Remembering Lennon 30 years later
December 8, 2010 7:24 AM   Subscribe

 
"I always remember to thank Jesus for the end of my touring days. If I hadn't said that the Beatles were 'bigger than Jesus' and upset the very Christian Ku Klux Klan, well, Lord, I might still be up there with all the other performing fleas! God bless America. Thank you, Jesus." -- John Lennon, 1978
posted by blucevalo at 7:28 AM on December 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


((°J°))
posted by New Frontier at 7:29 AM on December 8, 2010 [42 favorites]


His 5 year silence in the second half of the 1970s seemed like such a profound renunciation at the time.

Now it's the standard gap between Shania Twain records.
posted by Joe Beese at 7:32 AM on December 8, 2010


Joe Beese: "Now it's the standard gap between Shania Twain records."

So it doesn't impress you much?
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 7:33 AM on December 8, 2010 [35 favorites]


One of the odder news stories I have read this morning was this clip where James Taylor talks about being harangued by Mark Chapman in a subway station the day before Lennon's shooting.

Thirty years ago today my mom came in and woke me to get up and get ready to go to school (I was a junior in high school) and said as an aside, "Your Beatle guy was shot last night; it was just on the radio."
posted by aught at 7:36 AM on December 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


Lennon (and The Beatles) are the only music that I was listening to at 13 that I'm still listening to at 43. As a teen, it was his rebellious Hamburg youth that I was most interested in. Now, thirty years on, I'm a parent of a boy just slightly younger than Sean was when his father was murdered, and its the Dakota years that hold the most fascination for me.

Lennon endures not only because of his music, but because his life and his words (sung and spoken) in every phase of his life continue to resonate with us.

John is dead, man. Miss him. Miss him.
posted by anastasiav at 7:37 AM on December 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


I was thinking about this this morning, and realized that this is my "where were you when Kennedy was shot?" moment. As far as I can tell, it's the earliest memory I have of something like this, and it had a really profound impact on me.

I remember getting my mom to take me to the record store that day to buy "Double Fantasy," and I remember how disappointed I was to get home and find out that every other song was Yoko.
posted by jbickers at 7:38 AM on December 8, 2010 [3 favorites]


I was on Yoko Ono's concert once. This is something you can see only being drunk as hell. :)
posted by Gazetter at 7:39 AM on December 8, 2010


I was on Yoko Ono's concert once

You say that like it's some kind of hallucinogen.
posted by paulina961 at 7:43 AM on December 8, 2010 [3 favorites]


I was deep in the Sahara desert. Didn't learn of his murder until a month or so after it had happened, and then only quite by chance. So when I think of Lennon's death now, I think of Africa, and how even though he was a towering figure, as famous as one can get, really, throughout many parts of the world, there were other vast swathes of the globe where his name meant absolutely nothing. This has remained for me something of a... balancing perspective.

He was most certainly my number one childhood hero, though, and I'm very sad his life was taken away from him as he'd reached only his fortieth year. I'm not so comfortable with the cult that's grown around him, with the almost religious status conferred upon him, but, that's not his fault. I don't think he would've wanted it. Anyway, I love you, John Lennon. You were one of my greatest inspirations.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:50 AM on December 8, 2010 [10 favorites]


With the passing of elizabeth edwards, yoko ono is now no longer the most hated person with a dead spouse.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:51 AM on December 8, 2010


Yoko Ono remembers John

Isn't that pretty much her whole career these days?

posted by mhoye at 7:52 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


There aren't a hell of a whole lot of things I remember from my adolescence -- much of it was a blur -- but there are certain era-defining moments, and his being shot 30 years ago was one of them. That, along with the release of the hostages in Tehran the following month and the quickly succeeding attempted assassination of Reagan three months later, were truly riveting events -- in a way that not much else had held my attention to that point in my life. I remember exactly where I was and how I reacted 30 years ago tonight.

I would agree that this was "the Kennedy moment" for many in my generation, although the truth is that there really is no comparison.

With the passing of elizabeth edwards, yoko ono is now no longer the most hated person with a dead spouse.

Classy!
posted by blucevalo at 7:53 AM on December 8, 2010


Thank you for this.
posted by zarq at 7:54 AM on December 8, 2010


Thirty years and I still miss him like it was yesterday. Not too many people you have never met garner that reaction.
posted by caddis at 7:57 AM on December 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


My alarm clock went off and WNBC 660 AM was playing a Beatles song instead of their usual Top 40. I knew something was wrong.
posted by Joe Beese at 7:58 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Nightline on December 8, 1980.

My dad's blog post about that day:
The clock radio woke us, and the first sound that came over it was an announcer’s voice: “We’ll have more about the murder of John Lennon after this.”

We sat bolt upright in bed. Had we heard correctly? It had come to us at the tail end of sleep, maybe he had really said some other name, or not the word “murder.”

But when the commercial was over, we learned that it was true. Then we remembered hearing an unusual storm of sirens when we’d gone to bed around midnight, sirens which we now learned had been a couple of miles north of us.

I remember the disc jockey, Scott Muni, vowing that morning that as long as he remained in the business he would open his program each day with a John Lennon song. ...

I remember getting two phone calls in the next half hour or so, one from each of my younger brothers. The middle one was a rock musician up in Albany, and we sobbed together and agreed that Lennon was the most important of all of them, and like a father to us. The youngest brother was a newspaper reporter in Binghamton, just a year out of college, and he was so upset he didn’t want to go to work that morning. I told him it was important for him to go to work: he was a journalist, he had to confront hard things. ...

