John Lennon

John Lennon was the dreamer who taught the twentieth century to imagine peace. Born in Liverpool in 1940, he caught the skiffle fever as a teenager, founded the Quarrymen, and by 1960 had become the Beatles, co-writing with Paul McCartney the most successful songwriting partnership ever counted. His restless mind pushed the band toward the strange and beautiful, from "Strawberry Fields Forever" to "All You Need Is Love", and his solo years gave us "Imagine", "Give Peace a Chance" and "Instant Karma!" before a killer took his life in New York in December 1980.

The chart reads like a manifesto. His Libra Sun is Venus's scale, the ego aimed at harmony and fairness, and it shines from the sixth house of daily craft and service, so his artistry was hard, dutiful work. His Aquarius Moon in the eleventh is the collective psyche fused with the tribe of humanity, the higher octave of Mercury, the crazy-genius wired to revolution and to friends; here was a man whose feelings rose and fell with the masses. And his Aries Ascendant, the Ram's warrior mask, gave him the Martian nerve to walk out front and say: follow me. Peace, sung with a pioneer's spine.