Editing John Lennon (section)

==Solo Career (1970–1980)==

===''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'' and Raw Confessionalism===

Lennon's debut solo album, ''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'' (1970), was a radical departure from anything in the Beatles catalog. Recorded following his participation in primal scream therapy with psychologist Arthur Janov, the album stripped rock production to its barest elements — piano, bass, drums, guitar — and confronted childhood abandonment, the death of his mother, institutional religion, and the mythology of fame with unflinching directness. Tracks including ''Mother'', ''Working Class Hero'', and ''God'' are among the most emotionally raw recordings in rock history.

===''Imagine'' and Political Songwriting===

''Imagine'' (1971) balanced the rawness of its predecessor with more accessible production, yielding Lennon's most enduring solo composition: the title track, a deceptively simple meditation on peace, secularism, and collective human possibility. The song has since become one of the most recognizable pieces of popular music ever written. Other tracks — ''How Do You Sleep?'' (a pointed attack on McCartney), ''Gimme Some Truth'', and ''I Don't Want to Be a Soldier'' — reflected Lennon's growing commitment to political songwriting and anti-war activism.

===Activism and US Government Surveillance===

Lennon and Yoko Ono were prominent figures in the anti-Vietnam War movement, staging high-profile ''Bed-Ins for Peace'' in Amsterdam and Montreal in 1969 and releasing the protest anthem ''Give Peace a Chance''. After settling in New York City in 1971, Lennon became a target of the Nixon administration, which sought to have him deported on the basis of a minor drug conviction in Britain, fearing his influence on the youth vote and anti-war movement. The four-year deportation battle, which Lennon ultimately won in 1976, is documented in the film ''The US vs. John Lennon'' (2006).

===''Walls and Bridges'', the Lost Weekend, and ''Double Fantasy''===

Following a period of personal turbulence — including an eighteen-month separation from Yoko Ono during which he lived in Los Angeles with May Pang, a period he referred to as his '''Lost Weekend''' — Lennon released ''Walls and Bridges'' (1974), which produced his first US number-one solo single, ''Whatever Gets You Thru the Night'', featuring [[Elton John]].

After the birth of his son [[Sean Lennon]] in 1975, Lennon largely withdrew from public life for five years, becoming a self-described househusband and primary caregiver in the Dakota apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He returned to recording in 1980 with ''Double Fantasy'', a duet album with Yoko Ono that received mixed reviews upon release but was in the process of being reassessed when Lennon was shot and killed outside the Dakota on December 8, 1980, by Mark David Chapman. He was forty years old.

''Double Fantasy'' was subsequently awarded the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1981.