John Winston Lennon was born in Liverpool on October 9, 1940 during the height of WWII. John grew up in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton, with his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George Smith.
Aunt Mimi ran a very strict household. John very quickly became bored at school, preferring drawing and writing about his classmates and teachers rather than his studies. Rebellious at an early age, he had a very rough school history, sagging off from school and petty stealing. His future looked bleak until Mimi got the headmaster of the Quarrybank school to write a letter of recommendation for John to the Liverpool Art College, because of his drawings.
It was at Liverpool Art College, in 1956, that a friend played him Elvis's Heartbreak Hotel, and John's musical interest was piqued. Then he heard Lonnie Donegan's Rock Island Line on Radio Luxembourg, and became part of the new Skiffle craze by begging his Aunt Mimi until she broke down and bought him a guitar, although she forever told him he would never get anywhere with it.
In 1955 he started his own band, the Quarrymen, with his long time pal and fellow troublemaker Pete Shotton, singing all the popular songs, sometimes making up the words when he couldn't get them all off the radio. Also in the Quarrymen were Nigel Walley and Ivan Vaughan, the rest of John's gang. It was Ivan Vaughan who introduced John to his friend, Paul McCartney, in 1957.
