John Lennon Oct. 9, 1940 - December 8, 1980: 27 Years Later
Each day is 1/365th of a year (except for Leap Years, which are dumb and, all of them 24 hours in duration, but all days are not created equal. For centuries, December 8 was an unassuming day, doing what it did, coming after the 7th and before the 9th . Only occasionally did it showboat by giving birth to someone famous like Mary, Queen of Scots, Gregg Allman, or Sammy Davis Jr. It wasn’t until 1980 that December 8 became something more.
John Lennon was murdered 27 years ago today.
As the calendar passed from November to Decemeber, I realized this day was coming and wondered how I would commemorate it on this site. After some consideration, I decided to reach out to a handful of my favorite writers and ask them for their John Lennon stories. It was only after I read their contributions that I began to fully understand why I needed them in the first place.
John Lennon’s life was too big and his loss too great for one lone hack in the wilderness to think he could capture it all. It was only with the help of some friends that I could even begin to convey how much we were robbed of, how much emptier the world is for the years that were taken, and the sense of sorrow and dread I feel at this time every year. Joining me today are Dawn Olsen, Mat Brewster, Mark Saleski, and El Bicho.
Being a Beatles fan is not the most exclusive club in the world, but I am a Beatles fan and that fact has informed my life because that music has become such a powerful force in my life. The Beatles, as a band, were history by the time I hit the scene in 1973, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have an impact on my life. While you were singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” I was singing “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the relationship between artists and fans and the peculiar sense of entitlement and ownership we feel about them, and it hit me.
The songs are the bridge between us. The songs belong to their creators (so take that, Michael!), but they also belong to each of us because they become a part of us. When I think about artists who left too soon, I think about all the great songs they left unwritten and it makes me sad and angry. As another artist who left too soon said, “My heart is broke but I have some glue.” Today, that glue is the music John Lennon left behind and the friends who’ve joined me today to remember.
In 1980 I was 11 and we had just moved to our first house in the “suburbs.” After living in rural West Virginia for most of my childhood and surviving my parents’ divorce, and the knowledge my dad was an alcoholic, I had finally begun to accept my new life with my step-dad in Ohio. It seemed life was going to be normal for my mom, sister and I.
Just the previous summer I had purchased my first “album,” The Beatles’ Abbey Road. My stepdad gave me his old stereo which had a 8-track tape deck and a turntable. This was the coolest thing ever in my world. I listened to Abbey Road obsessively. During this time, John Lennon’s Double Fantasy all over the radio, people were really excited, and it was all anyone could talk about. “Woman” “Watching the Wheels” and “(Just Like) Starting Over” were ubiquitous and they never got old no matter how many times you heard them. Both my mom and stepdad were “music” people and all of these influences were starting to gel in my mind. I was becoming uniquely aware of how significant John Lennon was, not just as a musician, but as a public figure.
Dec. 8, 1980 and I was driving home with my parents, I remember being really drowsy, so it must have been late. They were listening to the radio when a man’s voice broke in. His voice was trembling and he sounded stunned, he said something to the affect “Folks, I just don’t know how to say this, this is just horrible, just sickening. John Lennon has been shot and we have reports he has died.” My mother gasped, my dad looked at my mom in disbelief and they just sort of stopped. My mom began to cry. I was laying down in the back of the car, I had been drifting in and out of sleep, while occasionally counting houses with Christmas lights. Then without really understanding why, a very black, very sickening feeling crept over me and all the hope I had allowed to seep into my heart just disappeared. Out of nowhere I began to quietly sob, I didn’t want my parents to hear. The man on the radio had been talking about John’s life and how incredibly tragic, and how could this have happened to an icon. John was cut down in the prime of his life just as he was hitting his stride. Then the man on the radio played “(Just Like) Starting Over.”
I was never a pretty boy. I was pimply and a curvature of my spine made me a bit hunched over, and I was shy. That’s not exactly the mixture for popularity at your average Oklahoma high school. As such, I pretty much stayed away from most major social activities – football games, parties, and dances. I did, however, make it to senior prom.
I hadn’t intended to, but when they announced the theme for the gala was John Lennon’s “Imagine” I knew I had to go, and I had to bring my friend Candy. We were both fans and we hoped that with such a cool theme it might actually make prom interesting.
We were wrong. They played “Imagine” once but after that it was nothing but lousy pop songs, terrible country music, and the worst line dancing these eyes have ever seen. The girl and I danced a couple of slow songs but mostly we sat in the back and made fun of my classmates.
After the dance we went back to my house and watched a few movies with some other friends. The night wore on and everybody but Candy left; she lived in Arkansas she was staying the night.
