We’d finished filming John and Yoko for the video a day or so before he was shot to death. It was their last video, but of course, we didn’t know it at the time. There was film of them holding hands and walking in Central Park in the place that would later become “Strawberry Fields.” We’d filmed them rolling naked in bed together in a Soho Art Gallery where she looked healthy and ample and he looked small and slight, with skin that was almost translucent. I remember being slightly surprised by the fact that Lennon’s need for Ono was so constant and palpable. He was seldom more than two feet away from her side and had the disconcerting habit of calling her “Mommy” whenever they spoke.
My role was as “executive producer” which really meant that I was to stand around with a roll of hundred dollar bills and pay-off the Teamsters and solve other problems with copious applications of money. It was an odd job in more ways than one, but I was grateful to have it at the time.
We’d sent the last of the film to the lab, and my old friend and director Ethan Russell had gone back to Los Angeles to begin editing. The crew had dispersed and I’d taken to my bed racked with pain. The job, this time, had been so tough and high stress that my neck had gone out. I could barely turn my head without feeling as if a sledge was hammering a hot-needle into the cervical vertebrae. I was lying carefully propped on the bed eating Bufferin as if they were Tic-Tacs and trying not to move. My neck was held in one of those tight foam collars. Not moving was the best thing to do at the time and I was doing it with all my might.
It was a small one-bedroom apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. My first wife and I were there after three years of living in London, Paris, the Algarve, and other European locations. She was eight months pregnant with our daughter and looked as if she was trying to smuggle a basketball across state lines for immoral purposes. Her mood, never really cheerful, was not improved by her situation.
The apartment was on loan from her uncle’s girlfriend. I was down to my last few thousand dollars and was looking for a job. The film gig had been a gift from my old friend Ethan, and I’d been glad to get it. But it was over and, with a baby banging on the door of the world, things were not looking up. At the time, the only thing looking up was me since my neck required me to lie flat and gaze at the ceiling. It had been a rough two weeks but I thought things would certainly improve.
And of course, that’s when things got worse. It got worse in the way most things do, the phone rang and my wife called out, “It’s for you.”
Some New York wag once said, “Age fourteen is the last time in your life when you’re glad the phone is for you.”
I groped blindly to the side of the bed and picked up the extension. It was Ethan calling from an editing room in Los Angeles. “John’s been shot. He’s dead.”
I think my reaction then was my reaction now when I wrote out the phrase above. I just stopped doing and thinking whatever I was doing or thinking and stared at the rough plaster ceiling above and blinked slowly in the silence.
Then I said whatever I said. I’m sure I expressed shock, disbelief, and something about how alive he’d been at the filming session the day before, or two days before… whatever it may have been. But Ethan, ever the professional, brought the call back to the reason for it.
“Here’s what has to be done and done now. The footage we shot in the park is now the last footage ever taken of John. It is sitting in a film lab in Manhattan. We’ve got to get control of it, all of it, and secure it until everything is sorted out. There can’t be a bootleg copy floating around for the tabloids and the television shows. It’s probably the property of Yoko but we’ll sort that out later. For now, you’ve got to get it out and safe.”
The call ended and I stood up. Slowly. Dressed even more slowly and watched, as I dressed, the unfolding of the end of Lennon’s life as reported, beat by beat, by all the television stations on the dial.
The next 24 hours are a blur. I remember sitting rigidly in the back of a limo learning to hate the potholes of the New York streets with a passion as each one slammed another heated needle deep into my neck. I somehow got the film out of the lab and took it to a midtown bank and placed it in a safe-deposit box. There were lawyers and paperwork to deal with, phone calls and more instructions.
The street in front of the Dakota was packed with people along both sidewalks and the crowd spilled into the street. The police were keeping it moving in a quiet way. Small seas of flowers flowed across the sidewalk and up the walls and gates of the Dakota. Pictures and scrawled messages of love and loss were taped to the walls and flung into the flowers. Widening puddles of melted wax where hundreds of candles burned lapped at the edges of the flowers. Some people held each other, others walked and wept openly. Some stood to the side and sobbed quietly. A path through the offerings had been cleared at the entrance to the Dakota and to get in you had to wade through the grief.
