Thirty-five years ago, during the Dolphins vs Patriots MNF game,

December 8, 2015 5:52 PM

Howard breaks the news --The behind-the scene debate about how to present the matter.
Following the game, Ted Koppel did a special Nightline report.(slyt)
The following night, ABC devoted a special edition to Lennon.(slyt)

Everyone knows where they were and what the were doing when they heard the news.

posted by shockingbluamp (40 comments total)

This was the first time I recall the modern media circus going into action. The same 3 clips repeated ad nauseum by talking heads every 5 minutes for the next day. This has become the norm today. SNL covered it well in parody.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:59 PM on December 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I got the news from Vinnie Scelsa, the great New York DJ who was on the old WNEW back then. I'm pretty sure that I burst into tears.
posted by octothorpe at 5:59 PM on December 8, 2015

Well we all shine on
Like the moon, or the stars, or the sun.
posted by eriko at 5:59 PM on December 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

Mister Rogers helps children understand sad and scary things, soon after.
posted by Capt. Renault at 5:59 PM on December 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

OMG, THAT IS ONE HELLA CRAZY DELIVERY OF TERRIBLE NEWS BY HOWARD COSELL. I just -- WHAT. They set it up like a joke -- "We gotta tell them what we know in the booth" -- and then Cosell says it's been an "unspeakable tragedy" before he says it's just one person or who it is. That kind of non-linear delivery of terrible breaking news would NOT BE OKAY today.

It makes more sense when you play the "behind the scenes" clip and hear Gifford and Cosell talking about what to do during the 60-second break, but it's super-weird if you just jump in to the first clip.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:09 PM on December 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

We had gone to bed early, so I didn't get the news until the morning, when I opened our apartment door to get the paper and was punched in the gut by the headline.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:11 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

My clock-radio alarm went off the next morning and WBCN was playing We Can Work It Out. I lay in bed for a couple minutes as the song finished, and then the DJ came on and gave the news about Lennon. I think I remember that he was crying. I think his co-host was crying. I woke up my mom and we turned on the radio and the TV. (When the attacks on September 11 happened, I had the radios and the TV on, and I thought about the morning I heard that John Lennon had been killed.)

I walked to meet my friends to go to school. We cried on the walk there, and stole a copy of the Boston Globe with its zillion-point headline off someone's driveway. In nearly every class I had, our teachers were gentle and even teary with us, and talked with us about what had happened, let us talk about how we felt. (Except for one. I still remember what felt like her unnecessarily emphatic disinterest and dismissal - at the time, I though mean, why is she so mean. We were fourteen years old.)

My mom was so kind and so sympatico and so right there with me. I miss my mom.

I still, and always will, wonder how the world would be different if he had stayed in it. Maybe not much or at all? Maybe a lot? I feel a 14-year-old's terrible realization and grief that I'll never know.
posted by rtha at 6:13 PM on December 8, 2015 [12 favorites]

I was six months old, and I have a friend who was born the next morning. (12/9)

My spouse was trying to get to work, on the other side of Central Park. (We live a few blocks from the Dakota). He was very late.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:17 PM on December 8, 2015

My best childhood friend was born the same day, so I always connect the two.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:19 PM on December 8, 2015

I was barely 1 month old when this happened. So a bit before my time. But I can understand the significance. These flashbulb moments are always seared into our lives. Here are a few that I can recall were significant as I was growing up:

• Space Shuttle Challenger explosion
• Princess Diana's death.
• O.J. Simpson car chase.
• Waco siege.
• Columbine shooting.
• Kurt Cobain's death.
posted by Fizz at 6:26 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was a Gilley-rat at the time, and was taking a friend to Gilley's for his first time. We're driving down to Pasadena, every song on every station is a Beatles song, wtf. We walk into Gilley's and they're playing John Lennon songs from the stage. At Mickey fkn Gilley's WTF? And then they announced it, in between songs. And there maybe were some country songs played there that night but there were not many.

Frank, my friend who was with me that night, so happens that he is the biggest Beatles fan I've ever known. It pretty much blew him out of his shoes. It didn't me, it was not a 9/11 type shock for me, it was slower settling in for me.

It's just so sad. 40 years old, a young child, a woman that he loved, a new record on the streets, happy to be living in New York City, happy to be him. He was happy. He was so happy.

I didn't know the guy, never met the guy, how can I say I love the man? But I did. And I do.

