Claim: John Lennon was a songwriter for the Beatles.
Evidence: John Winston Ono Lennon , -LRB- born John Winston Lennon ; 9 October 19408 December 1980 -RRB- was an English guitarist , singer , and songwriter who co-founded the Beatles , the most commercially successful and musically influential band in the history of popular music.
In 1963 their enormous popularity first emerged as `` Beatlemania '' , and as the group 's music grew in sophistication in subsequent years , led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney , they came to be perceived as an embodiment of the ideals shared by the counterculture of the 1960s.