Some time on the morning of December 8 I went out for my daily jog, a few circuits of Washington Square Park. Or maybe it was the next day. I think I remember that it was a chilly gray day.... And I remember how quiet and still the streets were. Few people were out walking. There were no laughing groups of young people.

All that weekend, no one could think or talk about anything else. There were moments of silence around the world. Radios and TVs were on all the time and there was little conversation. We were all waiting for signals about how next to show our grief. I got sick of the song “Imagine,” especially as quoted by the very authorities it challenged. What I imagined was poor John Lennon being reduced to that one song, treacly and nihilistic at the same time. There were so many other songs.

We went to a law students’ party, and one guy, a student’s husband, a short, plump, blond-haired young man, told us that he and his wife lived on the Upper West Side and had been out walking at the time of the murder, just a couple of blocks away, and had heard the horrible sirens, and without knowing anything about what they were for, he had suddenly begun to cry as he walked home.
posted by John Cohen at 7:59 AM on December 8, 2010 [12 favorites]


Howard Cosell's announcement on Monday Night Football, probably the first place a lot of Americans heard the news. I wasn't around back then, but hearing that this morning on Mike & Mike gave me chills.

There's also an interesting behind the scenes audio clip where Frank Gifford and Howard Cosell hash out what to do when they first heard the news.
posted by kmz at 7:59 AM on December 8, 2010 [8 favorites]


Funny, I remember lots of articles in 1980 when Double Fantasy was released worrying about whether rock-n-roll could survive middle-age since Lennon was attempting a comeback at the advanced age of forty!
posted by octothorpe at 8:01 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


I was alive when he was shot but didn't hear about it and probably wouldn't have cared if I did, since I didn't really know who he was due to be young, rural and not exposed to pop music. Later, in the mid-80s, I read some story that ended with the omgstinger that the secret was MARK DAVID CHAPMAN, BUM BUM BUUUUUM!!!! Only after reverse engineering the story was I able to figure out that John Lennon must be dead.
posted by DU at 8:01 AM on December 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


Oh so my memory of learning of his death is standing in my childhood living room holding a book, trying to figure out who "Mark David Chapman" might be. I guess I must have known by then who Lennon was...
posted by DU at 8:03 AM on December 8, 2010


The interview is awesome, even if the Rolling Stone link resizes my browser.
posted by grabbingsand at 8:04 AM on December 8, 2010


As I've gotten older, gotten married, made choices other people find unfathomable, seen people grow and shrink from life and its challenges, I find that Yoko Ono jokes seem a lot less funny to me.

He loved her. When is someone's love a goddamn punchline?
posted by DigDoug at 8:05 AM on December 8, 2010 [82 favorites]


I was in the 3rd grade, and when we arrived at school, an announcement from the principal told us the news. We were all sent home. We were all pretty psyched about the sudden day off from school, until we arrived home and had to deal with our own parents crying.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 8:13 AM on December 8, 2010 [5 favorites]


I find that Yoko Ono jokes seem a lot less funny to me.

For anyone who has taken the time to learn much about Ono's life, including her childhood in Japan during WWII, you realize there is a lot more there than just a flaky performance artist.

At the age of 12 she lived through the firebombing of Tokyo, and her father was interned in a Chinese concentration camp. These two facts alone should make it easier to understand why she was so drawn to the peace movement.
posted by anastasiav at 8:15 AM on December 8, 2010 [23 favorites]


Watching MNF on a B&W TV in my parents basement, 19 years old. When Cosell said that Lennon had been shot I was kind of stunned and at first I thought he had mis-spoke. Don Meredith was in the booth, too, so here is a (.) for him.
posted by fixedgear at 8:17 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


DigDoug: "He loved her. When is someone's love a goddamn punchline?"

This. Additionally, anyone who earnestly believes a group as talented and, by association, ego-filled as the Beatles were would have stayed together longer than 10 years without Yoko is either ignorant of rock history generally or quite naive.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 8:18 AM on December 8, 2010 [8 favorites]


I've never been comfortable with the hatred for Yoko. She certainly didn't break up The Beatles, and if you don't like her music, well, it's not like Christmas music where you hear it in stores for three months. You sort of have to go out of your way to find Yoko's music. I like it, but I'm not going to defend it, except to say, if you don't appreciate it, just don't play it.

I would defend her as an artist, but, oh my God, as one of the defining voices of the Fluxus movement, which manages to be Minimalist and Conceptual at the same time, that would probably bring more hatred down on her from people who already think that modern art exists just to fuck with them. I would ask that on the anniversary of his death, we not disrespect Mr. Lennon by heaping disrespect on a woman he adored.
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:18 AM on December 8, 2010 [27 favorites]


i was in school, in a much hated Math class. either the teacher had stepped out or had sent one of the students to make copies of a quiz. whomever walked into the classroom just looked at us and said, "John Lennon was shot and killed. Just heard it on the news". mind you, this is in Puerto Rico, where salsa and merengue are de riguer but where The Beatles will always be eternal.

i remember being stunned and not being able to process the information. my teacher sat on his chair and started crying. since that day, our hated Math teacher became one of our biggest friends and allies in the school. we all in that classroom, at my conservative catholic puerto rican school, bonded over our love for that hippy who dared to say he and his friends were bigger than Jesus.

a week after that, i came in with a new pair of glasses. you bet they were round wire-framed like my favorite beatle.









.

*RIP John*
posted by liza at 8:19 AM on December 8, 2010 [12 favorites]


Yoko's remembrance in the NYT is pretty poignant. Ray Davies', even more so.
posted by blucevalo at 8:21 AM on December 8, 2010 [3 favorites]


.
posted by stormpooper at 8:21 AM on December 8, 2010


Hey is it wrong for me to think his message about peace love and understanding is more relevant now than it was then?
posted by newdaddy at 8:21 AM on December 8, 2010


Wow, it's been that long?