We put on our pajamas and I put Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band on the record player and we danced in the pitch black in my dining room. There we were two misfits sitting in a formal dining room in the middle of the night in a small town in Oklahoma holding each other close letting the compassion and beauty of “Love” move us in multiple ways. It was a good night, and it is a great album. I’ll never forget either.
I truly and fundamentally have never really recovered. As time has gone by, and I discover more and more the otherworldly talent John possessed, I am all the more profoundly affected by what I was robbed of when he was killed. To this day, I still feel the weight of his death on my soul. Senseless and earth shattering.
His name was Fred and he was from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. We were hanging out in his dorm room (Aroostook Hall, if you must know) listening to records when somebody stepped in and told us that John Lennon was dead.
You’ll have to forgive me when I say that my reaction didn’t get beyond a shallow, “Gee, that’s too bad.” At the time, I wasn’t the biggest Beatles fan in the world. My entire Beatles collection numbered two: the infamous “White Album” and Magical Mystery Tour. It wasn’t so much that I disliked the music as that I was just too young to appreciate the subtleties involved.
As I grew to understand Lennon and the Beatles’ brilliance, the sense of loss saddened me. There were some that said Lennon had become a joke, that Yoko ran the show, that his best days had gone by. It all seemed like a pointless waste of energy. The fact is, we don’t know what John Lennon would have gone on to become. Given his penchant for fearless engagement with his muse, I can’t imagine that it would have been uninteresting.
I don’t know what became of Fred, and I’m still actively looking for remnants of my 19-year old self.
John Lennon was my favorite Beatle. That in no way is meant to belittle Paul McCartney or the other Beatles, but to me Lennon had something extra. McCartney is one of the 20th century’s finest craftsmen of pop songs, but I give Lennon extra style points because he took more gambles as an artist, lyrically and musically.
An example of this is best illustrated in a comparison between two very fine songs created around the same time, Lennon’s “Strawberry Fields Forever†and McCartney’s “Penny Lane.†Released together as a double A-side single, both songs are about their childhoods in Liverpool and both alleged to be influenced by LSD, yet they tell different stories. Lennon ’s lyrics focus more on his internal thoughts and the music conveys a sense of that inner world while McCartney mostly presents external things from his youth and the accessibility of the music mirrors his associations with them.
But it goes beyond music. Lennon’s great sense of humor revealed a sharp mind and a wit as quick as Groucho’s, not just in film but in appearances also, which always amused me. He jousted with others whether in press conferences or on talk show appearances. He also made political statements through actions like the Bed-In and guests he brought on “The Mike Douglas Show,†such as Black Panther Party president Bobby Seale and Yippie Jerry Rubin. These activities got the attention of the U.S. government.
Unfortunately, December 8th is when the most outpouring of emotion happens for John Lennon. It’s certainly understandable as people naturally bemoan and reflect on what they lost, and it really hits hard in the United States this year as yet another deranged young man tried to become famous through lethal means. However, the day is filled with such tragedy, sickness, and finality, things that I don’t associate with Lennon, that in the future I wish people would stop
commemorating his memory on this day and start celebrating it on October 9th, his birthday, a day that offered the potential of such hope, joy, and creativity.
Filed under: Musical Musings and Random Ramblings
Great work, you three. I read your contributions before I’d written my own and your words and memories challenged and inspired me. Thanks for stopping by and giving a touch of class to the place.
Hey, Josh great work. Thanks for including me with three great writers on a topic near and dear to me. I really appreciate getting that out of my soul.
As should always be the case, great writing about music forced me to go listen to it.
“Everybody’s smoking, and no one’s getting high…”
I despise Yoko’s singing on “Happy Christmas (War is Over),” but those first few seconds of the song when John sings, “So this is Christmas” is one of my favorite vocals ever; just those first four words. The song has been beaten into the ground, but that intro never fails to get under my skin.
It’s a real shame that everybody’s smoking and nobodies getting high. What the hell’s the point of that.
And yeah, Yoko needed to be unseen and unheard. Though I appreciate her bringing joy and happiness to John. He sure loved her.
Yes, he was completely in love with her and that’s beautiful. If only that love were silent.
EO’s said the same about me, and, vice versa
time to get out my Yoko records….
[...] makes all of this all the more bizarre is that after yesterday’s piece about John Lennon, I started listening to the Anthology sets for the first time in who knows how long. It’s [...]
John Lennon is my favourite singer. You see he is a man of true words. His singing beats anything you hear today, at least his songs have a story and a meaning. A working class hero is something to be. His songs were written straight from the heart. You have to admire the influence he had on all of us. It’s sad he’s not still here. I do prefer his album– Imagine , I think, it is a masterpiece. Most of the songs of it are entertaining, and some are memorable - especially the ballads. I found it with a good price here: http://dealstudio.com/searchdeals.php?deal_id=72358 , I guess those people who like Lennon would love this album.