Few artists can hope to have the influence on rock and roll that John Lennon had. Throughout his time with The Beatles and into his solo career, Lennon was one of the cornerstones of songwriting, crafting tunes about dreaming of something greater than just the material world. Even though Lennon may have been able to help most of us dream bigger than we had imagined, he was indebted to the musicians who came before him.
Before he had even picked up a guitar, Lennon was already interested in rock and roll. Although he may not have been as familiar with the mechanics of the music, Lennon was usually drawn to the excitement he felt whenever he listened to his favourite songs, being transfixed when he heard Elvis Presley for the first time.
While the new genre of music was typically frowned upon in his household, Lennon took to rock and roll as if it were second nature, quickly adopting the guitar as his main instrument and trying to figure out chords based on banjo chords that his mother had shown him. Then again, Elvis was only the tip of the iceberg regarding Lennon’s love for music.
When talking about his musical upbringing, Lennon was drawn to several famous acts to come out of America, saying, “There was Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Elvis, of course, Gene Vincent when he was alive, Eddie Cochran when he was alive.” Even though Little Richard may have introduced the rock and roll scream into the world, Lennon wouldn’t have the right vehicle for that sound until he met Paul McCartney, who could match Richard’s intensity whenever he played.
Outside of the traditional rock sounds, Lennon was also drawn to what he heard from the blues scene, explaining, “Before that, we used to listen to a lot of blues, T Bone Walker and Sleepy John Estes. When I was at art school, they would only allow jazz to be played. We had to con them into letting us play rock and roll by calling it blues.”
Although Lennon may have had a respect for the blues, it wouldn’t be until The Beatles’ rivals, The Rolling Stones, arrived that rock and blues fully congealed, creating songs that were as much indebted to Chuck Berry as they were to Muddy Waters and BB King. Even though Lennon may have had a distinct taste in rock and roll, he was about to carve out his own voice in the genre.
Once The Beatles knocked out their first album, Please Please Me, fans got their first taste of what The British Invasion sounded like, with Lennon working his Little Richard and Bo Diddley chops across songs like ‘I Saw Her Standing There’. As the band proceeded to conquer the world, though, Lennon found out there was more to life than just playing standard rock and roll.
Throughout the rest of the 1960s, the band would continue to stretch what the genre was supposed to be, from Lennon’s innovative takes on psychedelia on ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ to working with McCartney to create masterpieces like ‘A Day In The Life’. Bo Diddley and Elvis Presley may have given Lennon a foundation to work off of, but it was only a matter of time before he started to go beyond the sounds of his heroes.
The music that shaped John Lennon:
*Bo Diddley
*Little Richard
*Elvis Presley
*Gene Vincent
*Eddie Cochran
*T Bone Walker
*Sleepy John Estes