I find Lennon fascinating even after I've been disillusioned in the peace and love hagiography that surrounds a man who had some pretty serious flaws at various points in his career. There's a real sense that although he was never perfect, he made a serious effort at becoming something better. His mid-life idealism was tempered by the realization that living up to that is hard work, especially when you have an ugly history of violence, infidelity, and drug abuse.

But that story gets overshadowed by the marketing juggernaut that Lennon helped to build that sold people on the myth of The Beatles as four lovable chums who could do no wrong.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:22 AM on December 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


RIP Dimebag Darrell

It's too late for goodbyes.
posted by Eideteker at 8:24 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Also: John Lennon → Julian Lennon → Julian Assange

COINCIDENCE?
posted by Eideteker at 8:24 AM on December 8, 2010


I was stunned but ok for a few days. about 4 days after I fell into a corner and wept. it's still hard to think about.

anybody carrying around hate in their heart for, of all people, JOHN'S WIDOW has no idea what John was about.

((°J°))
posted by victors at 8:28 AM on December 8, 2010 [5 favorites]


But that story gets overshadowed by the marketing juggernaut that Lennon helped to build that sold people on the myth of The Beatles as four lovable chums who could do no wrong.

To the extent that there's a marketing myth around the Beatles, I'd say it's a myth that accretes around anyone who's attained that type of celebrity (of course, often with at least tacit approval of the celebrities involved). Even more so with Long Deceased Celebrities®, and their estates.

I've always had the sense that the Beatles were incredibly flawed humans -- just their clawing, acrimonious strife and incompatibility during the late sixties during the recording of their last albums should be proof enough of that without having to dig into biographies. But how is it that we've been sold a vision of them as "chums who could no wrong," any more than we've been sold any other major celebrity that way?
posted by blucevalo at 8:32 AM on December 8, 2010


He was my idol until I got older and learned more about his treatment of Julian and Cynthia. Kinda shot a hole in the whole give peace a chance thing. Too bad he wasn't nicer to them. I'm just sayin'. But I stil miss him dearly.
posted by punkfloyd at 8:33 AM on December 8, 2010 [3 favorites]


Like so many, I remember the moment oh so clearly (the Challenger, 9.11 and this, the shared moments of tragedy) - being with my friends at Rutgers, freshman year, when we heard the news. The group of us looked at each other, in tears, hopped in my car, and drove into NYC, right to the Dakota. I remember that we had to park down somewhere near the Hudson river and walk over, all the people outside, the barricades, everyone crying, the smell of pot randomly wafting by, talking, hugging strangers, fuck, it still hurts.

So very many years later, I was hired to produce a couple of videos for Elton John's 60th birthday show at Madison Square Garden, I had a comp seat right off the stage, and I cried when Elton played Empty Garden. Not the best quality, but here it is. I'm tearing up right now, watching this...
posted by dbiedny at 8:43 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]




Thirty years ago tomorrow, I woke to my radio alarm; the song playing was Things We Said Today, and I remember feeling happy, because I loved the Beatles and it seemed like an omen for a good day.

And then there was a confusing several minutes of trying the understand what the DJ was saying. "John Lennon shot and killed" was somehow not in English, or I had suddenly become unable to understand English. I woke my mom and we ran around the house turning on radios and the TV.

I walked to school with a couple of friends, all of us crying. We stole a newspaper off someone's stoop (sorry about that), and things were weird when we got to school. Half the people were like, "Who?" and the other half were crying. The English teacher I had was entirely unsympathetic, but she couldn't get any work out of us.

I was in Liverpool earlier this year. We were staying just across from the Beatles museum; I'm still a fan, and even though I felt kind of dorky for doing such a touristy thing, of course I went. Maybe because I'm in my forties now, the thing that struck me most about the exhibit is how incredibly young they all were when they got famous, and how overwhelming it must have been.
posted by rtha at 8:53 AM on December 8, 2010 [4 favorites]


blucevalo: I think that mythologies are universal aspects of pop-music branding but it certainly changes from group to group.

With the Beatles, you had hundreds of merchandising items for the Fab Four, "Lennon-McCartney" attribution long after the two stopped collaborating, and two blockbuster movies. So I don't think it's entirely a matter of posthumous idealization, especially when you consider that the myth of Ono breaking up the greatest musical friendship in history had legs well before Lennon was murdered.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:12 AM on December 8, 2010


I was eight months old.

My husband, though, was in a taxi caught in a traffic jam on West 72nd St (where we live), and couldn't understand why he was going to be late for work.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:20 AM on December 8, 2010


He loved her. When is someone's love a goddamn punchline?

When it's Tiny Tim?
posted by Jody Tresidder at 9:29 AM on December 8, 2010




I was deep in the Sahara desert. Didn't learn of his murder until a month or so after it had happened, and then only quite by chance. So when I think of Lennon's death now, I think of Africa, and how even though he was a towering figure, as famous as one can get, really, throughout many parts of the world, there were other vast swathes of the globe where his name meant absolutely nothing.

My experience was similar, though not as extreme. I was working on a remote ski hill out of small town British Columbia and for whatever reason didn't hear about it until better part of 48 hours after the fact.

I remember being in double-shock. A. Because of the sheer gut madness of what happened. A Beatle murdered!?! It just didn't compute. B. Because nobody else around me seemed to "get" it, even remotely. The Queen song "Another One Bites The Dust" was big at the time and I recall a lot of people singing the chorus as a sort of cool joke. Strangely, there was a lot of very strong LSD floating around at the time, so I very quickly found myself in that deep/high place, which gets us to ...

