That John Lennon was shot. Like many others that night, I got the news from Howard Cosell while watching Monday Night Football. I remember that following Sunday, radio stations went silent to honor him…and I sat there on the couch looking over all my albums and Beatles memorabilia. Then, out of the silence, “Imagine” played, and I wept.
I was on the air at KIQO-FM, in San Luis Obispo, CA.
Were you listening to my show?
That’s exactly what I did - one minute of silence, followed by Imagine.
Sad night.
I was outside the theatre, singing “The Ballad of John and Yoko” with a friend. Someone drove by and told us he had been shot, but we thought he was kidding. We found out in a few minutes at a bar. Then followed a long night of drinking, plugging the jukebox, and finally sitting up with my room-mate as we drank home-made wine and listened to “The Plastic Ono Band.”
Miss him, miss him, miss him…
I was listening to a college radio station playing what turned out to be his last album (was that Double Fantasy? – I can’t remember). Anyway, the student DJ spent quite a bit of time talking about the irony of the news coming in just as they were playing the album, and then finally told us that Lennon had been killed.
It was my birthday, and my then-bf wouldn’t take me out–I forget his lame excuse. Anyway, I was listening to the radio, and I kept waiting for the announcer to say “just kidding.” He didn’t. I was stunned.
I was 13 and just getting into the Beatles. I often left my radio on overnight. I woke up around 4 am and the radio was playing only Beatle songs. I thought that was an unusual stroke of good luck to wake up during a Beatles Block, or whatever they called it when they played a few songs by one artist. Then the DJ came on. I fell asleep soon after. Just felt sort of melancholy. Still get pangs of sadness when I think of it.
Like yawndave, I got the news from Howard Cosell. For some reason, I’ve always resented that I had to find out from him.
I was about 7 years old and I can remember my mom unpacking our stuff in our new kitchen. I walked in and she was sitting on a chair, holding a dish towel, crying.
When I asked her what had happened, she told me that a very good friend of hers had just passed away.
I kinda pushed it to the back of my mind until my late teens when I became a huge Beatles fan, and then I realized how much he’d meant to her.
I was sitting around with some friends in my apartment on Ashbury Street, er, drinking tea, and I believe we had KSAN on at the time. I couldn’t believe it when the DJ made the anouncement. I just couldn’t understand why the f**k someone would shoot John Lennon. Wow, 23 years ago. Damn.
Another thing about the tragedy that hit me hard was that Mark David Chapman grew up in the same area of Atlanta area I did. In fact, if we had been the same age (he’s four years younger than me) we would have gone to the same high school. (The high school Chapman attended was built to absorb some of the students from my school.)
I’ll never forget going into the bathroom of my favorite bar in Atlanta about a month after the shooting and seeing written on the wall, “Some nut from Decatur killed the Working Class Hero.”
I should probably stay out of this, but I seriously think Lennon is one of the most over rated artists of the century. Writing with McCartney, they created magic. On his own, he had a couple of songs that were good, some ok, but most of it was terrible. I still dislike him for putting all that Yoko crap on his albums and IIRC, on Double Fantasy, every other track was from her, and in those, pre-burning, pre-cd days, it was just a pain to listen to - no skipping or ff. His work post Beatles is about on par with McCartney. Some pop tunes that stick out, but nothing to get excited about.
Of course, it’s a tragedy when someone dies early, or when the world has one less artist. But people die every day, for the poeple close to them, it’s always a tragedy.
I never could understand the kind of idol worship where people who don’t even know the person in any other way than through the media, go in mourning or even try suicide (as w/ Kurt Cobain). It’s sad that he died, but no worse than: Bob Marley, Bonzo Bonham, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Marc Bolan, Bon Scott, Phil Lynott and a slew of others.
Obviously YMMV.
On the night Lennon was shot, I was sitting at my desk doing my homework and listening to the radio (which, by the way, is not conducive to effective studying. I had tuned into an LA station–KFI–that was having its Top 30 countdown and they had just played his 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. Now, when I heard this, the first thing that shot into my mind was not John Lennon but Poland. (1980 was the year Solidarity challenged Polish Communist authority and all during this time, there were fears that the USSR would intervene like they did in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan and put an end to such “rebellousness.”) However, the DJ came back and instead announced that John Lennon had been shot.