35 years. Blink your eyes POOF I'm 25 years old and I'm in that Buick with my friend, a chill night, we're headed home from Gilley's, we're sortof in shock I guess.

You've gotta know that John would have given us so much more, he was the coolest motherfucker alive and happy about it and able to handle it, too.

Not Chapmans fault, either, he was just insane is all. Guns, I guess what it comes to, once again. Our love affair with guns. This thread isn't about guns, except that it is. Fuck.

It's just so fucking sad.

.
posted by dancestoblue at 6:37 PM on December 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

right there with you rtha.
posted by pipoquinha at 7:01 PM on December 8, 2015

Oh, the Patriots were playing? That makes perfect sense.





(I say that as a Steelers fan.)
posted by mr. digits at 7:03 PM on December 8, 2015

This was probably my first big news thing that stuck with me, yes. I was only six but my dad was a Beatles fan and watching the game at the time. I remember being not sure which Beatle John was because I hadn't quite figured out how to tell them apart at the time, being mostly aware of them in their early moptop/matching suit format.

I guess my next big one was the release of the hostages in Iran a few months later. My school had some big assembly featuring yellow crepe paper streamers and I'm honestly not sure what we were meant to understand about it other than "Yay America" and in hindsight it seems utterly bizarre to have made such a fuss about it with such young kids, but I also bet that the kids upwards of 8 or so understood what was happening just fine.

Unfortunately every big news tragedy after that is just etched on another line of my heart, right after the last one. Other than the Challenger explosion, for which I was 11-12, I was an adult for every event Fizz mentions and I can think of plenty more. My heart's running out of lines.
posted by padraigin at 7:11 PM on December 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I distinctly remember going to school the next day, where my teacher was an old sorority sister of my mothers and had known me forever.

Mom gave me a Daytons bag full of Beatles records to bring in and the class listened to them and she cried all day.

For a while, I've held an odd idea that someone, somewhere has a time machine. You can't simply have so many things not erupt in a gigantic nuclear holocaust in a row. Our history is based on so many vastly improbable events, I can't come to any other conclusion. Maybe the price to pay is Lennon.

It's times like this that if I ever had a time machine, after I woke up with Audrey Hepburn, the second thing I'd do is stop that bullet.
posted by Sphinx at 7:25 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sphinx, that very much makes me think of this short story.
posted by litlnemo at 7:51 PM on December 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Here's a distraught Stevie Wonder announcing the news to his audience that night in Oakland. (Skip to the one minute mark to see the onstage portion of the clip). You hear the genuine shock from the audience when he tells them who he's talking about.
posted by maudlin at 7:54 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was 8 - I remember my mom sitting on the floor by the radio listening to the news. I asked what happened, she said John Lennon died. I said, "Oh, he was really old, huh?" 🙄 I was the worst.
posted by artychoke at 8:04 PM on December 8, 2015

I was just thinking today, what if he hadnt moved to the States. Cos yah, never talk about Lennon "dying" -like he slipped in the tub or had a stroke. He was an American gun violence victim, like Kennedys and MLK and Marvin Gaye and Jim Brady (injured, probably died younger because) and 100s of thousands since then.

Pretty sure I was watching a movie that night, dunno if it was on b'cast or a tape. (Did we have a VCR yet?) And heard during or after it. Total shock, cos as said above, he'd just been in the news for good reasons with the new album and all.

I saw Sir Paul perform in person for the first time this fall; it's STILL surreal John's been gone so long, as Paul and the rest of us move on.
posted by NorthernLite at 8:12 PM on December 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Fizz I'm about your age and have that same list of flashbulb moments. Where everyone remembers where they were.
posted by sweetkid at 8:28 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was in college (SMU, Dallas) and we had been playing Double Fantasy that weekend upstairs in the frat house while playing pool. I don't specifically remember seeing the broadcast, but I'm pretty sure I did, or at least that it was on in the living room downstairs.

The next day, two of us pulled the U.S. flag to half-mast on our way to breakfast. It was pulled back up later in the day.
posted by yhbc at 8:33 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

OK... this is a true story. I understand if some are skeptical however it actually happened exactly as described.

I was an overnight DJ for a radio station in New Hampshire (WLNH). My shift began at midnight.