This spontaneous shrine was a harbinger, as so many things in John’s life and death were. The same motif of flowers, pictures, candles, weeping, and grief would be repeated on a vast scale across the entire city and country some 21 years later on 9/11, but that sort of thing could not have been imagined in December of 1980. This was the largest grief that could then be conceived by us – the killing of one of the Gods of music. “Our music.” Which the “Man can’t bust,” but, as had just been proven by one of our lunatics, we could kill.
Taken large, this was the death of the music in the death of a man in whom we’d invested much of our misplaced faith. Taken larger it was the death of the 60s and all that we once “imagined” it might mean, might become. And all of it happening in a way that would be echoed in later years as the 60s died again and again – and always at the hands of those that lived it. I might have seen it then, if then I could have seen clearly, as a portent of so much that sprung from those fertile blindingly optimistic years that would go wrong and twisted in the years ahead, but “I am no prophet and here’s no great matter.”
On that day, I didn’t see anything clearly — nor would I for decades. I just walked into the courtyard of the Dakota, took the elevator up to the apartment, said some words to the small and aging Asian woman in the white room, dropped off legal papers and keys and went down the elevator, out to the car and had it drive me back to bed across the park.
That’s what I did on that day. Just another walk-on part in the war.
Some days later there was a memorial service for John in Central Park. I went with an old friend from Berkeley, Jon Cott, who’d interviewed Lennon once or twice over the years for Rolling Stone. I don’t remember much about the service. I’m sure “Imagine,” that anthem of dubious distinction, was sung by all of us, and that there were more flowers and candles and crying as is the way of these things.
When it was over, I walked out of Central Park with Cott, one of my amigos from those diamond sky nights in Berkeley, the Haight, “swinging” London, and all the other scenes we’d flowed through in the 60s and 70s. I walked East out of the park towards what would soon become not just my first wife, but my family for 12 years — a whole new life containing all the seeds, good and bad, of the old dead life.
I said goodbye to Jon Cott at the entrance to the subway that would take him downtown to the Village where he’d put aside writing about rock and roll and was now writing a book about children’s fairy tales. Cott was always just ahead of the curve. I watched from the street as he went down under the ground.
I’d never see him again. But then I’d never see the 60s again either. On that day, it all went down under the ground.
The video contains autumn footage that was shot by Russell and our crew just before Lennon’s assassination.
UPDATE 2021:
What?! John Lennons Last Interview! I found an original BBC copy!- YouTube
Comments on this entry are closed.
New WoodPile!
http://www.woodpilereport.com/
And just in time, too.
Sometimes I wish I was as angry today as I was that day.
If one did not know any better, one would think the lyrics to “Imagine,” came right out of Marx’s Das Kapital.
Of course, Lennon did not deserve to be killed; no decent person does.
But let’s be clear; he was a pop singer; that’t it. In the not too distant future no one will remember who he is because, frankly, he was just a pop singer.
He did not change the world; he wrote and sang songs. That’s it.
He associated with the rich and famous and was seen frequently in the mass media.
He did not change the world; he did not make it a better place. He just wrote and sang pop songs.
His music will most likely not live on because, well, they were just pop songs.
Lennon simply does not deserve the acclaim and “hero-worship” status that he receives. After all, he was just a pop singer.
Meanwhile, when a Norman Borlaug dies – a man who literally saved the lives of millions of people, the majority of whom were very, very poor – almost nobody pays any attention.
There are no articles written about him, no memorials, etc.
He is simply forgotten.
May Lennon rest in peace
I will remember John Lennon and how my creative seed was nourished by his words & melodies but especially John’s tenacity to live out his free will. He & Yoko lived outside the confines of conformity- a courageous & conscious act that continues to wake up anyone of us who is exploring our own potential to love & strive for peace.
That is called a legacy. John will live eternally through his unique & thought-provoking body of work. Thank you Yoko for inspiring & co-creating “Imagine”, for which, I do just that
🙏🏼✌🏿
Of course no decent person deserves to be killed, and it is wrenchingly sad and isolating when one’s idols are violently taken from the living. There have been many, too many to detail over the years, and all made a positive impression on their fans and left a strong scar when they died.
