Maureen Cleave: Reporter
Cleave was a reporter for the London Evening Standard when she befriended the Beatles I first met the Beatles early in l963 when they were the darlings of Merseyside. It's hard to imagine how different things were then. Music was made by people like Perry Como. "Pop" music was referred to in inverted commas by The Times and made by pop singers who copied Elvis: wild and wanton on stage, but off it humble, devoted to their mothers, grateful to their fans and innocently dim. They sang songs written by other people and had made-up names. What they never dared have was an opinion. John Lennon had opinions about everything from hollandaise sauce - "I'm not letting that anywhere near my fish" - to the Romans. He read about them with the excitement of a schoolboy. "I've decided I'm a Celt. I'm on Boadicea's side - all those bloody, blue-eyed blonds chopping people up." The Beatles were the greatest fun - if you enjoyed merciless teasing. You'd turn up to interview them, only to have your notebook confiscated and your coat put in the bin. You might be picked up and set down somewhere else. I once had to cut John's hair.
John had the wrong looks for a pop singer - that long nose down which he would peer like an eagle, and clothes that never looked quite right. "Look at these trousers," he'd say. "Must've sat in something." He once bought a gorilla suit and thought of cutting off the head and feet and wearing it everyday. He said it was the only suit that fitted him. It was "interesting to watch him coping with fame: first of all the thrill of it, tempered with slight resentment that he hadn't been famous a bit sooner. Then the impudence: "Those in the cheaper seats clap your hands - the rest of you just rattle your jewellery" - this at the Royal Variety Performance in the presence of the Queen Mother. Then the boredom: "I asked to be rich - I never asked to be famous. Here I am, famous and loaded and I can't go anywhere."
I last saw him in l966 when he, George and Ringo had bought themselves and their wives imposing mock-Tudor mansions in Weybridge in the Surrey stockbroker belt. They seemed to see only each other, until setting off at two in the morning for nightclubs in London. Sometimes Lennon might invite you down to the house: "We've got a pool so bring your body."
He was bemused by it all, as though he didn't belong there, showing me round his home, followed by baby Julian. The house was full of daft objects: a suit of armour called Sidney, a room full of model racing cars, a fruit machine, a giant compendium of games from Asprey's. And outside were the cars - the Mini Cooper, the Ferrari and the Rolls-Royce - all with black windows.
No sooner had he bought these things than he lost interest in them. He was bored. "This isn't it for me," he said. Things would have to change, and what triggered the change was one of Lennon's opinions.
I interviewed him at this time for the London Evening Standard. He was reading a lot about religion. "Christianity will have to go," he said. "It will vanish and shrink. We're more popular than Jesus now - I don't know which will go first, rock'n' roll or Christianity." We were used to him sounding off like this and my editor didn't even put it in the headline.
The Guardian picked it up, so did Newsweek and The New York Times. Nothing happened. But four months later, two weeks before the Beatles were to tour America, the quote appeared in a huge headline in an American magazine called Datebook and all hell broke loose. There were anti-Beatle demonstrations all over America. The Beatles completed the tour, but it was their last. Every rock 'n' roll loudmouth since has owed Lennon an incalculable debt and, if it's Geldof or Bono, we all listen. Maureen Cleave

Keith Richards: Rolling Stone
"John always partied too much with me. I would always have to end up wiping him off and sending him back home. When the Stones were recording Exile on Main Street [1972], so many people passed through, including John - who threw up on the carpet. He was a great bloke, but for some reason he always felt he had to party harder than me. Which is a very difficult thing to do - especially in those days. I wouldn't try, darling. But John did. And he threw up. Har har har."

Cynthia Lennon: first wife
Girlfriend, first wife, mother of their son Julian. Now lives in Spain, and has written a book, "John", about their life together (Hodder & Stoughton)
My fondest memories of John are when we first got together. I was a shy twin-set-and-pearls-kind of girl and he was a rebellious student. To watch his metamorphosis was fascinating - student, father, Beatle, creative genius. He never stopped creating; he was constantly searching for something new and trying to find himself within it. And that was the tragedy; he never evolved and became himself. Even when he was married to Yoko I don't think he lost the pain of his childhood.
When I was with him he was battling to understand his early life. And for the first three or four years we were together he had a stability he had never had before. He knew where he stood in terms of our relationship and home. In our first few years, we had about ten cats. That was what John was like when he was content.
But as the Beatles' fame grew, life became less stable again. Fame was truly brain-blowing. We'd been hungry, starving students, so were naïve about everything. We didn't realise what it was all about. Pop stars were never front-page news, but after the Beatles hit the big time, all hell let loose.
The last time I saw John was in Los Angeles in 1974. I had read in the papers that John had left Yoko and gone off with May Pang. Previously it had been virtually impossible to get in touch with him, but May was wonderful - we're still friends today. I decided to take Julian over to Los Angeles to see his father, who by this time he hadn't seen for four years. We had one evening with John. We sat and chatted; it was so sweet, no bitterness.
Julian had been aching for his father the way John had ached for his mother. But " " John didn't recognise it, because people in pain don't have insight into other people's pain. And that pain was a crucial part of John's aggressiveness and creativity. Whether people want to accept that, it's up to them, but John was violent and aggressive at times.
I felt I was entitled to write my side of the story. I had ten years of close contact with that world and it was important for me, and also for the fans, to tell my tale. Unless they get the story correct, or pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in the right place, they cannot see the genius or humanity of John. He wasn't a saint or a sinner, just a human being.