I'd come in early the evening John Lennon was assassinated. We were all deeply stunned. The fellow on air was Bill Shane. We'd been talking of the tragedy off air and lost track of time. Bill suddenly realized the record was about to end. He asked to quickly hand him a current tune. Without looking, I grabbed the next available 45 on the stack. He cued it, keyed the mic and repeated the news about John Lennon... and then Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With You Best Shot" rolled out over the airways.

Sorry Bill, wherever you are today.
posted by Bdprtsma at 8:33 PM on December 8, 2015 [12 favorites]

I was in Hawaii at the time, part of the INSCOM installation team converting an old underground aircraft factory near Wheeler AFB, into an NSA Facility (Where a certain E. Snowden was later assigned). I remember coming back to the hotel room that afternoon, kicking off the steel toed shoes, and turning on the TV to be met by the breaking news.
posted by pjern at 8:38 PM on December 8, 2015

I'm not being glib, so keep that in mind. I'm a Pats fan. The Mister is a Dolphins fan, and a huge Beatles fan. He's old enough to remember this, while I'm not. Things suddenly make a lot more sense to me. I'll be kinder to him this football weekend.
posted by Ruki at 8:39 PM on December 8, 2015

i feel fairly comfident that, had he not been killed, the beatles would have produced more music. just imagine that! (no pun intended.) seriously - imagine the energy in the room for a beatles concert in 1989. i sometimes daydream about what the setlist would be. would john and paul alternate songs? every third song goes to george? would billy preston be there too? what would be the first song? the last? would there be an acoustic set in the middle?

even if the mind can comprehend, the heart simply breaks at the enormity of it all.
posted by fingers_of_fire at 12:36 AM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I woke up to the news as an 8 year-old Beatles obsessive; mum holding back the tears. But I remember immediately creating in myself that sense of candid, selfish, intense lucidity unique to children and their need to defend themselves against the scariness of the world: "Well I'm not dead, I've never met John, he wasn't a family member, I meant nothing to him, I never expected the Beatles to happen again as they once happened - and yet still his voice and records and songs could continue to be as important to me as they ever were. Woot! I could just carry on.

It feels very different 35 years later though.
posted by colie at 12:41 AM on December 9, 2015

Sort of extraordinary to retreat to a time when everybody didn't already know everything about the breaking news the instant it happened. I mean, no tickers running on that TV, no smartphones in the audience at that Stevie Wonder concert. And no one spewing hours of bizarre speculation and other ridiculous bollocks into the airwaves at the very same time, on every channel.

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

Maybe we did get that, after all.
posted by chavenet at 2:46 AM on December 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

THE SCENE: September 14, 2001; Union Square Park, New York City. The park is taken up with a haphazard "peace vigil", clusters of people milling around, knots of candles. I am with the guy I've just started dating. Every so often we hear groups of people start singing "God Bless America", because recently that's what Congress opened a session with, but he and I already feel like the country is going to take a hard right into flag-waving so we don't join. He tries to start singing "New York, New York" a couple times, but no one joins in.

Then we hear, over to one side, a guy on a guitar in the midst of a crowd start up: "Everybody's talkin' 'bout bagism, shagism...." We smile and head over, joining I with the crowd on the chorus - "all we are saaaaaayinnnnng, is give peace a chaaaaaance...."

The guy sings through the whole song, and gradually more people come join the crowd, joining in with the chorus. The guy runs through the verses a second time, keeping it going, but after the second run, he just plays and we all sing the chorus over and over for a full minute and a half -

All we are saying, is give peace a chance...
All we are saying, is give peace a chance...
All we are saying, is give peace a chance...
All we are saying, is give peace a chance....

New York has a weird sort of affection for John because he fell in love with this city and made it home. Part of me is actually comforted that he was spared seeing how the city is now, but part of me suspects that we may not have gotten to this point if he were still here. But he left the best bit of himself behind for us.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:33 AM on December 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

The three events like this that have hit me the hardest: John Lennon, Phil Hartman, and 9/11, which was slightly different because there were continuous waves of new information to absorb and I immediately recognized the why after the second plane hit. With Lennon and Hartman there was just the shock of the news and the unanswerable question "why?"
posted by pmurray63 at 4:55 AM on December 9, 2015

Everyone knows where they were and what the were doing...