But I admit to some confusion when “we” is used to identify the killer. We? Really? Jagger did that in “Sympathy for the Devil” and the theme runs through some pop references of the mid-20th century – especially disturbing when used to compare the wealth of one demographic over another, as if I have anything to do with someone else’s lack of resources or poor motivation. Guilt and shame are powerful tools when used against juveniles and it can take decades to shed the weapons needed to combat their force. Since I never fit in with the KoolKids and had more in common with my grandparents than with my age identified group, the murder of Lennon did not viscerally affect me as it did my school mates. Instead the histrionics on display for decades later makes an interesting subject on human psychology.
Yes, John Lennon rest in peace. Peace to his family and friends, and to his devoted fans. But I had nothing to do with it.
Why did you kill him?
John got just what he imagined. He ain’t got no possessions. He ain’t got no country. He ain’t got nuttin to live for and sure as hell he died. He sure ain’t hungry, and I sure don’t want to join him.
Who ‘dis we you talkin’ ’bout?
I’ve no outstanding memories of 8 December 1980 but 20 or 30 years later I was wandering around the stadium, Saitama Super Arena, in Saitama, Japan and came across the john Lennon museum that Yoko set up. I didn’t go in but I did sit outside and listen to a few Beatles tunes on my Ipod.
RIP John, it was cut short but you had a damn good run.
Was it me that killed him? I don’t remember that. Do I need to go to Two-Door Ford’s headshrinker to recover the memory?
I didn’t much care for his music, but if I was going to kill musicians I wouldn’t have started with Lennon.
I probably would have started with Yoko. Or maybe Barbra Midler or Bette Streisand.
[b]ut if I was going to kill musicians I wouldn’t have started with Lennon.
For me, it would’ve been whoever was responsible for disco. *shudders*
But, Donna Summer was smoking hot.
Tiny Tim must die.
Calling Lennon’s songs anything other than what they were is just plain goofy.
I liked the Beatles (and their spin-off’s) songs at the time but haven’t played one in years, maybe 10 or more years, and if I hear one while in the grocery store the lyrics come right back. I was young and malleable during that period so those songs are probably permanent in my brain. Glad I wasn’t young during the (c)rap period. shudder
“I remember being slightly surprised by the fact that Lennon’s need for Ono was so constant and palpable.”
They were the younger, “hip” version of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, in my opinion– a needy boy-man besotted with a psychological dominatrix. Lennon’s death didn’t affect me all that much other than the compassion I felt (and still feel) for anyone who dies as the result of murder. I never cared much for pop music; I was one of those nerdy kids who discovered Bach, Haydn, and other classical composers in junior high and never looked back. In addition, my religious faith inoculated me against idolizing any human being, however talented, charismatic, or simply hyped by the mass media.
So I realize this question means I’m a shallow person, but. I have never understood What he say in Yoko Ono. I assume he could have had/married a beautiful sexy woman that just the sight of her would make most men fall in love/lust. I certainly would have done that.
Can’t speak to what was in Lennon’s mind/heart when it came to Ono, but I will say that during the week or so I was filming both of them, he obsessively called her “Mommy” and “Mother”
We all believe what we want (said in a fake Liverpudlian accent).
I believe John did become more conservative as he aged what little he did age.
I believe Yoko is someone to avoid with certain prejudice. What a shrike!
December, 1980: I was so involved with Officer Candidate School that the things going on in popular culture were very far from my mind. I had no response to the killing of JL.
Gerard, did you converse with Lennon?
How did he seem personality wise?
I want to hear more thoughts, Gerard, regarding your time spent in such close proximity. The Beatles were huge to me. I was eight years old when they came to America first time. Suddenly I experienced music as exciting and limitless. I’ve read a lot of Beatles biographies. A couple of months ago I read “John Lennon & the FBI Files” by Strongman and Parker. This is a book filled with very disturbing information. Lennon was purposely assassinated. And the guy who did it was a programmed zombie, a tool…. who had spent the past several years being flown all over the globe on government-paid excursions to mind control camps. The authors present an impressive explanation of how and why Lennon had to be removed permanently. Spooky shit.
