Ever since John Lennon was a boy the number nine followed him throughout his entire life.
Some people have a lucky number. John Lennon has a number that follows him around, even beyond the grave. Throughout the ex-Beatles' life the number nine popped up constantly, sometimes coincidentally or purposely, and eventually became a Beatles legend. One thing's for sure, the legend is real and frankly kinda creepy.
"It’s just a number that follows me around, but, numerologically, apparently I’m a number six or a three or something, but it’s all part of nine," John Lennon said in 1980, the year he would die.
On May 18, 2017, at 9:09 Sirius XM launched their Beatles channel. The date and time of the launch was no coincidence, and neither was the channel number; 18. The station planned it to have those dates and times because if you added 1+8 it equaled nine, and of course, 9:09 fit in as well. Sirius XM did this on purpose because of the well-known legend the number followed Lennon and The Beatles around.
When The Beatles were releasing their remasters they chose to release them on 9/9/09 and when Rock Band wanted to release their Beatles themed version, they chose the same date. These were designed on purpose, but the number nine wasn't anything new in the Beatles world.
Nine has followed Lennon around since he was born in fact. He was born on the ninth of October and lived on 9 Newcastle Road in Wavertree, Liverpool, "Newcastle," "Wavertree," and "Liverpool" all being nine letters. When Lennon met Paul McCartney (McCartney is nine letters) they formed The Beatles, and they had their first gig at The Cavern Club on February 9, 1961. Nine months later on November 9, their future manager, Brian Epstein, saw them play for the first time. He was able to secure a recording contract with EMI for them on May 9, 1962. Lennon was also only in The Beatles for nine years, leaving in 1969.
Together The Beatles and Lennon had songs that had nine in the title. For The Beatles, there were songs like, The One After 909, recorded early in the band's career (1963- 6+3=9) and then re-released on Let It Be, and Revolution 9, which has the famous "Number Nine" lyric playing over and over at the end. For Lennon, it was #9 Dream off his Walls and Bridges album, coincidentally his ninth solo album, released on the ninth of the month. And when #9 Dream was released as a single? It made it to #9 on the charts.
Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970, "All the thing was made with loops. I had about 30 loops going, fed them onto one basic track. I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backward and things like that, to get the sound effects. One thing was an engineer’s testing voice saying, ‘This is EMI test series number nine’. I just cut up whatever he said and I’d number nine it. Nine turned out to be my birthday and my lucky number and everything. I didn’t realize it: it was just so funny the voice saying, ‘number nine’; it was like a joke, bringing number nine into it all the time, that’s all it was."
The Beatles' famous televised appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show happened on February 9, 1964, and Lennon's son Sean was born on his birthday, October 9, as well. There are also nine '0's in the combined John Ono Lennon and Yoko Ono Lennon, and they lived in apartment number 72 (7+2=9) at the Dakota Building on West 72nd Street. Lennon died on December 8, 1980, where it was December 9 in England, at Roosevelt Hospital (nine letters) on 9th Avenue in Manhattan (also nine letters).
When these coincidences kept happening Lennon became increasingly more intrigued with numerology; the belief that there is a divine relationship a number and an event or person. Together with the fact that Lennon had visions of things throughout his life, and always thought he'd be famous, the weird number following him around isn't much of a surprise. He was clearly made of greatness and maybe the number was a higher power justifying that and leading him on the right path, as numerology has made many people sensitive about dates for a long time. Either way, whatever you believe, the coincidences are strange, to say the least.