I got sick of the song “Imagine,” especially as quoted by the very authorities it challenged. What I imagined was poor John Lennon being reduced to that one song, treacly and nihilistic at the same time.

This was powerfully true for me. I'd never had a strong opinion of Imagine. A nice enough song, I guess, but lacking the KICK and spit of anything truly great. Within a week of the murder, I HATED IT. Because on close lysergic examination, it really was treacle and naive nihilism wrapped up in bullshit flower power sentiment. And don't even get me started on the stuff from DOUBLE FANTASY which the music industry, in its inherent unsubtle greed and opportunism was jamming down the whole world's throats.

There were so many other songs.


This was my first serious inkling of how awful the 80s were going to be.
posted by philip-random at 9:34 AM on December 8, 2010


He loved her. When is someone's love a goddamn punchline?

It's not the love that's a punchline. It's Yoko's root inability to sing. And the fact that she's still somehow occasionally finding her way onto records, onto radio, into our ears. Seriously, has there been a worse singer out there over the past forty years who wasn't/isn't just a hipster novelty item, or buried in autotune? At least, Linda McCartney kept her distance from the spotlight, backing vocals only, and even then buried deep in the mix.
posted by philip-random at 9:41 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


I grew up with the Beatles. My friends and I adored them and spent days listening to our joing collection of albums on each other's stereos.

When Lennon was killed I was in the Navy. I remember standing on a balcony in an apartment in San Diego, drinking a can of Rainiers Ale and wondering why the world was so fucked up.

I've always thought that if Lennon had not been killed, that he and Paul would some day tour.

Oh well.

RIP, Eggman...
posted by mmrtnt at 9:42 AM on December 8, 2010


Joing, joint - you know...
posted by mmrtnt at 9:44 AM on December 8, 2010


This feels like a good day to re-read this again:

Scenes From An Alternate Universe Where The Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels’ Generous Offer
posted by anastasiav at 9:46 AM on December 8, 2010 [5 favorites]




DAMN YOU ANASTASIAV!!!
posted by padraigin at 9:50 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Similarly to others, I woke up for school (grade 7) when my Panasonic clock radio went off. In my case it was tuned to Q107 here in Toronto (who apparently are playing 24 hours of Beatles/Lennon today.) I was a huge Beatle fan and I remember that creepy, cold feeling that dawned on me as they played song after Beatles song and repeated the few details they had about the murder. It was all the talk at the snowy bus stop that morning and of course after school I flipped from channel to channel trying to get as much information as possible; I don't know if TV was making it more or less real. A few weeks later, I got Double Fantasy for Christmas and I remember the whole bizarre dichotomy of new John Lennon songs suddenly being everywhere, all over the radio, while he was just as suddenly dead.

I was kind of in awe of John Lennon, his music and his commitment to ideas, art and Yoko. But I never idolized the man; sometimes it seemed like he could be a real dick and other times I actually felt embarrassed for him when looking back on some of the things he said or did. But I don't think he ever saw himself as flawless, and he said many times that he never wanted to be idolized.

Mostly when I think about his death I just think what a drag it is that we can't know what other music he might have come up with, or his opinion on how bizarre and fucked up things are now. I think the saddest clip of him, the one they always play, is the one where he's all fired-up and optimistic about the future:

"Here I am now. How are you? How's your relationship going? Did you get through it all? Wasn't the seventies a drag, you know? Well, here we are, let's make the eighties great because it's up to us to make what we can of it."
posted by chococat at 9:53 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


I was born a couple years after the fact, so I don't have any "where were you when..." memories, but I do have two particularly powerful ones that center around his death.

When I was in my teens watching VH1's 100 Most Shocking Moments... countdown, when they got to this, I remember them playing the radio announcement and the first bars of Imagine and I started to get that tightness in my throat. It was so inconceivable to me. I mean, I've always known that John Lennon was shot, I knew about the incident, and not five seconds before, that guy from Sugar Ray had pretty much told me what the next segment was going to be about. Why was a simple photo/audio/music package making me want to bury my head in a pillow and cry? I wasn't even that big of a fan of Lennon or the Beatles at the time.

I think that was when I realized that I was an agnostic rather than atheist. I can't believe in a "god" but I've seen some pretty transcendent people, and Lennon may just have been one of them. If his death can grip me despite the cookie cutter VH1 doc edit sequences, something was there.

But I also remember, vividly, riding to my grandparent's camp in my dad's blue Crown Victoria (with the push button slider radio memory that never worked), watching rain drops compete with each other to get to the edge of the window. Across the Universe was playing on the radio and I was fascinated with the "...endless rain into a papercup" lyric, perhaps due to the presence of the rain imagery. I asked my dad who was singing the song and he told me. My mother corrected him, thinking that my father should have said the Beatles, and they had one of their discussions about whether a four year old wanted to know who was singing or who the band was, and if it really mattered what I understood about the whole thing, and someone should just explain it to me anyhow, despite the fact I'd lost interest in the topic while they were discussing the matter.

My father gave me a summary of the Beatles and the individual band members after they "stopped being friends." Afterwords:

Me: Why aren't they friends any more?
Dad: Well, they are all friends, they just don't play music together.
Me: Why did they stop?
Dad: Sometimes people can be mean to each other.
Me: What if they said they're sorry, would they play again?
Dad: No.
Me: Why?
Dad: The man singing this song is dead.
Me: Why?
Dad: Somebody shot him.
Me: Why?
Dad: Sometimes people can be mean to each other.