Just look at all the lives and families destroyed because Lennon pushed the religion of taking drugs.
And it was probably karma that his assasin was a boy whose paranoid schizophrenica was the result of taking drugs.
Nancy, can you name just 1 example of a family destroyed because of your claim that Lennon “pushed” the idea of enjoying drugs?
I was waist deep in every kind of drug and alcohol way back when and never knew or even heard of anyone being forced to do those things. Every seller always had ample and willing buyers. The whole thing about “pushers” is a fairy tale, never happened – lies from the gov’t/media.
Been going on 40 years since Lennon was killed and there is no end in sight to the number of people doing drugs. He was more successful, in Nancy’s lights, than he ever “imagine”d.
Fantastic experience for you! Meeting such a huge figure as John Lennon. Creating the last images of him.
And well, how very odd that he addressed his love as Mommy. Little weird, or perhaps some sort of inside joke… Were Lennon and Ono witty?
Probably no weerder than hearing spouses refer to each other as “dears”.
Had an aunt and uncle that did that, us kids would snicker.
Especially funny when they were arguing.
“Now dear, it’s my way or the highway and that’s all there is to it!”
“Don’t take that tone with me, dear, or you can just pack your shit right now!”
Don’t hear it that much any more but when I do it catches the ear.
Never been the lubby dubby type.
I’ve got a problem with Nancy’s wishful thinking. People didn’t take drugs… and continue upon that path to their imminent demise… because of John Lennon or any other rock n’ roller. I’ll throw in some jazz greats like Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Stan Getz while I’m at it. As a teenager I was accused, by parents, of leading various boys down the “road to ruin.” If all these high school buddies of mine were going to follow me to ruin they were going to have to walk there. I didn’t have a car until I was 18 and out of school. They had the cars. These guys literally drove me to drink. Nancy, everybody’s doing exactly what they’re doing with all their might. And nobody’s making them do it. You can add church/religion to the addictions list, too. Some of my closest friends became Jesus freaks and they never snapped out of it. Lost forever babbling a strange dialect, unable to speak of anything else. Sad.
“And nobody’s making them do it.”
Right there.
When Lennon was killed I was on a shipboard deployment in the US Navy and was not aware of him passing until years later, probably the 90s. I’ve wondered from time to time if Lennon, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix were alive today and they had lucid minds and identified with the “progressive” camp. Would the public have to hear their takes on MeToo, flag kneeling, etc? Or was it their death at such youthful age that made them legends?
Anwar Sadat did more than imagine and had a huge change of heart and mind and was ultimately assassinated for those changes. He died within a year of Lennon. How many today under the age of 50 are aware of Sadat?
The radio announcement of the murder of John Lennon came while I was ironing clothes for the workday on the morrow. By 1980 I’d long since ceased to care about The Beatles, or about their members’ post-Beatles music. Pity that the man was slain, but I felt no special attachment to him or to his musical or pop culture output. Tomorrow was a workday, so, pace John Lennon, on my mind I had more pressing matters (pun most definitely intended).
Like almost all of that decades’ increasingly politicized pop stars Lennon was an intellectual featherweight, and so were most of us who were enraptured by the whole Sixties’ counterculture schtick. What’s enduringly sad is that too many of us who were the enraptured of that time now cling like limpets to that same old intellectual featherweight nonsense.
Two decades ago, in my forties, it occurred to me that I no longer cared for 99% of the Sixties’ schtick, that I’d come to care much more for the early Beatles songs, when they, and most other pop bands, were a joyful little pop group, before they, and so many other pop acts, appointed themselves the arbiters of intellectual and moral propriety. (One of my still-favorite, wondrously upbeat – pre-politicized pop – songs from that time, from the early British Invasion, is “Have I The Right” by the Honeycombs; and who cares that last year, just two days before Christmas, their supposedly “groundbreaking” woman drummer Honey Lantree died, at age seventy-five?)
