I was a college sophomore in Athens Georgia on Monday night, December 8, 1980 when John Lennon was gunned down by Mark Chapman outside of the Dakota Building in Manhattan. I had never really lost someone or something really dear to me at that time. I was a young innocent, only recently deflowered.
My upbringing and history taught me to expect assassinations, but the holes blown through the Smart Beatle that night sucker-punched my 19-year-old gut for all time. This was pre-Internet, pre-live cable news. I happened to be lounging in the apartment I shared with my disabled Mother, watching Monday Night Football, and caught Howard Cosell's live announcement.
With confirmation on the 11:00 local news I adjourned to my room and played , which had been alternating with Lennon's new release on the turntable lately much of the time, in between my new-found Pretenders, Gang of Four, English Beat. They all owed a great debt to John for their chops and attitudes, as he grew cold on a coroner's slab that night, his first album in five years only out three weeks. Even now the unbelievable cruelty of it all hurts in my bones.
Every smart-ass kid who ever picked up a guitar and wanted to write their own songs owed many of their dreams to John Lennon, and now he would only exist in those dreams, on those (now quaint) vinyl records, one spinning around just then on my turntable that cold winter night long ago.
I turned the stereo off and went out for a walk, a walk that took me all the way up Milledge Avenue to Lumpkin and back downtown and back down Lumpkin and up Broad until I returned, the cool Georgia Winter air my only companion, my teenage psyche blown away. I probably walked for two hours, returning cold and numb.
It's easy to look back in the cold light of 21st century post modern cultural analysis and say his best artistic days were behind him by 1980, that Double Fantasy was a leaden affair, a quirky creampuff valentine of a record. John jammed with Cheap Trick during the sessions but those never saw the light of day--this was going to be a Yoko-John project. But I loaded Beautiful Boy on the shuffle this week and it came up yesterday, and what seemed sappy back then hit me between my middle-aged eyes--instead of singing about his baby he was singing about his baby boy.
Besides, I don't ever have to listen to again if I don't want to.
Who knows what would've happened had Dekalb County Georgia's own Mark Chapman merely threatened John and he had escaped that night unhurt? How would Lennon have responded artistically to Reagan, the Internet, grunge, the fall of the Soviet, Newt Gingrich, Madonna, hip hop, Tarantino, Islamists?
I'd like to think he would have kept a hand in, twitting Paul right up until the inevitable Beatles re-union. I see pictures of now and again and it's uncanny how much he looks like his dad. I see Yoko here and there and can't hate her like I did when he was alive.
Her Beatle-killing svengali sway trumped by her widowhood, as vivid as Jackie's, her prince's dying blood pumped fresh onto her hands the night of December 8, a date that shall live in infamy.
I went the next day and had my Lennon portrait poster from The White Album (see above) framed. It hangs behind me tonight, keeping watch.
I can only hope to be so inspired, though he generally seems to be saying 'give it a rest rankin' rob, that post's a bit of a stretch.' And whole generations of kids now know that they can get their elders' goat by claiming how much they think the Beatles suck. And if they go out and write a song about it and make it a hit and tell the whole wide world to toss right off, they would be making proper tribute to this rock and roll giant.
I cried that night, and I shed another tear for the waste of it all tonight, 26 long years later.
Close your eyes, have no fear
The monster's gone, he's on the run, and your daddy's here
{Refrain}
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy
Before you go to sleep, say a little prayer
Every day in every way it's getting better and better
{Refrain}
Out on the ocean sailing away
I can hardly wait to see you come of age
But I guess we'll both just have to be patient
'Cause it's a long way to go, a hard row to hoe
Yes it's a long way to go but in the meantime
Before you cross the street, take my hand
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans
{Refrain}
Before you go to sleep, say a little prayer
Every day in every way it's getting better and better
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy
Darling, darling, darling, darling Sean
I was 9 going on 10.
To me at the time, he was nothing but a long haired hippie freak.
But the more I learn, the more I appreciate.
Great post, Rob.
Every smart-ass kid who ever picked up a guitar and wanted to write their own songs owed many of their dreams to John Lennon, and now he would only exist in those dreams
I may as well face it I suck.
Great line.
Isn't it weird how Atlanta is so reaching for pride that we even celebrate our killers? I even heard Monica Kaufman say "Atlanta's own Mark David Chapman.
.." "We produced the guy that killed a beloved international icon!
The South has risen, baby!
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