I don’t really remember although presumably I would likely have heard it on the radio as I got ready for school (I was 12). Or perhaps my mother would have told me, having been up earlier. Breakfast TV had yet to begin in the UK, and it may well have happened too late for it to have made the morning papers on the 9th (the front page I would have seen on the 10th). I do recall having heard Lennon interviewed on the radio a short time before about the release of Double Fantasy and how enthusiastic and upbeat he’d seemed about that, and I recall liking (Just Like) Starting Over which was getting a lot of airplay even before his death, so while I wasn’t a fan as such it was jarring and disconcerting news nevertheless.
posted by misteraitch at 5:41 AM on December 9, 2015

i feel fairly comfident that, had he not been killed, the beatles would have produced more music.

I think that the personalities involved and long-held grievances could not lead to anything stable. Look how the Anthology produced two new songs for three discs; the scheme was originally a more elegant three-for-three but even after a twenty-five year pause, George could not take working with Paul for that long.

That said, I think the John and Paul reunion was the closing moment of Live Aid that most universes got but we did not.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:52 AM on December 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was a fairly rabid Beatles fan as a teen, and partial in particular to Lennon, enough so that when my (mostly musically clueless post-Elvis) mom woke me up for high school the morning after the shooting, the first thing she said to me was "Ronnie, wake up, your Beatle was killed," having just heard it on the radio while setting up breakfast. Then, without coordinating it - this was long before email and texting and Twitter of course, to do that we would have had to telephone each others' families' homes at 7 a.m. - I and several friends wore black armbands to school.

I think the naive high school junior me had somehow hoped a new decade would mark an upturn for things, after the Vietnam / Nixon-Watergate / oil crisis / recession / nuclear threat / hostages in Iran vibe of my formative years, but the election of that creep Reagan and then the gunning down of Lennon really brought it home to me that wasn't the case.
posted by aught at 5:59 AM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I suppose I existed then, but I wasn't born yet (which I'll use as my excuse for not recognizing the date). Watching that Mr. Rogers clip- it's not just the kids who could use an adult who loves them to watch this with. I could using a caring adult myself. "Always look for the people who are helping" indeed.
posted by nat at 8:23 AM on December 9, 2015

I was 8 and I remember sitting in the car with my dad while Strawberry Fields was on the radio. He explained to me what had happened. I quite liked the Beatles. My mother had given me all her old Apple singles for my little turntable. So I remember being sad. To this day I find Strawberry Fields to be a sad, sad song.
posted by Biblio at 9:07 AM on December 9, 2015

I still, and always will, wonder how the world would be different if he had stayed in it. Maybe not much or at all? Maybe a lot? I feel a 14-year-old's terrible realization and grief that I'll never know.

In the card game Chrononauts, one option to change history leads to a future with a Senator John Lennon.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:54 AM on December 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

That said, I think the John and Paul reunion was the closing moment of Live Aid that most universes got but we did not.

That could have been more likely if they had reunited on SNL first.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:55 AM on December 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was 9 years-old and don't remember the day at all. Probably because it was yet another chance for my parents to tell the story of how me and my sister did the twist on all their old Beatles albums 6 years earlier.
posted by tetsuo at 12:14 PM on December 9, 2015

In the card game Chrononauts, one option to change history leads to a future with a Senator John Lennon.

Indeed. In the game, the campaigning of Senator Lennon (I am gonna go out on a limb here and say "D-NY") against gun violence leads to the 29th Amendment banning handguns, effective January 20, 1999.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:18 PM on December 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was at work, where I always am, at that time in the kitchen of a small hotel in Lake Wales, Florida. Didn't hear any radio that previous evening or the next morning, so when a co-worker who I didn't like much (he had thrown a 10" chef's knife at my head a few days previously) told me-- I simply refused to believe him. I continued to refuse to believe it for another 24 hours, until I finally gutted up and confronted the media, via FM radio in my car on the way to work the next morning.

I was in such a bubble of just busting my ass trying to get by, that I don't really even recall talking to anyone about it except my young wife-to-be, who was likewise devastated. I just numbed out & plodded forward, with the lights grown dim. No vigils, no listening marathons, just grim survival.

I think I partly hate Florida just for being where I was when Lennon died. I have had to travel back there a few times recently, and even now, that memory casts a pall & I find it a difficult place to be. I was never happier than when we crossed the Texas border on I-10 the next March at about 3 am in my '69 Nova, new wife asleep, head in my lap, cat curled up in hers, all of us escaping the place where we had been when that thing happened.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:33 PM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was in college and spent all evening working on a project for my concrete structures class. I finally decided to take a break and watch Carson's monologue and found out then.
posted by lordrunningclam at 5:03 AM on December 10, 2015