The Sixties: never before had so many children in so many countries been so grievously misled into adopting and parroting evil Marxist claptrap or vacant, juvenile Pollyannaism, all of which would come to be used by the Globali$t Open Border$ Elite against the masses of people they rule, exploit, and immiserate, not least through Lennon’s patent idiocy of “Imagine there’s no countries.” Along with so many other Sixties’ pop and counterculture luminaries John Lennon played no small part in gulling far too many people, adolescents and adults alike, into all that intellectual shallowness and moral spinelessness.
Miss Analogue,
My goodness, what an incandescently lovely rant. I may be in love.
I didn’t know many kids that got hooked on drugs when I was young but that is because I’m so old that drugs were not common amongst us kids. But the few I knew who started using drugs were definitely encouraged by the singers and actors who did it and made it sound like a good idea.
Thanks Auntie,
I do believe that you have just hit the nail perfectly on it’s head.
Some actress in some movie (Pulp Fiction????) said there were two kinds of people in the world, Beetles people and Elvis people.
In truth, I guess I’m sorry they’re dead, but I didn’t worship at either of those churches and am bothered not in the slightest by that character flaw, if that’s what it is, which I rather doubt, and care not one whit if I’m wrong. Johnny Cash, though, I miss him very much.
Gerard… it’s been a year since your revealing memories of Lennon. Ghostsniper asked….
“Gerard, did you converse with Lennon?
How did he seem personality wise?”
Well?
I worked for a time at the Sands, Las Vegas, and sometimes walked next door to the Silver Slipper to cash my paycheck. There was a side entrance with a small lobby on the way to the casino and Lennon was sitting there alone playing a quarter slot. Passing the time I guess. Nobody bothered him. I’d worked around famous entertainers and never once saw one pull that off. I don’t suppose they wanted too either, but Lennon did. I give him credit for that.
Kudos for Auntie for that summing up.
As to Lennon, my direct interactions with him were few since I was usually on the periphery of the shoot making sure that the needful things needed were there.
Of the few times my overall impression of him was that a) he was very thin with that almost translucent skin that you often see among junkies. He was also very short with people on the set, almost imperial.
My dears, Messrs Rob De Witt, Denny, & Vanderleun: for your kind compliments, thank you.
When young I was taken with demagogues and glitterati, when older I rued that I’d been taken by them.
“If morning’s echo says we’ve sinned, well it was what I wanted now . . . . Just touch my cheek before you leave me….”
‘Life goes on
Whether or not there’s a reason
Life goes on
Enter another season’
Todd Rundgren
I love coming here and re-reading The Annuals – this one, The Name In The Stone. The Wind In The Heights…all of them.
Thanks Gerard.
I always liked the music of the Beatles but I thought Lennon was a spook and my opinion of him fell to the bottom when he hooked up with Yoko. She was repulsive then and she still is.
I was far more ‘saddened’ when Croce and Maury died.
Everybody’s gonna die. Some are lucky and die instantly; others suffer in agony for weeks or months. It all ends the same way. Are you prepared? Have you done what you can for your loved ones? Have you said “I love you” and hugged them?
Auntie-
Your comment exactly a year ago foresaw what we have on the left TODAY. Look at what the lefties such as J Lennon types have molded our younger voting imbeciles to vote for: Communist/fascists who openly tell them and the rest of us they will enslave us all. My generation (Boomer) is also heavily tainted with the poison the sixties leftists spewed.
The first year or so of the Beatles songs were fun. That was it for me.
Was John Lenin part of the Tavistock burn it all down fundamental transformation why don’t we do it in the road on the way to the global Soviet workers utopia?
Thank you Trot! So Right! Lennon was the AOC oof music. His hook was that he could put together very catchy tunes with a gloss of musical intelligence. Her’s is that she has Disney heroine quality eyes and (apparently) nutty jugs and can put together endless streams of insanely, unselfconsciously ignorant rants with a confidence and verve that have the power to fool the unwary and gullible. Neither of them actually have (or had) the truth, cultural well-being or gratitude for their gifts in mind. They are examples of ingratitude and self absorption gone amok. They are Oblah-dumb and Oblah-dumber.
