon’s song “Imagine” could be heard, viewers were then taken on a psychedelic journey. The journey began on the John Lennon Google Doodle with dandelion seeds being blown into the sky, before landing in the ground and taking seed, forming a forest.
Leaves from the trees in the forest were then blown into the air, circulating in time to the song before morphing into a waterfall, which in turn transformed into a butterfly. The video based John Lennon Google Doodle continued, with the butterfly flying for a few seconds before separating into eight butterflies which formed a circle and rotated, before morphing into a windmill. The windmill then transformed into a plant themed “E”, from which the Google logo formed. The final Google logo in the John Lennon Google Doodle was shaped out of plants and leaves, John Lennon and his iconic round glasses formed the logo’s double “O”.
John Winston Lennon was born on October 9th 1940 in Liverpool Maternity Hospital, his father was a merchant seaman. Lennon’s early childhood was unsettled, his father was often away working at sea, however he did send Lennon’s mother, Julia, cheques to support his upbringing. These cheques abruptly ended when his father went absent without leave during February 1944. He returned home six months later and offered to help Julia, who was pregnant with another man’s child, raise the family. Julia declined the offer.
However, Julia proved to be an incapable mother. Julia’s sister Mimi Smith, twice rang Liverpool’s social services complaining about the environment in which the children were raised. Following this, Lennon entered Mimi’s care. Lennon continued to live with his auntie and uncle throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence.
Lennon passed his eleven plus examination and gained entry to Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool. Whilst here he showed artistic talent and a number of his cartoons appeared in the school magazine he had established “The Daily Howl”. However, his school reports were poor, he was described as “Certainly on the road to failure … hopeless … rather a clown in class … wasting other pupils’ time.” Lennon failed all of his GCE O-Level examinations and only gained entry to college due to the intervention of his headmaster and aunt. However his college performance was equally poor and Lennon was dismissed from college before his final year.
In 1956 Lennon’s mother bought him his first guitar, a Gallotine Champion acoustic. In September of the same year he set up his first band, The Quarrymen. The group was named after the secondary school which Lennon had attended. Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time at The Quarrymen’s second concert which was held at St. Peters’ Church, Woolton on 6th of July 1957. After the concert Lennon asked McCartney to join the band and he accepted.
In early 1960 The Quarrymen became The Beatles. During the August of that year the band took a 48 night residency in Hamburg, Germany. Following their first residency the band accepted a further two in April 1961 and April 1962 respectively. Whilst here Lennon and the band began to experiment with drugs including amphetamine and Preludin.
The Beatles released their first single “Love Me Do” in October 1962 and it gained a top position of 17 in the British pop charts. Following the success of the single the band recorded their first album “Please Please Me” on 11th February 1963, it took the group less than ten hours to record. In the same year, The Beatles enjoyed mainstream British success for the first time.
However by 1967 Lennon had begun to consider leaving the group as he had become lost due to the band’s lack of live performances. He did not action these thoughts at this time and the band released the albums “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in the same year.
Lennon actioned his decision to leave The Beatles in September 1969. The following year he released his emotional debut solo album “John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band”. The album received wide critical acclaim and featured the songs “Mother” and “Working Class Hero”. His next solo album was released the following year, “Imagine” and contained the song after which the album was named and the John Lennon Google Doodle featured. The second album did not receive as good reviews and gained a lukewarm write up in Rolling Stone.
He moved to New York with his partner Ono during August 1971 and in the December of that year released his Christmas anthem “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)”. By this time Lennon’s anti-war and anti-Nixon propaganda had gained the attention of the Nixon Administration who launched out on an unsuccessful four year attempt to deport Lennon.
In 1972 Lennon released an album, “Some Time In New York”, in collaboration with both Ono and Elephant’s Memory. The album contained songs which covered a wide range of topics including race relations, women’s rights and England’s role in Northern Ireland. Lennon continued to write an album each year for next three years, “Mind Games” (1973), “Walls And Bridges” (1974) his only number one album outside of The Beatles and “Rock n’ Roll”, comprised completely of covers in 1975.
Lennon began what would become a five year hiatus following the birth of his second son Sean on October 9th 1975. During this time he became a home husband and put all of his attention into raising his family. In order to fulfil his contractual obligations to his record label, Lennon released the album “Shaved Fish” in the same month. It was made up of recorded songs which had been previously unreleased.
The five year hiatus ended in October 1980, with the release of the single “(Just Like) Starting Over”, which was quickly followed the next month by the release of the album “Double Fantasy”. Lennon died on December 8th 1980. On returning home late in the evening with Ono he was shot in the back four times by gunman Mark David Chapman. Lennon was rushed to hospital but was pronounced dead upon arrival.
Ono announced the next day that there would be no official funeral for John Lennon. His body was cremated and his ashes were spread by Ono in New York’s Central Park. John Lennon is not the only iconic pop star to have celebrated with his dedicated John Lennon Google Doodle, Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury also received one on September 3rd 2011.