"I Read The News Twenty-Five-Years Ago Today, Oh Boy..."

Cafe Society
21

This is the third year in a row we’ve had a thread on this topic.

Because I’m too lazy to link the earlier thread, I’ll just say again that on that night, I was sitting at my desk doing my homework and listening to the radio. I had tuned into KFI in Los Angeles and they had just played Lennon’s current hit, “Just Like Starting Over”, when the DJ suddenly announced that there was a big news story breaking and that they had to take an unscheduled commercial interruption. When I heard that, the first thing I thought of was not John Lennon but Poland. Solidarity had been challenging Polish Communist authority and there was the fear that the USSR would soon intervene to crush the “rebellious” activity like it did in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan. However, when the DJ came back, he instead announced that John Lennon had been shot.

Obviously, it was quite a shock.

22

Here’s a link to Cosell’s announcement (Cut 10). He actually made it against his producers wishes. Cosell had interviewed Lennon in the MNF booth before, and apparently had a lot of respect for him. I think what you heard was an urban legend.

23

I heard about it on the radio when I was eating breakfast before school. I was 15, and a big Beatles fan due to my older siblings. John Lennon’s death was the first death of someone I didn’t know personally that had a significant emotional impact on me. The second one was John Belushi a couple years later.

Most of the kids at school that I talked to about it had no idea who he was.

24

John Lennon died 3 years before I was born and I’d never heard that clip until now. I’m holding back tears as I type this now. :frowning:

25

It was on the front page of the morning paper as I sat down to breakfast. Everything seemed surreal. We had framed photographs of each of the Beatles in the hallway. All of my in-laws at the time were Beatles fans. Bummer Christmas.

I learned recently that Lauren Bacall heard the fatal shot or shots. She lived at the Dakota.

26

I was in my second year in college and finishing a paper while listening to the radio (WRIF in Detroit to be exact). The DJ broke into the programming to first say that the wires were reporting that Lennon had been shot, but they didn’t know his condition. He repeated it and then said he’d been handed a new report that Lennon was dead. He started crying and then played “Imagine.”

I was a huge Lennon fan and had just bought “Double Fantasy.” It was late at night and my parents were in bed, and I came downstairs to get tissues and I went in the living room and watched a little of the news on TV (quietly). The dog came in and sat at my feet while I cried. My mother came in and asked what I was doing up, so I told her Lennon had died.

It was an incredibly sad night.

27

Call me naive, but I’m rather amazed at these reports of how emotional people got over the news. Grown men reduced to tears? Wow. I knew of course that it was a big shock and sad that someone so young would be killed, but at the same time the Beatles had been over for a while and I just wouldn’t have thought it would be so devastating for people…!

(I was about two months old when it happened.)

((I really am ignorant about the death, because I had been under the impression that John Hinkley had shot Lennon, not Reagan, to impress Jodie Foster.))

This is probably well known, but there’s a cycle of tragedy involved with that building. John Lennon was shot outside his apartment building the Dakota, which was where the movie Rosemary’s Baby (which deals with fictionalized atrocities in the building) was shot. The movie was directed by Roman Polanski whose wife, Sharon Tate was murdered by members of the Manson cult, who were inspired by the song Helter Skelter, which was written by…the Beatles. :eek:

28

I was in Berlin and when I woke up, I turned on AFN (American Forces Network) radio and caught the DJ saying, “…and we will be playing John Lennon music all day.”
I thought, “great!”
Was all happy and making coffee.

Then they broke in with the news why they were playing John Lennon songs all day.

I was devastated. As a huge Beatles fan, it was unbelievable and to make matters worse, there was a letter I had written that was still in the kitchen.

I was doing some film reviews and interviews while I was living in Berlin, and one I had recently done was with Romy Haag - a transvestite who had had a brief affair with David Bowie. She told me they met when he had come to Berlin to “get away from the madness” and record an album. She said he was impressed with the studios Berlin had to offer.

So for no particular reason, I went home that night and wrote a letter to John Lennon and mentioned that David Bowie had recently recorded an album in Berlin and enjoyed living here while he was making it. I suggested that maybe he and Yoko might like to consider Berlin when recording their next album - and that they might also like to “get away from the madness” as Romy had described it.

I never sent the letter - thought it was too “fan boy”, but had not tossed the letter either. I think I was still considering sending it - perhaps with the hope that if they did come to Berlin, I could do an interview.

I never got to see the Beatles perform, but once when I was living in NYC, I was walking through Central Park and happened to notice a couple walking in my direction. The woman was very attractive with really long hair…I suddenly realized it was Yoko (who looks far better in person) and then I realized who was walking with her. My jaw must have dropped as they both sort of smiled when they walked by. I turned and watched them cross the street towards the Plaza and some guy walked by and I blurted, “that was John and Yoko!” The guy was obviously born and raised in NYC as he said, “so?”

