John Lennon / Yoko Ono

John Lennon (1940–1980) and Yoko Ono (born 1933) were partners and artistic collaborators whose work together produced some of the most radical and politically charged records of the late 1960s and 1970s. Beyond the Beatles, Lennon and Ono's collaborative albums — Two Virgins (1968), Life with the Lions (1969), and Wedding Album (1969) — drew on Fluxus, noise, and free improvisation in ways that shocked conventional pop audiences. Their political work, including the Bed-Ins for Peace and the music of Some Time in New York City (1972), merged activism with artistic practice. Lennon was murdered in New York in 1980; Ono has continued her extraordinary practice as an artist and musician.