a day late, but a remembrance of John Lennon
I remember exactly what I was doing: lying in bed in the dark, listening to Monday Night Football on CBS radio.
Jack Buck and Hank Stram were the announcers (the best sports announcing team ever, by the way). There was only the one TV in the house and my parents controlled it. And, unlike me, Dad wasn’t a huge football fan.
I’d always loved the Beatles. My brothers were six and eight years older than me, so I grew up listening to the Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Grand Funk Railroad, and Led Zeppelin. And the Beatles.
And John had always been my favorite. Paul was a shallow, commercial songwriter, Ringo a joke, and George (my second favorite) was the enigma. But John, John was awesome. I liked him even better after the Beatles broke up. He had shed the deadweight of needing to be a commercial success and was writing the songs he wanted to write.
Double Fantasy was one of the best albums I’d ever heard.
Oddly enough, I don’t remember who was playing that night. But it must have been the Eagles or I wouldn’t have been up listening to it.
But I do remember the news flash that interrupted the game. John Lennon had been shot. He was gravely wounded; there were reports he had died.
It was surreal. This couldn’t be happening. I changed to the local all-news station to make sure I had heard right, and they confirmed the terrible truth.
He was dead at the age of 40.
Assassinated. John Winston Ono Lennon had become our generation’s JFK.
Who would do this? Lennon wasn’t a political figure. He wasn’t even all that controversial.
Who would kill a man known as a peace activist?
Later, of course, we found out; a man tortured in his mind.
Who knows what Lennon would have done had he lived. If he would have had any influence over the course of historical events.
But even now, thirty years on, it’s still as surreal. And it still hurts as much as it did then.