As he passed through the archway that leads into the courtyard, Mark David Chapman, a former mental patient and avid Beatles fan, called out to Lennon, then crouched in a firing position, both hands gripping a .38-caliber pistol, and discharged the weapon, hitting Lennon four times in the back.
“I’ve been shot!” Lennon exclaimed.
He stumbled up six steps and collapsed. Chapman dropped his pistol and the doorman kicked it away.
“Do you know what you’ve just done?” he asked Chapman.
“Yeah,” Chapman replied. “I’ve just shot John Lennon.” Then he began leafing through a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye.”
John Lennon, former Beatle turned social activist, was dead at age 40.
For a generation that had suffered more than its share of surreal public tragedies — the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, the shootings at Kent State and Jackson State among them — the news of John Lennon’s death elicited shock and profound grief.
“John Lennon’s murder was just another knife in an already open wound,” says Southern Pines musician Danny Infantino. “I was living in New York when Lennon was murdered, and like everyone else in the city I was struck by the senselessness of it. The Beatles, especially John Lennon, had been an important part of my life.”
Art Professor Denise Baker was a graduate student at Appalachian State University when she learned of Lennon’s death.
“The news came over the radio about 3 in the morning,” she says. “I was in the art studio with some other students, and we made silk screens of Lennon’s face with the words ‘John Is Dead’ underneath, and we graffitied the campus so everyone would know what had happened when they went to class the following morning.”
Early TV reports of Lennon’s murder included live coverage of grieving fans congregated outside the Roosevelt Hospital emergency room and in front of the gothic façade of the Dakota. Tearful mourners laid flowers at the site of Lennon’s murder. Some held up flickering candles in the cold December night. Others wandered about in their pajamas and bathrobes.
Although dazed by the pointlessness of Lennon’s murder, members of the crowd at the Dakota finally managed to raise their voices in a half-hearted rendering of the Beatles’ 1963 hit “All My Loving”: “Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you. Tomorrow I’ll miss you. ... ”
It’s likely Lennon would have found any rendition of the old song passé. He’d long ago abandoned the frivolous, upbeat lyrics of the Beatles’ early years for the primal screaming of the “Plastic Ono Band” (“Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV….”) and the thoughtful musings of “Imagine” (“Imagine there’s no heaven….”)
He’d actively protested the war in Vietnam, and his post-Beatles songs explored social issues such as peace, racism, and feminism. Yoko and John held bed-ins and purchased full-page ads proclaiming “War Is Over!” They led an entire generation in chanting “Give peace a chance.”
Because he was capable of speaking directly to millions of young people, Lennon suffered ongoing surveillance by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and a campaign of harassment by Nixon-era goons. In the early ’70s, he took the U.S. government to court to avoid deportation.
And then Lennon disappeared for five years, choosing to spend his days as a reclusive househusband. His eventual return to the recording studio in 1980 was one of the most anticipated musical events of the year, and when his album “Double Fantasy” was released in November 1980, it went gold in two weeks.
Lennon was returning from a recording session for the album “Milk and Honey” when he was murdered. A few days after his death, “(Just Like) Starting Over” from “Double Fantasy” hit No. 1.
But the mourners gathered outside the Dakota on the night of Lennon’s death chose to recall the simpler, more hopeful moment when the Beatles first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964.
“Four of the nicest youngsters,” Sullivan said when introducing the Fab Four. More than 70 million Americans stared expectantly at their black-and-white TVs as Lennon and the other Liverpool mop-tops opened their set with “All My Lovin’,” the song mourners would sing outside Lennon’s apartment 16 years later.
‘Looked Loony to Many’
“The Beatles’ appearance on Ed Sullivan was a turning point,” says Craig Fuller of Pure Prairie League and Little Feat fame. “After that performance, I knew what I would do. There was no turning back.”
Denise Baker watched the Beatles’ performance with her sisters. “We were all in junior high and we screamed and screamed when the Beatles came on,” Baker recalls. “We couldn’t wait to buy their records, which we played on my father’s hi-fi when he wasn’t home. I’d later see them in concert in Pittsburgh.”
Danny Infantino had read about the Beatles in The New York Times magazine. “Their hair was long, and I thought they were probably just a passing craze,” says Infantino. “But when they began to sing on the Sullivan show, I knew things would never be the same. They were just right there with the music. And it was John Lennon’s vision that brought the Beatles fame.”
The day after Lennon’s murder, Yoko Ono released a simple statement: “There is no funeral for John. John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him. Love, Yoko and Sean.”
When asked to comment on the death of his longtime songwriting partner, Paul McCartney wisecracked, “It’s a drag, isn’t it?”
But he later added, “There was no question that we weren’t friends, I really loved the guy. I think that what has happened will in years to come make people realize that John was an international statesman. He often looked a loony to many people. He made enemies, but he was fantastic. He was a warm man who cared a lot and with the record ‘Give Peace a Chance’ helped stop the Vietnam War. He made a lot of sense.”
A Controversial Life
Lennon’s death didn’t end the controversy that had surrounded his life.
Although Yoko Ono has retained control of the Lennon legacy, other voices have offered a more mundane image of the working-class hero. Albert Goldman’s “The Lives of John Lennon” depicts Lennon as a drug-addicted misfit, and in her recent memoir “John,” Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia Lennon, writes of the “pain, torment and humiliation” she suffered during her marriage to Lennon.
It’s safe to say that the Beatles were the Baby Boomers’ most profound influence. The band burst onto the music scene at a time when rock ’n roll had lost its focus; they put energy back into the music, creating a timeless legacy. As Lennon forced the band to evolve as musicians and cultural critics, they awakened a generation’s social consciousness, aggravating generational grievances and inspiring the counterculture and anti-war movements.
A vigil held for Lennon on Sunday, Dec. 14, 1980, brought together mourners around the world. More than 35,000 gathered in Liverpool, the Beatles’ hometown. And there were sizable vigils in Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles.
But the largest gathering took place in Central Park in New York, John Lennon’s adopted home, where more than 100,000 fans observed 10 minutes of silence and then sang along with “Imagine” as it was broadcast over loudspeakers.
“No hell below us, Above us only stars.” ...
Stephen Smith can be reached at travisses@hotmail.com.
