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Me at Strawberry Fields, the Central Park Memorial to John Lennon

         Strawberry Fields is a living memorial to the world-famous singer, songwriter, and social activist John Lennon (1940–1980). This area of Central Park was named in 1981, and the re-landscaped Strawberry Fields was dedicated in 1985.

         John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940 in a working-class neighborhood in Liverpool, England, and raised by his aunt in the suburb of Woolten. In 1956, Lennon took up guitar and formed his first rock group, the Quarrymen. The following year, Lennon met Paul McCartney, another young musician, and he became a fellow band member and Lennon’s main musical collaborator. In 1958, George Harrison (1943-2001) joined the Quarrymen, which evolved into the Beatles. With the inclusion of Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey), the legendary band debuted in 1960.

         “Strawberry Fields,” was one of the Beatles’s best-known songs, written by Lennon and recorded on November 24, 1966. With surreal lyrics and music, the song was inspired by a Salvation Army orphanage, Strawberry Field, near Lennon’s childhood home in Woolton. Paul McCartney later recalled, “we related it to youth, golden summers, and fields of strawberry.” Though intended originally for the watershed 1967 album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the song was instead released prior to the album on February 13, 1967. Appearing as a double A-side single with Penny Lane, the song was issued again late in 1967 on the album, Magical Mystery Tour. On the recording, an electronic instrument called a Mellotron was used to simulate other instruments (an innovation in popular song), and the final single was stitched together from two different versions.

         In 1984, Yoko Ono contributed $500,000 to redesign and renovate Strawberry Fields, and an equivalent amount for an ongoing maintenance endowment. Landscape architect Bruce Kelly designed a meditative Garden of Peace, rich in trees, shrubs and flowers, which was integrated with the historic landscape of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824–1895). At the western apex of the garden, Neopolitan artisans crafted a circular black and white mosaic emblem into the pavement, containing a starburst pattern and the solitary word, “Imagine,” the title of one of Lennon’s most famous songs. 150 nations were enlisted to contribute plants to the garden, thus embodying the principle of world peace for which Lennon was such an influential advocate. On October 9, 1985, on the 45th anniversary of Lennon’s birth, Strawberry Fields was dedicated, and has become a pilgrimage site for visitors to New York from around the world.

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