This is one of those memories that stick around well into your adulthood, almost as if your brain magically knows you'll need them later (see my agnostic note above).
posted by Bathtub Bobsled at 9:56 AM on December 8, 2010 [22 favorites]



posted by Sailormom at 9:59 AM on December 8, 2010


What I imagined was poor John Lennon being reduced to that one song, treacly and nihilistic at the same time. There were so many other songs.

I've always kind of rolled my eyes at people who snark on Imagine for its drippy lyrics - as if it mattered. It's so gorgeous that I don't care what it says. But it never occurred to me how appalling it must be to see Lennon so strongly identified with it, when he was so much more to so many. That sucks.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 10:05 AM on December 8, 2010


Remember when the Beatles were going to do a live action Lord of the Rings with Stanley Kubric? Lennon was going to be Gollum.
posted by Sailormom at 10:06 AM on December 8, 2010


I don't know if it's the year I was born (1969) or some sort of birth defect or what, but I never could stand John Lennon's music. I've always felt as though there was something that someone could explain to me about it that would make me go "Ohhhhh, now I get it", but it's never happened.
posted by DWRoelands at 10:15 AM on December 8, 2010


I walked past the dakota the week he was shot, it was madhouse with the vigil. I was 6 at the time and I asked the woman who was walking with me. 'Who are all those people" and she said " I dont know, some singer got shot or something"
posted by Ad hominem at 10:17 AM on December 8, 2010


He loved her.

Yeah, yeah yeah!
posted by Gelatin at 10:18 AM on December 8, 2010 [9 favorites]


but I never could stand John Lennon's music

so what do you like? Is this just a post-Beatles thing, or does it apply to everything from Love Me Do on up?
posted by philip-random at 10:18 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


I have hazy memories of the night itself, and of the next morning, but what I remember most is that the kids in Grade Eight got to put up a bulletin board dedicated to John, in the room where we had our music and French classes. "R.I.P. JOHN LENNON", and then the dates, his picture in the middle.

That thing was up for years. I know I only got to know him through his death first -- I imagine that the same was true for all the kids there after us. His defining image was his death.

Oddly, when it was our turn to be the Grade Eights, I really had to fight the administration to let us play a couple of John's songs at the Remembrance Day ceremony, in addition to the usual patriotic rah rah army stuff. Give peace a chance, indeed...
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:25 AM on December 8, 2010


Yoko's remembrance in the NYT is pretty poignant.

blucevalo,
What a lovely little tribute - delicate and vivid.

Though WHY the NYT put that stupid explanatory tag at the end: "Yoko Ono is an artist". I can't figure out if it's pretentious, or meant to be deliberately deadpan in tone, or what. But it's irritating.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 10:27 AM on December 8, 2010


It's the typical NYT need to identify and label anything that is there to be identified and labeled, obvious or not. It would have been less stupid if it had added something along the lines of "She and John Lennon were married for 11 years."
posted by blucevalo at 10:55 AM on December 8, 2010


I was 12 and he was 40 in 1980. Now I'm 42. Crazy.
posted by zzazazz at 10:59 AM on December 8, 2010 [4 favorites]


I heard the news from Howard Cosell. I was 15 and a Beatles/Lennon fan, but for some reason it didn't seem that big a deal at the time. Maybe it was shock or the surrealness of the announcement in the middle of the football game. The next morning is when the reality sunk in, when it was all anyone could talk about, and every class in school was just teachers sitting around talking to a bunch of us kids about what a big deal it was, as if our generation could remotely understand what it meant to theirs.
posted by rocket88 at 11:02 AM on December 8, 2010


anastasiav: "Scenes From An Alternate Universe Where The Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels’ Generous Offer"

Paul McCartney is the musical guest on SNL this week. But you probably remember him from the Chris Farley Show.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 11:05 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


John and...

Give me a break, the guy liked absurdist humor
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:06 AM on December 8, 2010


Jody Tresidder: "Though WHY the NYT put that stupid explanatory tag at the end: "Yoko Ono is an artist". I can't figure out if it's pretentious, or meant to be deliberately deadpan in tone, or what. But it's irritating."

The Times does this all the time. See also: Barack Obama is the president of the United States.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 11:06 AM on December 8, 2010 [4 favorites]


I'm nitpicking but that wasnt his last interview, Andy Peebles interviewed him for BBC Radio 1 the next day - December 6th 1980
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14
posted by Lanark at 11:16 AM on December 8, 2010 [4 favorites]


> I would ask that on the anniversary of his death, we not disrespect Mr. Lennon by heaping disrespect on a woman he adored.

There is an unmentioned and important lesson here in my opinion. Hating Yoko Ono is misinformed. It is easy to do because of the meme running about that "she ruined John" or she "broke up the Beatles" and there was such great music before John met Yoko and then afterward some of it was good but really none of it was as good as before.

It is far-fetched to blame any of that on Yoko. How long could any human being stand to be a Beatle without becoming too exhausted by the experience to continue on? By all accounts John was happier after leaving the group, so any true fan of the band would have to say "good for him", not "Yoko is a demon" or anything of that nature.

What is not mentioned is in all the pages and pages of disclosure regarding John's painful psychotherapy, Yoko comes across as an exploitative and mothering creep. I am not disrespecting John here or even disrespecting her. She and he invite this analysis by presenting their psychiatric details into public media. What happens in the psychiatrist's office is, in almost all real world cases, best left in the psychiatrist's office. Any competent psychiatrist will point this out to his patient if he thinks it might be an issue. I don't know if their shrinks did not point this out or they did not listen, but here you have Exhibit A why this is.
posted by bukvich at 11:22 AM on December 8, 2010


I heard the news from Howard Cosell.

