John Lennon Lennon was born in 1940 during the Nazi bombing of Britain and given the middle name Winston, after Prime Minister Churchill. Knowing firsthand the horror of a world at war and living through the era of Vietnam's senseless carnage as well, Lennon came to embrace and embody pacifism via such classics of the Beatles era as "All You Need Is Love" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." Yet he also had a countervailing dark side that found expression in pained outcries that dated as far back as "Help." This unvarnished aspect of the Lennon persona reached a fevered pitch with the drug-withdrawal blues of "Cold Turkey," a 1969 single released under the name Pla