Remebering John Lennon

Friday, December 8th, 2006 marked the 26th anniversary of John Lennon's death. Lennon, who was only 40 years old at the time, had re-entered public life that fall, after a self-imposed five-year retirement which he spent with his young son Sean, traveling and recharging his creative batteries. On November 17th, 1980, Lennon and wife Yoko Ono released their "comeback" album Double Fantasy, which included such future Lennon standards as "Woman," "Beautiful Boy," "Watching The Wheels," and the album's lead-off track and single "(Just Like) Starting Over."

On the night of December 8th, 1980 -- with "(Just Like) Starting Over" sitting at Number Six on the singles charts -- Lennon and Ono returned home to their apartment building, the Dakota on Manhattan's Central Park West. They had spent the evening at the Record Plant recording studio mixing a tune of Ono's called "Walking On Thin Ice." Mark David Chapman, who had been stalking Lennon for several days and had received an autograph from Lennon earlier that day, lay in wait for his return. Chapman, who was living in Honolulu at the time, had made an unsuccessful trip to New York the previous October with the intent of killing Lennon, but couldn't find him.

Lennon and Ono returned from the studio at around 10:50 p.m. ET, with their limousine dropping them off in front of the building on 72nd Street, rather than pulling into the building's courtyard as usual. As Lennon and Ono walked in, they passed Chapman, who called out "Mr. Lennon?," and fired five shots from a .38 caliber handgun into Lennon's neck and back. Officers were quick on the scene, arresting Chapman and rushing Lennon in a squad car to nearby Roosevelt Hospital, where doctors worked on reviving Lennon, who died from the severity of his wounds.

Dr. Stephan Lynn, the director of Roosevelt Hospital's emergency room, recalled Lennon's injures to the New York Post, saying that, "We made an incision in the left chest and separated the ribs and found a very large amount of blood. We looked for an injury to the heart or to the blood vessels. But what we discovered was that all of the major blood vessels leaving the heart were simply destroyed. There was no way that we could repair them."

The news of Lennon's death was broken by a reporter for New York's ABC-TV, who coincidentally was in the same emergency room after a motorcycle accident. The news was first reported by Howard Cosell during the Monday Night Football telecast.

Ono returned home and called "the three people John would have wanted to know" -- his aunt Mimi Smith, who raised him; his 17-year-old son Julian by his first marriage; and Paul McCartney. Within hours of the news, thousands of fans flocked to the Dakota to stand vigil for Lennon.

Julian Lennon and Ringo Starr made immediate plans to head to New York, with George Harrison issuing a statement saying, "After all we went through, I had and still have great love and respect for him. I am shocked and stunned. To rob life is the ultimate robbery." McCartney also issued a statement saying, "I can't take it at the moment. John was a great man who'll be remembered for his great contributions to art, music and peace. He is going to be missed by the whole world."

There was no funeral for Lennon, who was cremated almost immediately. Instead, tens of thousands of mourners gathered in New York's Central Park the following Sunday (December 14th) to observe ten minutes of silence at 2 p.m. ET. The event was broadcast globally, with many radio stations ceasing all airplay during the memorial.

"(Just Like) Starting Over" went on to top the charts for five weeks, with the album's "Woman" and "Watching The Wheels" hitting the Top Ten in the coming months. Lennon and Ono's Double Fantasy went on to win the 1981 Grammy Award for Best Album.

Both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr contributed to George Harrison's 1981 Lennon tribute "All Those Years Ago," which hit Number Two in the spring of 1981.

In early 1981, Chapman pled guilty to second degree murder, and is currently serving a 25-years-to-life sentence in New York's Attica State prison. A devout born-again Christian, Chapman has refused all offers of psychotherapy since the murder. He has already been turned down for parole four times.

Ono has kept Lennon's legacy alive by issuing previously unreleased recordings and videos along with reproductions of his artwork as lithographs, mugs, tee-shirts, baby clothes, and other items -- to the chagrin of some Lennon fans.

A quarter century after Lennon's death, he has as many posthumous releases as he had solo albums by 1980.

In 1995, with Ono's blessing, McCartney, Harrison and Starr teamed up to complete two of Lennon's unreleased demos -- "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love" -- for The Beatles Anthology project.

As is the custom every year, several hundred fans are expected to stand vigil for Lennon today across the street from the Dakota building in Central Park's Strawberry Fields. The triangular patch of land was designated by the city of New York to celebrate Lennon's life and work in 1984.

Family, friends and fans remember John Lennon:

Yoko Ono told us that she thinks Lennon would've embraced most of the artistic and cultural changes that came into place after his death: "Internet, Website -- all that would have driven him crazy, but also he would have said, 'I told you so. It was gonna to be a global village, and this is it!' You know, that kind of thing. But also, I think he might have gone to rap music -- you know, the first white rapper kind of thing -- because he was a real, you know, real rocker -- and a funky one at that."