I see what you did there.
posted by mmrtnt at 11:32 AM on December 8, 2010


I was approximately three and a half months old when Lennon died. The magic, the impact, and the presence that he held for the generation or two before me has always escaped my understanding. Nor have I yet experience the death of a celebrity that brought with it such an impact on my life and memories. Sure, the music is generally good, but for the most part I stand apart baffled that his death meant so much and such strong ripples from it are yet felt by those today.
posted by Atreides at 11:34 AM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


That the Yoko debate still goes goes on even here cracks me up. It's understood in my social circle she was pretty damn rad in multiple ways, and most folks I know online with similar taste in art and music and media agree. Damn, I may have to put "Walking on Thin Ice" on now...my household's idea of holiday music. Ohoh, and "Listen, the Snow is Falling", both original and covers...

And as AZ mentioned diplomatically, it's not like, you know, the Yoko fans are "winning" by any stretch and you are forced to be exposed to her work constantly. Unlike, you know, the Beatles and their solo work (especially Paul's my god!). I'm pretty sure my husband's blood pressure would be a little lower if he either decided he could stomach most of the Beatles' catalog after all or they just stopped being so damn ubiquitous. And no, this is not a hipster snide transmission; I know there are people who find it hard to believe, but pop culture is not universal, and yes, there are people who really truly do not care for them. The way you know, you don't care for Yoko.
posted by ifjuly at 11:43 AM on December 8, 2010


The failure of Lennon's post-Beatles music was the same as the failure of McCartney's -- that they were a terrific songwriting team, even when their being a team meant being rivals for excellence. Lennon has a greater knack for intelligent lyrics than McCartney did, but McCartney had a great genius for music while Lennon was primarily a roots rocker. If any Beatles album had been made up of just music for one or the other, we might think they were likewise interesting but often mediocre. It was the play of one song against each other that made them dazzling. Left to their own devices, Lennon sang songs with a rather stripped won rock and roll structure, or engaged in difficult-to-listen-to aural experiments, that were generally notable mostly for the nakedness of their lyrics than for their quality as pop songs. McCartney, in the meanwhile, mostly just got daffy and sang about how much he loved his wife.

But, then, I've always been of the opinion that, note for note, the best songwriter of the group was Harrison. I'm listening to "Long, Long, Long" right now, and it's just haunting.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:43 AM on December 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


> But, then, I've always been of the opinion that, note for note, the best songwriter of the group was Harrison. I'm listening to "Long, Long, Long" right now, and it's just haunting

I'm right there with you. (I don't mind John or anything, don't get me wrong, but I totally agree.)
posted by ifjuly at 11:46 AM on December 8, 2010


When I was in high school, the phrase "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Personal Lord and Savior?" seemed very curious to me. The implication, in my mind, being that you could just as well accept someone else as your Personal Lord and Savior.

So, I did. I accepted John Lennon as my Personal Lord and Savior. John, who was shot down for our sins. At age 14, it made as much sense as anything.

(I also joke that since I was born nearly 40 weeks to the day after his passing that I may or may not be the reincarnation of John Lennon. Jury's still out.)

Anyway, love the man's memory with the fire of a thousand million suns and regret that we weren't both alive at the same time.

((°J°))

(One last thing, as soon as I found out my baby-to-be is a boy, I downloaded "Beautiful Boy" and teared the hell up for a good hour. That man could write the hell out of a song.)
posted by sonika at 11:46 AM on December 8, 2010 [3 favorites]


The English teacher I had was entirely unsympathetic, but she couldn't get any work out of us.

Some people are just like that. I dunno.

There was a columnist in my hometown paper - he was like our low-rent version of Royko, only just mean and crappy, rather than cutting and insightful - and his take on it was that all this fuss about some trivial pop star dying would blow over once people came to their senses and realized there was no real art after Beethoven, blah blah blah. Come to think of it, there were a lot of stupid establishment-type columnists around that time who, I guess, thought they were cool and edgy to take a crap on the death of a beautiful, flawed person who tried hard to find and reflect the beauty in humanity.

Nobody remembers you, either, Brumfield, do they?
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:54 AM on December 8, 2010


also,

((°J°))
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:55 AM on December 8, 2010


I'm nitpicking but that wasnt his last interview, Andy Peebles interviewed him for BBC Radio 1 the next day - December 6th 1980

No, you're not nitpicking — Peebles' interview was terrific, and Rolling Stone is plugging the not-last interview as the last interview. That's in the big type. You need to read a bit down to see that they later say it was his last print interview. Peebles recalls his interview here. You can buy a transcript of the interview in a book via Amazon. Or you can find it via file-sharing sites on the Net.

Boy, Lennon was in a talking mood. Nine+ hours with Rolling Stone one day, more than three hours with Peebles the next.
posted by young_simba at 12:03 PM on December 8, 2010


Would you have invested?
posted by squalor at 12:07 PM on December 8, 2010


It's Yoko's root inability to sing. And the fact that she's still somehow occasionally finding her way onto records, onto radio, into our ears. Seriously, has there been a worse singer out there over the past forty years who wasn't/isn't just a hipster novelty item, or buried in autotune?

Well, her singing voice is certainly an acquired taste, but the same could be said of, say, Dylan's pinch-nosed bleating or Neil Young's leaky balloon falsetto.

