John Lennon statue could tour Liverpool to mark music icon's 80th birthday

A sculpture of John Lennon could go on a tour of Liverpool to mark his upcoming 80th birthday.

Laura Lian, who created the six-foot bronze statue of the late music icon, has said she wants it to be displayed in Lennon’s home city by September 21 – the International Day of Peace.

The likeness of Lennon – who would have turned 80 in October – has been displayed at London’s Hard Rock Cafe since Lian completed work on it two years ago.

But she is now calling for the statue to tour all of the boroughs in Merseyside over the next two years.

She told The Guardian: “With all the trouble in the world about statues … the pandemic and the strife, it’s so right that Lennon can go back to where he belongs. For my generation growing up amid protests against the Vietnam war and the threat of nuclear war, Lennon was an inspiration in the way he inspired us to dream of peace.

“I had always intended for the statue to have a permanent home up on Merseyside and at one stage it looked like the Lennon statue was going to be erected in the Strawberry Fields area of Liverpool. That project fell through but when the metropolitan mayor of Merseyside, Steve Rotheram, suggested it should go up in the borough of Sefton, I thought that was a great idea. Every year a borough on Merseyside is nominated as the borough of culture and this year it’s Sefton’s turn.”







She added that it “was also apposite that his statue comes home to Liverpool”, ahead of the 40th anniversary of his death in December.

Meanwhile, a series of artists have covered some of Lennon’s most notable tracks during lockdown. Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong covered ‘Gimme Some Truth’, while Two Door Cinema Club offered their take on Lennon’s ‘Isolation’. 

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