JOHN LENNON - HAPPY XMAS (WAR IS OVER)

HAPPY XMAS (WAR IS OVER)

JOHN LENNON

SONGWRITERS: JOHNN LENNON & YOKO ONO

COUNTRY: U. K.

ALBUM: JOHN & YOKO THE PLASTIC ONO BAND

LABEL: APPLE RECORDS

GENRE: CHRISTMAS SONG

YEAR: 1971

 

           John Winston Ono Lennon MBE (born John Winston Lennon, 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in history. In 1969, he started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, Yoko Ono. After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Lennon continued a career as a solo artist and as Ono's collaborator.

             Born in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1956, he formed his first band, the Quarrymen, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. He was initially the group's de facto leader, a role gradually ceded to McCartney. Lennon was characterised for the rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews. In the mid-1960s, he had two books published: In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works, both collections of nonsense writings and line drawings. Starting with 1967's "All You Need Is Love", his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture.

               From 1968 to 1972, Lennon produced more than a dozen records with Ono, including a trilogy of avant-garde albums, his first solo LP John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and the international top 10 singles "Give Peace a Chance", "Instant Karma!", "Imagine" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". In 1969, he held the two week-long anti-war demonstration Bed-Ins for Peace. After moving to New York City in 1971, his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a three-year attempt by the Nixon administration to deport him. In 1975, Lennon disengaged from the music business to raise his infant son Sean and, in 1980, returned with the Ono collaboration Double Fantasy. He was shot and killed in the archway of his Manhattan apartment building by a Beatles fan, Mark David Chapman, three weeks after the album's release.

             As a performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Double Fantasy, his best-selling album, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. In 1982, Lennon was honoured with the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer and thirty-eighth greatest artist of all time. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (in 1997) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice, as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1994).

               Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" is a Christmas song released in 1971 as a single by John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir. It was the seventh single release by Lennon outside his work with the Beatles. The song reached number four in the UK, where its release was delayed until November 1972, and has periodically reemerged on the UK Singles Chart, most notably after Lennon's death in December 1980, when it peaked at number two. In a UK-wide poll in December 2012, it was voted tenth on the ITV television special The Nation's Favourite Christmas Song.

              Also a protest song against the Vietnam War, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" has since become a Christmas standard, frequently recorded by other artists, appearing on compilation albums of seasonal music, and named in polls as a holiday favourite.

            The Plastic Ono Band was a rock band formed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969 for their collaborative and solo projects.

              Lennon and Ono began a personal and artistic relationship in 1968, collaborating on several experimental releases. Following their marriage in 1969, they decided their future endeavours would be credited to a conceptual and collaborative vehicle, Plastic Ono Band. The band featured a rotating lineup of musicians including Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann, Alan White, Billy Preston, Jim Keltner, Keith Moon, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, and Lennon's former Beatles bandmates George Harrison and Ringo Starr. After the Lennons' move to New York, they collaborated with Elephant's Memory under the moniker of the "Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory Band". Lennon's collaborations continued under similar names, until the winding down of the concept in 1974.

            From 2009 to 2015 (29 years following the death of Lennon in 1980), Ono and her son Sean Lennon led a new incarnation of the group, the Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band.

So this is Christmas

And what have you done?

Another year over

And new one just begun

 

And so this is Christmas

I hope you have fun

The near and the dear one

The old and the young

 

A very Merry Christmas

And a Happy New Year

Let's hope it's a good one

Without any fear

 

And so this is Christmas (war is over)

For weak and for strong (if you want it)

The rich and the poor ones

The road is so long

 

And so Happy Christmas

For black and for white

For yellow and red ones

Let's stop all the fight

 

A very Merry Christmas

And a Happy New Year

Let's hope it's a good one

Without any fear

 

And so this is Christmas

And what have we done?

Another year over

And new one just begun

 

And so Happy Christmas

We hope you have fun

The near and the dear one

The old and the young

 

A very Merry Christmas

And a Happy New Year

Let's hope it's a good one

Without any fear

 

War is over

If you want it

War is over

Now.