And if you want to hear it used to great effect, give a listen to this lovely little dirge: Yoko Ono: "Mrs. Lennon" (from one of the great Dick Cavett Show interviews).
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:16 PM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


I was watching television in my parents' family room when there was a "We interrupt this broadcast" thing, announcing that Lennon had been shot. For years I remembered it having been Hill Street Blues that I was watching, but I've only just now determined that Hill Street didn't even debut until a few months later. Was it even a Thursday night? Funny how the memory works.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 12:18 PM on December 8, 2010


Honestly, I can't understand anybody who likes Nico but dislikes Yoko. Does Wes Anderson need to put "Beautiful Boys" in one of his films for people to start enjoying her music?
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:27 PM on December 8, 2010


Atom Eyes, thanks for sharing that. I'd never heard it before, and have a new appreciation for her. Well played.
posted by ApathyGirl at 12:39 PM on December 8, 2010


Each generation - naturally, it seems to me - remembers the death of a music icon in their own way. The 27-year-old clerk at my local general store was 10 when Kurt Cobain died and recalled being upset at the time, but couldn't say why or where he was, except his older brother was "sad at the news and made me feel sad." He had more recent memories of watching TV reports when Michael Jackson died, but it didn't shake him up: "The guy was a weirdo druggie anyways!".

He was kind enough to listen to me when I recounted where I was when Lennon was killed, a vivid memory for me back then in 1980, when I was 29 and it was an "earth-shattering" event, so to speak. I didn't ask the clerk what he was listening to re his latest music, yet wondered if he could say he'd be saddened by the sudden death, or shooting or killing of his favourite artist. Times change and of course he would.
posted by drogien at 12:52 PM on December 8, 2010


McCartney, in the meanwhile, mostly just got daffy and sang about how much he loved his wife.

That's not even remotely true of "Band on the Run," which I've been listening to a bit lately after a reissue. Not fair either. By contrast, I think "Admiral Halsey" was definitely about Linda.
posted by raysmj at 12:55 PM on December 8, 2010


Kennedy, Lennon, the Challenger. I can see the entire rooms I was in when I heard, like a flashbulb seared them in my brain. (Run-down Catholic School 2nd grade classroom, crying nuns, announcement over the PA; programming at a terminal in the MIT Media Lab; standing in a supermarket line with a copy of Teen Beat, to get some images of faces to scan for image processing tests)

And lay off Yoko. She was standing by herself in the dinky New York club, The Mercury Lounge, waiting for her son's first live show to begin. I approached her and we chatted a bit, she was very cordial. Review her output today, and all of her shocking travesties have become standard elements today. She really is a creative genius, and had every right to assert what she already knew.
posted by StickyCarpet at 12:58 PM on December 8, 2010


I was 3 months old, too. I grew up listening to a LOT of Beatles music (my dad insisted on waiting till 2001 to buy it all on CD, having had it on vinyl, 8-track, and cassette tapes already.) I think I was 10 or 11 when I finally found out that:

- the name wasn't spelled "beetles,"
- the guy from Imagine was also in the Beatles,
- the Monkees were a knockoff group, not the same guys,
- this stuff was pretty subversive back in the day,
- Ringo was not the cool one or even, to some people, "really" a Beatle,
- the band broke up forever ago,
- there was this period where they all became hippies, and
- John Lennon was dead.

I distinctly remember learning this all at once - the conversation probably triggered after talking about the story behind "American Pie" - and being suddenly concerned about all the other oldies people and if they were strange and dead, too.

Which is why I'm still surprised every time Ringo Starr pops up alive and well and actually a musician.

(I found out about the shooting when I was in high school, watching VH1. Radio DJs don't usually talk about it, unlike with the Big Bopper and such.)
posted by SMPA at 1:08 PM on December 8, 2010


I think that John Lennon was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

(But I found the Double Fantasy album to be un-listenable. Actually, Yoko can be kind of funny, but John's ballads at that time were way too syrupy. I cringe when I hear them on the radio.)
posted by ovvl at 1:20 PM on December 8, 2010


- Ringo was not the cool one or even, to some people, "really" a Beatle

Bite your tongue!
posted by toodleydoodley at 1:20 PM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Love or hate Yoko for whatever reason, John seemed incredibly happy and in love and isn't that what matters and what we all want with our mate?
posted by stormpooper at 1:28 PM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Lennon on Monday Night Football in 1974; the same night he had an off-camera conversation with fellow MNF guest Ronald Reagan.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:31 PM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


But, then, I've always been of the opinion that, note for note, the best songwriter of the group was Harrison. I'm listening to "Long, Long, Long" right now, and it's just haunting.

Yeah, George got quite good there towards the end when his one-song-per-album allotment was being oustripped by his output, which allowed hims to choose some very good pieces (and have a good backlog for the solo albums post-breakup). I have always thought that the exact point the Beatles end is when Paul has a moment of clarity and looks at Abbey Road: George contributes "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun," John brings in "Come Together" and "Because" and "I Want You," and even Ringo brings the charming "Octopus's Garden" to the party. McCartney must have realized that in a few short years he had gone from being the guy who knocked out "Yesterday" almost literally in his sleep to being the guy who is writing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." At that moment, he realizes he is arguably the fourth-best songwriter in the band.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:02 PM on December 8, 2010 [10 favorites]


I was 11 years old, and had loved the Beatles since I was about 7. I was sitting on the rust-orange couch in our living room, settling in with my sister and parents to watch "It's A Wonderful Life" on WGN (we had just gotten cable!) after decorating the Christmas tree. The news broke in at one point -- I remember my mom cursing -- to announce that Lennon had been shot, but not that he was dead. I don't remember what happened next except this feeling of WTF???? until rushing down the stairs to breakfast the next morning to ask breathlessly if he was alive. "He died," my dad said. I became so hysterical that they let me stay home from school. When I went back the following day, my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Linton, had brought his Beatles records to the classroom, and played them throughout the day for the rest of the week.

I also remember watching the memorial from Central Park a few days (weeks?) later. My parents had friends visiting from out of town, and I remember I couldn't believe that they were in the front room drinking cocktails and laughing while I was in the TV room, alone, crying over the man who was supposed to be the icon of their generation.