May Pang: girlfriend
John and Yoko's personal assistant, and Lennon's girlfriend from 1973-75
John just didn't understand his being the focus of all this attention. In New York it was different. We could walk around; we even went on a city bus once. But not Los Angeles. One night we were at an event honouring James Cagney, and all of the Hollywood elite was there - Mae West, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Fred Astaire, Jack Lemmon, George Burns, and Steve McQueen. John couldn't believe that the press was coming up to him.
"I'm nothing compared with these guys," he'd say. That night he was a kid in a candy store: he loved movies and he just sat there, as a fan, in awe of all these icons he grew up with. He wouldn't go talk to them; he was kind of shy that way.
When we went back to New York we had a little one-bedroom flat with a terrace that faced the water. He loved it. It reminded him of Liverpool. He would just sit out there and smoke a cigarette and think. At night - this was the onset of cable TV - he loved to channel-surf, and he would pick up phrases from all the shows. One time, he was watching Reverend Ike, a famous black TV evangelist, who was saying, "Let me tell you guys, it doesn't matter, it's whatever gets you through the night." John loved it and said, "I've got to write it down or I'll forget it." He always kept a pad and pen by the bed. That was the beginning of Whatever Gets You Through the Night, an American number-one and UK top-40 hit for John.

Cilla Black
In the 1960s, Cilla was part of the Liverpool scene and a close friend of Lennon I never did thank John. Isn't that weird? Because really I owe it all to him. Brian Epstein [the Beatles' manager] was looking for a girl singer to take on, and John said it should be me. I actually thought it was Ringo, but he said, "It wasn't me who recommended you, it was John." And John never said a word. He had this kind of shy side - and he was very, very shy with women.
He was always, in a way, a bit envious of Paul, because Paul was very much the pretty boy with this incredible charisma. Paul had no qualms about flirting with women, but John - I've been at a party with him where he smashed a raw egg over a girl's head as a chat-up line! And when she was furious, he retreated to the nearest bathroom with a friend of mine, and was terrified to come out all night. It's funny, he had this caustic sense of humour, but at the end of the day if he thought he'd hurt anyone he'd be mortified. When he said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, he never, ever really got over people thinking he was being blasphemous. John was very, very sensitive. You can't write all those incredible, vulnerable songs - Imagine, Across the Universe, Julia - and not be vulnerable and sensitive. I know Cyn [Cynthia] talks in her book about him hitting her, but that's not the John Lennon I know. If any fracas or altercation was going on, John would be the first to leave. I've never known an aggressive side to John, other than what came out in the rock 'n' roll.
And I didn't know this icon that everybody's talking about either. He was just a mate, this incredible artist doodling away in a corner in the Blue Angel [a Liverpool club] who was so funny and so shy, and what we had in common was the friendship and the music. God, I do miss him.

Derek Johnson: former news editor, NME
Lennon was always the leader of the Fab Four. He took it upon himself to deal with the media and he was a master at overcoming potentially dangerous security problems.
When the Beatles played New York's Shea Stadium in 1965 they attracted the largest-ever attendance at an open-air concert, and by the end many fans had been felled by hysteria and heat exhaustion. Ambulances were summoned to ferry them to hospital, and I heard Paul say, "How the hell are we going to get out of here?"
John gave me a 50-dollar bill and told me to give it to one of the ambulance drivers. So the boys scrambled into an ambulance which joined the convoy heading for the hospital, and nobody realised they had gone. The same procedure was adopted when the Beatles returned to Shea the following year.
Another time Lennon turned up at the NewMusical Express offices dressed as a tramp. "I'm sorry about this charade," he said. "It's the only way I can get around these days." John suggested we go for a cup of tea in a café where music biz folk met for a chat. Shortly after our arrival, the door opened and in stumbled an even more disreputable figure who looked as if he'd been sleeping rough. As this apparition passed our table, he said, "Hi, John", to which Lennon replied, "Hi, George." Inspired by George, the group started studying transcendental meditation in late 1967, and some months later John became involved with Yoko Ono. I believe that these two circumstances set the seal on the Beatles' disintegration. In the course of two years, I saw him transform from a fun-loving cheeky chappie into a sombre and morose man.
I didn't see much of him after the end of 1969, largely because he kept flitting back and forth to the States, and eventually he and Yoko set up home in New York. I treasure my memories of the good times with John, but I must admit that he wrote some of his most haunting songs in his latter years.
What would he be doing today if he were still alive? Just imagine. Derek Johnson

Tom Jones
Jones befriended the Beatles during the 1960s, and though he moved to America, remained in touch John and I were both on a tribute show to Lew Grade, the TV tycoon, in New York in the 70s. John wasn't working at the time, but he put together a group just for this show and did Stand By Me, the Ben E King number. I hadn't seen John for a long time and we were talking about the old days when Lord Mountbatten, who had been speaking about Sir Lew, came up to me and says [adopts a stiff, aristocratic voice] "Mr Jones, I want to tell you that we are very proud of you." And he walked off. Totally ignored Lennon. So John starts yelling [in a loutish Liverpudlian accent] "Hey! Hey! OBE, me!" but Mountbatten kept walking. John turned to me and said, "Do you believe that? He blanked me. And I've met the Queen!"