Boomer (b. 1946) who through a strange concatenation of circumstances played drums in a black band that backed up (among others) Ike & Tina Turner plus the Ikettes, viewing them from the rear in 1964. The Beatles? You’ve got to be kidding! The Stones got the message, however: Later, along came Lisa Fisher. Beatles fans were bubble-gum music aficionados right from the get-go. Fans were kind of twerps awakened, but pop-musically still pretty much comatose. I’m old now, but even so, if as a geez I’m trying to seduce a forty-year-old woman, I guarantee I won’t be using Beatles music as a backdrop. Play ’em a little James Brown and dance a l’il funky broadway and their still young eyes light up. That’s what pop music is for.
I don’t understand. Am I supposed to feel empathy, sympathy or something for someone who feels sorry for himself because a few days of his life were interrupted? Oh, it was in New York City. That explains everything, the impossibility of the writer to understand the world does not revolve around that place.
“WE” killed him? Sorry, not even close.
That’s like saying “we” killed Lincoln, or Kennedy.
I liked the Beatles (and Lennon) in their early years, before they went stupid with fame and self-worship.
When Lennon became a serial cheater on his 1st wife Cynthia Powell, (and others) went crazy with “Hari Krishna” stuff, hooked up with “Yoko the Destroyer,” and then publicly regarded himself and the Beatles higher than Jesus Christ and Christianity, I lost all respect and regards for him.
Remember when Lennon stated “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary.” It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
I’m not glad that he’s dead, but I don’t mourn his loss.
it wouldn’t have bothered me if he lived to a ripe old age.
I found him a overly-moneyed know-it-all marxo-hoople heroin addict.
his wife still hangs around creating great works the likes of covering with sheet plastic granite
blocks meant to impede terrorists from crashing vehicles into government property. there was something written on the plastic. I guess.
So what’s with phony “New Woodpile Report”?
Mean.
“For me, it would’ve been whoever was responsible for disco. *shudders*
I dunno. Donna Summer was a babe. And that’s what music became all about.
It’s not phony.
Retarded.
at the link, same webpage with the content removed declaring it would no longer be updated as has been seen for quite some time, now.
retarded.
Some of us wonder about the mindset of a biden voter.
It’s not about biden, it’s about the mindset.
I didn’t care then and I find that don’t care now. Heard “Imagine” piped in at the gym this morning and was struck once again at what a vapid, nihilistic piece of tripe it is.
To be fair, a lot of previous-century men addressed the mother of their children as “Mother” or “Mommy” or “Mummy,” and their wives would address him as “Father” or “Dad.” So maybe he was trying to be domestic.
“We” all admire and love the work of this great boomer.
Disco music was awesome. Fun to dance to and to listen to. The problem with it was simply that it required that both dance partners knew what to do. Thus it sucked at pickup bars because the women could dance to it and the guys were mostly posers. You could watch as the dance partners went from bad to worse. I wasn’t a great dancer but I was married and since I only danced with my wife we could manage a disco dance together. It was great fun, good music and a great beat.
When the disco craze hit I had just started at a community college (1976). I was taking several dance classes, mainly Modern and Jazz. The ballet teacher then was a fetching Italian lass. I took a ballet class to see if I could get to know her better, and…well I got to know her better. She and I threw ourselves into disco and spent a year dancing together at discos all around Portland, Oregon. It was indeed great fun. We copied the dance steps of Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever”. I can still recall every move, but now at 68 I don’t dare to try and dance them.
I never “got” the whole dance thing. My sister says she dragged my drunk ass out on a dance floor in disco joint 1979 but I don’t remember it. I did however like to watch the “Solid Gold Dancers” strumpets now and then.
Dark nefarious powers killed John Lennon. He was causing great anxiety for the FBI leading up to and after Reagan’s election. John and Yoko promised more political participation after his deportment crisis subsided. Here’s a shocker to read… “John Lennon & the FBI Files” by Phil Strongman & Alan Parker. Please stop giving your money to Bezos. This is bookfinder.com where you can support independent book sellers. A universe of books available and most of them from people just trying to make it. FJB and that goes for Bezos, too. https://tinyurl.com/2p9hxkmd
Why don’t you just come out and say it, Tom? “Jeff Bezos killed John Lennon?”