29

What I think you have to keep in mind - and this is just my rehashing of it, Lennon was gone before I was born - is how strongly the Beatles were connected to the youth of their audience, and the huge sense of possibility that existed when the Beatles were popular. The Beatles were doing these things nobody had imagined in popular music, and a lot of their fans were trying to change the world they lived in - and of course, the Beatles had their views on that, too. I think many people probably felt that they were sharing that vision with the band. The Beatles had a place in youth culture that I don’t think any other band can occupy. They were that popular and (although I recognize not everybody believes this, especially today) they were that revolutionary. Like you said, the Beatles had been gone for ten years when Lennon was killed, but they hadn’t disappeared entirely and there were all those memories. And I guess that was an abrupt end for anybody who was still dreaming of a Beatles reunion.

I haven’t talked all that much with my father about how he felt when he heard - I should do that. I do know that he went into therapy some time shortly afterward, and that the murder was among the things that was depressing him at the time.

30

Thanks for that link - especially since I’d always wanted to hear the original clip of John’s “I’m not afraid of dying” snippet from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

31

I was attending a Baptist high school at the time. I remember a girl got suspended for writing “John Lennon Forever” on a blackboard. Then the day after John Belushi died, some kids were sent home for wearing black.

32

*"FRANK GIFFORD, 75, co-announcer of the Patriots-Dolphins “Monday Night Football” game that night: We were in Miami. I was doing the play-by-play at the time. I could hear Cosell talking to the producer in the truck.

I knew something big was going on. I could tell by Howard’s intensity, and he wasn’t paying any attention to the game all of a sudden.

Then we go to a commercial. I said, “Howard, what the hell’s going on?”

Then he said, “They just shot John Lennon.”

He said, “I’ll take it from here, Gifford,” and, “We’re going to announce this,” or something to that effect.

I said, “Bulls–t, we’re not, either.”

I said, “We’re going to get confirmation from New York.”

Cosell was really pissed off - and he was right, it had just happened."*

and

BOB GOODRICH, 60, ABC “Monday Night Football” producer, who told Howard Cosell about Lennon: I said, “Howard, it’s been confirmed. It’s unfortunate, but you need to report it to the country.”

both from http://breezyl.blogspot.com/

33

John isn’t on Dark Side of the Moon. I think the voice saying “And I am not frightened of dying, anytime will do” is Pink Floyd’s road manager. (The Floyds did interview Paul and Linda McCartney for the album, but didn’t use their comments. It’s Wings guitarist Henry McCullough who says “I don’t know, I was really drunk at the time.”)

34

Color me embarassed. I could have sworn I read that it was John Lennon in one of my Pink Floyd guitar books, but I guess not.

Thanks :wink:

35

Wow Stinkum. I too heard the news on the WRIF. I was living in Sarnia, Ontario at the time and WRIF was the best station on the planet back then. Anyway I was living at home, in my first year of college, and woke up to the news. I too had just bought Double Fantasy, on 8 track no less!

I’m still devastated and can’t sing along to Imagine without getting totally choked up. I have tears in my eyes right now.

36

I had a clock radio that was set to wake me up every morning for school, and it was tuned to a local rock station. I woke up to the news that morning. It was a very sad day. He was, and still is, one of my favorite artists.
I remember that some of the kids at school were wearing black armbands in his memory that day, too.

37

I was one of the first people in the country to find out. I was working in a radio station in Arkansas and I heard our AP teletype bell ringing, as it did whenever urgent news was being delivered.

I walked up to the machine and watched as it typed out “John Lennon shot dead”. I then had the pleasure of telling everyone else.

38

I was four years old and my mom had been really sad over her brother’s death in Oct. 1980. This basically pushed her over the edge. I remember a lot of crying during that time and feverish cleaning of the house.

39

Right now, I’m listening to an interview with an ER physician who was on call when Lennon came in.

It’ll probably be available via podcast later on, the program is the Paul Harris Show.

40

Another Cosell-notifyee here. A dark day.

I’ve noticed a lot of “what’s the big deal?” sentiment this year, and I’m not really surprised. You had to be there to appreciate Lennon and Co.'s impact on popular culture of the day. The Beatles meant something to a great many people. Their songs were the soundtrack to so many lives, they were the first time many of us “discovered” Rock And Roll. We ran out and bought their albums the day they came out, and played them over and over again. At parties, you couldn’t go wrong if you put a Beatle record on. When they broke up, we naively hoped and dreamed that they would reform again someday. I think the outpouring of emotion has as much to do with Lennon’s death as the death of that dream.

(Minor hijack…

True. But, he does make an appearance in a “degree of separation” sort of way: At the very,very end, after Jerry Driscoll intones “…it’s all dark…”, you can hear the faint strains of “Ticket To Ride”—it was playing on a radio in the room when Waters recorded his sound bite interviews.

…end hijack)