Julian Lennon told us that the fact that he never truly became close with his father still weighs heavily on his mind: "We saw each other on and off... I saw him, probably, maybe 10 times before he was killed, you know? And I think it would have been nice to find some resolve between us eventually, but unfortunately that was never going to be, you know? So, there will always be that unresolved point in my life, whether I like it or not. Yes, there is forgiveness, but there is still bitterness, and still anger there as well. But, it's not something I think about on a day-to-day basis."

Lennon's first wife Cynthia Lennon told us that during her decade-long relationship with Lennon, she tried desperately to provide a stable home for him after dealing with childhood where both his parents had abandoned him: "That's all you can do. You can only give him what he needed. What more can you do? You can't change the man's psyche, his nature, his history, his past, his pain."

Cynthia Lennon says she was thrilled when she heard he was coming out of retirement in 1980 to begin making music again: "He was writing. He started to write again which was fantastic, you know, Double Fantasy. I thought 'Thank God, he's coming back into the real world.'"

Cynthia Lennon says that she still feels Lennon's presence in her daily life and pays tribute to his memory every year: "The essence of the man is still within my psyche -- even though he's not here anymore. And I have a son, who is not the image of his father, but I always joke about the fact that he's me for five days of the week and his father at the weekends. But every time there is an anniversary of John's birthday or his death, Julian and I raise a glass to him.'

During a Today show interview in 1997, Paul McCartney said he looks back on his partnership with Lennon with great affection: "We had a great collaboration. I mean, I don't think there's any doubt about that. Certainly from my point of view, John was like a great person to work with. He must've thought I was a great person to work with 'cause we stuck together for all that time. We'd grown up together."

Pete Best, the Beatles' original drummer, told us that although he never spoke to Lennon after the group fired him in 1962, he cherishes his times in Liverpool and Hamburg with Lennon during their all-night drinking sessions: "(My) best friend in the band was always John. (I was) friends with all of them but I was closest to John. We had an affinity which started back at the opening of the Casbah Club in 1959, it grew when we went out to Germany, you know, we were the last two propping up the bars together (laughs). And of course I got to know another side of John, which was a very tender and a very loving side -- which the world realized many, many years afterwards."

James Taylor, who was originally signed to the Beatles' Apple Records, and maintained a relationship with Lennon up to the time of his death, feels that Lennon's murder was inevitable: "I was in the building uptown from the Dakota in New York City -- a building called the Langham -- the night that John was shot. I heard the shots. I couldn't believe it. I have always thought that there was something almost inevitable about it. I often have the feeling that -- I'm not sure exactly where this comes from -- that too much exposure, or too much celebrity, too much of a sort of public profile, is toxic and dangerous. In John Lennon's case, he was so well known, so universally known and loved, that I almost felt that it was statistically inevitable that someone was gonna... he was so accessible, you know?"

U2's Bono told us that Lennon's artistic integrity was the blueprint for all that came after him: "Well, he wrote the book for us. You know, you're talking about Rubber Soul, other albums -- we've had, you know, The White Album in the back of our head. He's the one who was ready to take the pratfalls -- to make an idiot out of himself to make a point, if that's what it took to make a point -- to take the jeers and the sneers to sing his life. I think the courage to be uncool, in music and in art, is everything."

The Ronettes' Ronnie Spector, who was married to Lennon's record producer Phil Spector, said that the world will never get over the loss of Lennon's talent: "He was the nicest guy. And when I found out he was dead, I couldn't get out of bed for three days. I was stunned. Because he was heavy. Now here's a guy... Talking about writing -- there will never be another John Lennon."

Beatlefan magazine's executive editor Al Sussman says that the Beatles' 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club album was the first major example that the youth of the world were all in tune with each other: "In those days, records came out on Friday. So that weekend, everybody was listening to this album. The same thing happened when The White Album came out (the year after). And you knew, that everybody, everybody, who were at all hip to what was musically relevant was listening to this. Oh yeah."

Joe Raiola, the writer/director of the annual John Lennon tribute to be held on Sunday (December 10th) at New York City's Alley Citigroup Theatre, told us he was surprised at the quality of Lennon's 1980 comeback album Double Fantasy: "It surprised me in some ways, how clean and clear it was. If you take a song like 'Woman,' I think that compares to the best of John's Beatle work. It's that good. And there are a few songs on that album, probably 'Watching The Wheels,' even 'Beautiful Boy' -- those three come to mind that are among his best work."

Joe Raiola says that nobody can accurately speculate what Lennon would be doing artistically today: "It's open to a lot of speculation because we can't say for sure. What we know is, in 1980, that his music was revolving around his domestic and family life, and who knows how long that phase would've lasted? One thing we know about John is that he changed. He went through the 'primal' phase, he went through what he called the 'white' phase -- the Imagine phase, he went through the political rebellion phase -- the 'liberal phase' with Jerry Rubin and all that, he went through the 'craftsman phase.' And then came out years later with this new direction in terms of what his inspiration was."
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