I think you love Jeff Bezos. I loved the Beatles and am still very fond of them. Individually, they are flawed people… incredibly talented, however. J Edgar Hoover had Lennon killed. Read the book, it’s a jaw dropper.
I have no feelings for Bezos other than he is my servant and so I pay him. I read that book about JFK you recommended in one day. I simply could not put it down. LBJ got what he wanted through taking the lives of other human beings. A lot of good it did him. He was miserable to the end.
Was 24, and a whole lot more, I remember, I remember exactly where I was, States bound, on a Military hop, had landed in Guam, picked up a Nuke boat crew, after blue gold crew turn over.
The pilot had just taxied and as he went to hi power, the engines went back to idle. The pilot on coms said he had bad news. He then pushed the throttles to Military, we rolled out, as he climbed out, and said goodby to Guam for the last time, the pilot came back into the cabin and made the announcement over the 1MC system.
A lot of emotion, a lot of tension. These bublehead sailors had been under water for at least six months, maybe more. Their an odd group anyway, pale like Casper the ghost, in skin color. Many were very intoxicated, sleeping in the isle-ways, on the birds deck.
I remember deep sadness, and as if on que, soft crying from this sub screw, the airplane itself.
I’ll never forget what was taking place in front of me. These Nuke boat sailors, capable of killing the world, with the push of a few buttons, were crying….., the touching the peaceful side of life, saying goodbye to a man, whom gave much peace and hope-via his music, had died violently.
These silent warriors, these professionals, these potential planet killers, mourned from Guam to Barbers Point, Hawaii, which is where the sub crews departed the plane. I deplaned myself, caught a C5a, into Travis AFB.
In my mind, John IS the Beatles, will always be the Beatles.
VI
I was sitting in an alley off Syntagma Square on that December day. A Brit and I had managed to score some weed. We had hardly finished the first joint when some guy came up to us and said that Lennon was dead. We did not believe it at first, but during the next few hours people were talking about it at the hostel where I was staying. I don’t recall any sort of emotional or nostalgic reaction. There were other things on my mind, mainly trying to get a ride to Istanbul.
I was just a skinny elementary school kid when Beatlemania hit the US. The first song I remember was “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. AM radio played it constantly. I loved the Beatles then, and had all their albums up until the “White Album”. Gradually other interests took over: girls, cars, motorcycles—and then the USAF (1972 – 1975). While in college I would from time to time put a Beatles record on the turntable, usually “Rubber Soul” or “Revolver”.
Now 40 years later I still listen to their music. Just this year I bought their albums again—but now they were remastered recordings on 180 gram vinyl from the original tapes. Played on a ferociously expensive audiophile system—mine—they sound magnificent. How John and Paul—and sometimes George—managed to write such music in only six years amazes me still today. I rank them with Irving Berlin and Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Of course their personal lives were a bit messy—but whose is not?
I was turning on gas service for a couple of Russian immigrants in a crummy apartment in Bellflower, CA. I was adjusting the burners on the range. They had a TV on, and the program was interrupted for the news. I recall standing there feeling gut shot, but the folks for whom I was turning on the gas didn’t get what was happening. This memory is quite clear. Nothing else from that day is clear at all.
JWM
Too young to be a fan when it happened. Was living in N.J. at the time and all I can recall is the N.Y. radio playing Imagine over and over and maybe some of his other solo stuff, and it snowed that evening it was announced. I’m against the hero worship, but he obviously had an affect on a generation as music usually does regardless of the genre. Some music hits the center of emotion or even the soul in ways that can’t be explained. I appreciate all music (well almost all with exception to Ono’s cat screeching). Did he cure cancer, no. But we all have some role in this life and that was his, or that he made it be his. Would I rather be a pop singer, maybe. But as I age and watch my family, I understand my role and I’m okay with it and all that comes with it. For better or for worse. I call my wife “Ma” or “Mom”, but only after my kids entered this world and did the same. It sticks. Or I guess I’m a freak. I’m not a sage like others on this comment thread but my wisdom is my own. One thing all this clown world covid nonsense has shown me in the last two years, we’re losing our empathy for others. That to me spells disaster.