Then Reagan was inaugurated and I was all, "wow, the '80s are going to SUCK."
posted by scody at 2:31 PM on December 8, 2010 [6 favorites]


I can't mourn John Lennon. I didn't know the guy. But I do know that when all is said and done, that's all he was -- a guy. The refusal of his fans to ever let him just be that was finally almost as lethal as his "assassin" (and please, let's have no more talk of this being a "political" killing, and don't call him a "rock-n-roll martyr"). Did you watch the TV specials on Tuesday night? Did you see all those people standing in the street in front of the Dakota apartment where Lennon lived singing "Hey Jude"? What do you think the real -- cynical, sneeringly sarcastic, witheringly witty and iconoclastic -- John Lennon would have said about that?
--Lester Bangs (most of you probably already read this before, but hey. RIP JL.)
posted by Skot at 3:11 PM on December 8, 2010


I'm not so comfortable with the cult that's grown around him, with the almost religious status conferred upon him, but, that's not his fault. I don't think he would've wanted it.
posted by flapjax at midnite


I think you're right he wouldn't have wanted it. From the interview:

"What they want is dead heroes, like Sid Vicious and James Dean. I’m not interested in being a dead fucking hero…so forget ‘em, forget ‘em. "
posted by marxchivist at 3:19 PM on December 8, 2010 [3 favorites]


Let's not get too gloomy. The Beatles' lost album revealed
posted by Bubbles Devere at 4:19 PM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


- Ringo was not the cool one or even, to some people, "really" a Beatle

John called Ringo the "heart of the Beatles", and George said that The Beatles without Ringo was "a car with three wheels". You know, for what their opinions are worth.

Jeez, Louise...
posted by Capt. Renault at 5:31 PM on December 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


Without Ringo, the world wouldn't have I've Got Blisters On My Fingers! So, there's that.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 5:40 PM on December 8, 2010


Yeah, the Ringo dismissiveness always grates on me, too. There was a reason that John and Paul actively wooed Ringo away from his band at the time in order to maneuver Pete Best (alas, poor Pete) out of the band: because he was, in Lennon's words, "a damn good drummer" who turned out to be the missing piece that finally made the Beatles The Beatles.
posted by scody at 5:56 PM on December 8, 2010


And let's not forget Ringo's moment in Give My Regards to Broad Street. That one scene, in the recording studio, where Paul tells Ringo, "OK, for this song, you need brushes" and Ringo looks at him like he's nuts. Then he spends the entire length of the song looking to see if he has any brushes. Of course he doesn't. Ringo was a hard-hitting psycho.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:04 PM on December 8, 2010


I was 14 in 1980 and had tickets to the Beatles convention in Boston scheduled the weekend after the murder. They had closed off ticket sales the day after he died, so only the hardcore fans were there. It was weird. A man trying to look like John Lennon earnestly performed the song God in a talent competition. People were trading records. Nobody was in tears. There was a minute of silence, and everyone seemed concerned that it happen at exactly the right time. The other fans seemed to be mostly my parents' age, but not people my parents would know. I bought a Japanese single of Lady Madonna pressed on impossibly thick, black vinyl for $10. I didn't know anyone and nobody seemed to want to strike up conversation with a kid.
posted by quarterframer at 6:47 PM on December 8, 2010


Ringo had/has a great sense of self-deprication about him. It's that self-deprecation that allowed him to be silly, carefree, probably the nicest of them all. And he was (and remains) happy to let others enjoy the spotlight, retreating to the backstage. All of that, however, unfortunately feeds the dismissiveness of Ringo, when really, those traits are noble, honourable. But make no mistake -- on a technical level, he was a master of his craft like no other. And when he did take the spotlight, like in Help!, man, he owned it. In a movie about the biggest band on Earth, at the height of its fame, with brother artists held in more public esteem than himself -- he totally dominated. All the while, though, even he couldn't take himself too seriously. There's a reason why John gave Ringo this song -- no other person could ever have pulled it off.

Ringo's my favourite.

But today is John's day. Apologies for the derail.

posted by Capt. Renault at 6:52 PM on December 8, 2010


I woke up early to the clock radio stating: "John Lennon is Dead."

One of my friends was in a pub in Amsterdam. When the news was announced on the PA, the punk rockers in the crowd cheered.
posted by ovvl at 8:09 PM on December 8, 2010


As long as we're big-upping Ringo...my favourite Beatles solo tune is one of his.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:47 PM on December 8, 2010


Since this has turned into something of a Richard Starkey love-fest (I love 'im too!) here's a Ringo FPP I made recently, for those who might've missed it.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:58 PM on December 8, 2010


When the news was announced on the PA, the punk rockers in the crowd cheered.

It's pretty sad ain't it, when what you think you're supposed to rebel against is older rock musicians. They really oughtta just give it up, and go into banking or something.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:01 PM on December 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


I was on a bus, and a girl boarded who'd been at a party the previous week where I played some cuts from "Plastic Ono". She said "Sorry to hear about your friend."

I could have heard it on the radio or TV. Sometimes the universe can be extraordinarily gracious while it's ripping your heart out.
posted by Twang at 12:12 AM on December 9, 2010 [4 favorites]


I haven't read the thread, no time just now.

I want to thank a bunch of you and Metafilter, for speaking out against the Yoko hate thing. It has bothered me for years. See, I listened to John's words, and they only made me think well of her, and wonder a lot about her.
posted by Goofyy at 3:31 AM on December 9, 2010


In regards to that radio scan someone posted, Here is the full unedited version
posted by wheelieman at 6:13 AM on December 9, 2010


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