251 Menlove Avenue, named "Mendips", was the childhood home of John Lennon, singer and songwriter with the Beatles, and is now preserved by the National Trust.
Mendips is a 1930s semi-detached property in Woolton, South Liverpool, England. The house belonged to Lennon's Aunt Mimi and her husband George Smith. The couple took John in at the age of five, after his mother, who was living with her boyfriend, was persuaded that it would be better for Mimi and George to take care of him. He remained at Mendips until mid-1963, when he was 22 years old.
Despite having purchased the childhood residence of Paul McCartney, the National Trust showed no interest in acquiring the Menlove Avenue property, claiming that, unlike McCartney's home, no Beatles' songs had been composed at Mendips. It was eventually bought by Yoko Ono, Lennon's widow, who then donated it to the National Trust. After much restoration work to return it to a 1950s style, it was opened to the public on 27 March 2003.
Said Ono, "When John's house came up for sale I wanted to preserve it for the people of Liverpool and John Lennon and Beatles' fans all over the world." (Associated Press, 14 February 2003).
Menlove Ave. is a 1986 album by English rock musician John Lennon. It is the second posthumous release of Lennon's music, having been recorded during the sessions from his albums, Walls and Bridges and Rock 'n' Roll. Menlove Ave. was released under the supervision of Yoko Ono, Lennon's widow.
The album itself comprises session outtakes from the Rock 'n' Roll sessions with Phil Spector in late 1973, which comprises the first half of Menlove Ave. (save for "Rock and Roll People" which was cut in August 1973). The remainder features rehearsal recordings in mid-1974 for Walls and Bridges.
The title refers to Lennon's childhood home, 251 Menlove Avenue, in Liverpool. Menlove Avenue is a long road in South Liverpool, part of the Liverpool ring road. While it is mainly residential, it is also a primary route - the A562. It also passes Woolton Village where Lennon and Paul McCartney first met.
The artwork for the release was effected by artist Andy Warhol, just months before Lennon's 1980 death.
Failing to chart in the United Kingdom, Menlove Ave. managed to reach number 127 in the United States, making it Lennon's least-successful album.
John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founder members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Together with Paul McCartney, he formed one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.
Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved as a teenager in the skiffle craze; his first band, The Quarrymen, evolved into The Beatles in 1960. As the group disintegrated towards the end of the decade, Lennon embarked on a solo career that produced the critically acclaimed albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and iconic songs such as "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine". After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to devote time to raising his infant son Sean, but re-emerged with Ono in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy. He was murdered three weeks after its release.
Yoko Ono (オノ・ヨーコ(小野 洋子), Ono Yōko?, born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese artist, author, and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon. Ono brought feminism to the forefront in her music which prefigured New Wave music and is known for her philanthropic contributions to the arts, peace and AIDS outreach programs.
Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933 to mother Isoko Ono, the great-granddaughter of Zenjiro Yasuda of the Yasuda banking family, and to father Yeisuke Ono, a banker and one-time classical pianist who was a descendant of an Emperor of Japan. The name "Yoko" means "ocean child". Two weeks before she was born, her father was transferred to San Francisco by his employer, the Yokohama Specie Bank. The rest of the family followed soon after and Yoko met her father when she was two. Her younger brother Keisuke was born in December 1936. In 1937, her father was transferred back to Japan and Ono was enrolled at Tokyo's Gakushuin (also known as the Peers School), one of the most exclusive schools in Japan.