Frog, music is the language of the world. John was a lot of things, to a lot of people. It’s interesting, how our world worships, morns different people, differently, for their accomplishments, his contribution seemingly was providing thought provoking words, which Every nations people,,,, on the planet interpreted.
Like Gandhi a man of Peace taken with violence. A small world after all.
VI
Lennon was a musician and song writer of extraordinary talent, but nothing more than that. I never did idolize him or any of the music gods on the 60s and 70s. (Ok, maybe Duane Allman.) When I would read of something Lennon said about culture or politics I simply smiled at his naiveté. He was as a child in everything but his music.
Indeed. During the time I was working around him and Yoko he habitually addressed her as “Mommy.”
I can think of few words more dreadful than referring to Yoko as “mommy”. But if saying “mommy” would prevent her from singing, I might go for it.
Well, “mommy” knew what her boy needed and brought him the very best heroin New York City could supply.
Gerard, was Lennon still smacked up even on the last week of his life?
I had that sense but hard to say for sure… but I did notice that he was, as many junkies are, almost translucent.
I guess I’ll be endlessly curious regarding Beatles and such. I read an interview this past year, with James Taylor, and he retains a lot of guilt for offering heroin to John & Yoko. Taylor was the most successful discovery the Beatles promoted with their Apple Corps enterprise and he was a regular presence in their circle. He admits he was the H connection and feels remorse for his invitation. One thing I’ve learned about that addiction, is that it is especially attractive to self-absorbed drama queens. My personal friends who fell into the trap were weaklings who took no self-responsibility to persevere through their hang-ups and get a grip. I tried it myself, twice, just curious to see what the attraction was, and you wouldn’t care if a train was barreling down in the direction of your mother. It’s like a living death, thus many find the mind is totally quelled, for a while, until the next day. But I heard John & Yoko cleaned up their act when their boy Sean came along. He was baking bread and playing with the kid, the “house husband” years, while Yoko was in the office crunching numbers and investing wisely.
Hero worship is usually misplaced worship. But it’s been around forever, and John Lennon wasn’t the first guy to be raised far above the status of his wisdom. The best comment on hero worship came from Gerry Lopez.
Who?
Gerry Lopez played Subutai, Arnold’s sidekick in Conan the Barbarian. In the mid 1970’s he
was the hottest surfer at the treacherous Banzai Pipeline in Oahu. Lopez was MISTER Pipeline, and all the grems idolized Gerry. I remember reading an interview with him in a surfing magazine. He talked about how people would approach him and ask for all kinds of advice on how they should live, or what they ought to do with their lives. Of course I can’t recall the exact quote, but he remarked “People think I know everything just because I can do one thing well.”
’bout sums it up.
JWM
“Conan” was a cool movie, and so was the soundtrack by Basil Poledouris. Lopez had trouble with getting his voice acceptable to the director, so his lines were redubbed by a stage actor. No matter. The movie worked on many levels. From time to time I re-read the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard. Great stuff.
From rebel youth to commie tool and mouthpiece. A predictable trajectory for those westerners who reject Christianity.
and heroin addict- not the realm of geniuses.
I loved (and still love) the Beatles, and was a little sad that none of them as individuals ever seemed to do much with all their apparent talent and potential. Never cared much for Lennon, who came across as kind of an ass though it wasn’t polite in certain circles to say so. Over the decades I have occasionally enjoyed outraging some random leftie with my take on Imagine:
Imagine all the people
Forced at bayonet-point to donate their labor to the state
You – HOO – hoo hoo hoo
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I plan to control the guns
I hope one day you’ll join us
Then my liberation army won’t have to kill you.
I knew something was amiss when I heard, while watching the Monday Night Football game (Pats v. Dolphins, Dolphins won with overtime field goal), Howard Cossell say, “Remember, this is just a football game.” Apparently Cossell and Lennon had a bit of a friendship…
Auntie for the win and I have a pile of garments that need your touch.
Maybe after this year, with the release of the latest Beatles beat off sentimentalism, we can move on.
Or not. For the Boomers its always about them…
Frankly, my dear, I dont care about Lennon or the past that might have been.
They’d already passed their peak, and flash in the pan derivative ripples followed, all but the heroin addiction, plane crashes, etc.