John Lennon threw himself into a new life. The couple moved to Tittenhurst Park, a 26-room. A Georgian mansion in Berkshire, and in the summer of 1971 Lennon started his second solo album, Imagine.
These color pictures, some rare, that captured John Lennon on streets in 1980. Several pictures were the last hours of his life.
After John left the UK for good on August 1971, he never returned to the UK again. The main reason he didn’t come back was due to green card problems (the American permit which allows a foreign national to live and work permanently in the US). John struggled to obtain a green card and while that was on-going, if he was to leave the US he would have risked being refused reentry when he came back, so for several years John couldn’t leave for that reason. (Quora.com)
John and Yoko left the UK to live in New York mainly because of the fact a lot of people blamed Yoko for the break up of the Beatles and we’re not very nice to her (shall we say).
John obtained a Green Card on 27th July 1976. By this point John was settled in New York and his son, Sean had been born. With the Green Card he was free to leave American and would be allowed to return. He still didn’t visit the UK, which was probably more to do with he was busy with other things, most prominently raising Sean as John took an extended break from his music career to do that. John would have been able to apply for full American citizenship in 1981.
He did take holidays to other places like Japan and Bermuda and was planning a visit to the UK when he was killed in 1980. John was raised by his Aunt Mimi and he’d telephoned her only a few days (or hours, depending on which source you believe) to say he was home sick and was planning a visit soon. There was also some Beatles business which had been pencilled in for 1981, which John might have returned to the UK for.
There have been rumours that he visited the UK in secret, but these appear to be false. Presuming someone as famous as John could travel anywhere in secret he would still need to go through the customs process and would not have risked being refused entry back into the US prior to 1976.
The couple embarked on an accompanying film.
Also on the agenda was mending bridges with John’s son, Julian, who shared his father’s love of Dr Pepper – imported from America at John’s insistence, along with a freezer of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. 
A new book, Imagine John Yoko, collects intimate photographs from that time. Soon the couple would depart for New York, never to return to the UK in Lennon’s lifetime, but the book captures a time when a white mansion became a hub for their world-changing art.
‘When I met Yoko is when you meet your first woman and you leave the guys at the bar and don’t go and play snooker and billiards.
The boys became of no interest, other than that they were like old friends,’ said Lennon, above.
‘Yoko really woke me up to myself. She didn’t fall in love with a Beatle, she didn’t fall in love with my fame. She fell in love with me for myself, and through that, brought out the best in me.’
Having installed a state-of-the-art recording studio in the grounds. This is a part from an article published by
The couple’s everyday existence quickly came to resemble a never-ending art project, as Lennon recorded with producer Phil Spector and Beatles colleagues George Harrison and Ringo Starr, and the couple embarked on an accompanying film.