When I heard the news, I was incredulous. Why would anyone want to shoot John Lennon? Assassinations are what happened to kings, archdukes, presidents, and controversial political figures, not rock stars. I immediately started tuning around my radio to hear what was on the other stations. Unfortunately, the story was all the same: John Lennon has been shot. Just as that realization soaked in, I optimistically began to hope that even if he was shot, perhaps he wasn’t hurt too seriously. Then, about ten minutes later, came the bulletin that Lennon had died of his gunshot wounds. As I scanned through the stations again, I recall hearing a DJ on a station try to hold back his tears as he read the announcement. I was in a pall for the week afterward.
To me, the whole event seemed so bizarre and unreal. It was bad enough Lennon died just as he was beginning to record again. But it was even worse that he had to be murdered in front of his apartment and in front of his wife by some deranged individual who–in any other sensible country–shouldn’t have ever been able to obtain a gun. (Sorry about the gun control rant but it was what I was feeling at the time.)
I was 15, and I remember thinking, "He can’t be dead – he’s a Beatle!"
Then when Reagan got shot I assumed he was dead, and I couldn’t remember the name of the vice-president.
The Gaspode … my mileage varies.
John Lennon was the most influential of the Beatles as in regard to the art of their essence, as it were. Yes, McCartney was more musically talented, but Lennon was the deeper thinker. His lyrics were head and shoulders above McCartney’s. I think their collaboration was one more of a competition and as such Lennon wrote far better music as a Beatle than he did as a solo artist – granted.
As for Yoko … eh, I don’t really enjoy her music, but I can’t blame Lennon for including her in his art. Just because it wasn’t just like what the Beatles had been doing, didn’t make it worthless.
I was 15 when Lennon was shot. Like H. Jass, I was just getting into the Beatles. I was familiar with Lennon’s solo work, especially with Bowie and Elton John but at the time I was more of a McCartney fan, despite his forays into incredible musical sappiness (Silly Love Songs? ugh), just because he never stopped creating in the 70’s (to tell the truth, I was more of a little metal head – Kiss, Sabbath, AC/DC – but I did listen to pop too). Lennon had tossed it in when I was 10. He was just coming back to the scene by 1980.
I believe I got Double Fantasy a few weeks after he died, at Christmas.
It was weird. I remember having gone to bed early the night before, and when I got up my mother told me, almost in passing – “John Lennon was murdered last night. It’s all over the news …” and then she went about her business. She never was much of a music fan.
I really got into the Beatles afterward. In my teens and twenties I was pretty obsessed, and it was then that I really discovered Lennon’s genius – through his music, his writings, and what was written about him.
It doesn’t seem like it was 23 years ago. It seems like yesterday.
So, what was the motivation for killing him?
Psychosis.
Mark David Chapman concluded it was better to be a hated somebody than an unknown nobody. 
Sorry to continue the hijack, but I want to answer Jack Batty. Caveat: In no way do I mean to be disrespectful of fellow Dopers who miss Lennon.
Yes, Lennon was the deeper one, but IMO he was deep the way kids in college are deep, i.e. just for the sake of being deep. Many times, I think he was just playing silly-buggers, to screw around with people who thought he was deep. Double Fantasy is a crappy album, with pop songs, had they been done by any other artist, would have been sent to soft-rock hell, along with Amy Grant and the likes.
I seriously think that the saintification (is that a word?) has much to do with him getting killed, more than his musical talent.
I was 19 when he died. My second 45 was ‘All you need is love’ (first was ‘theme from the Monkees’) which my parents bought me when it came out. My first album, ever, was Abbey Road, so even though I was young, I think I at least caught the later part of the Beatles era, and certainly the solo efforts of the 70’s.
George HArrison and Ringo are certainly under rated. At least when we write music history, but IIRC, Ringo’s first solo album was the biggest selling effort by the four, upon release. I guess nobody buys it nowadays, so Lennon albums of the era must have passed it by now.
Carry on.
But you don’t have a tactful bone in your body?
Can’t you create another thread for this?
I’m pretty sure I was consumed with dreaming and scheming about the new Star Wars figures and toys I might get for Christmas. I was 6.
It’s funny–I remember the Pope and Reagan getting shot back then, but don’t remember hearing anything about Lennon.