Like today, December 8th, 1980 was a Monday. I was 15 years old, and was watching Monday Night Football – like a lot of people, I learned about Lennon’s death from his unlikely friend, announcer Howard Cosell, who broke into the game to make the announcement.
At that time, I wasn’t particularly a fan of Lennon or his music; my musical tastes were still very top-40, and McCartney’s music was much more approachable. I’ve since come to appreciate John’s work much more.
Part of the tragic irony is that he’d stepped away from music, and the public eyes, for five years, to help raise his son Sean; he was murdered while coming home from a recording session, and his comeback album had been released just a few weeks before his death.
There are some really good songs on his last two albums (Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey), but we’re left to wonder what else he might have created.
I was twelve years old, and I remember hearing the announcement on TV in my parent’s bedroom. I remember being shocked by the news, but in a rather abstract sense at the time. I think it hit me harder later.
I knew who he was, of course, but didn’t become a huge Beatles fan until about eight or nine months later. I don’t recall if they became more prominent in my mind because of the publicity of John Lennon’s death, but it’s possible. I then went through a three-year period of listening to all of their music in order.
Later in college I gained an appreciation for John Lennon’s solo work.
Oh, Lord… I was 32 and had fallen in love with the Beatles from the night they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was 16. Their music was the soundtrack of my high school and college years. I still think Abbey Road is the greatest album ever recorded. A friend gave it to me for my 21st birthday.
I remember that my friend Stan called when he heard about Lennon and wanted to talk…
Howard Cosell annouced it during Monday Night Football.
Cosell: Yes, we have to say it. Remember, this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City – the most famous, perhaps, of all of the Beatles – shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that newsflash, which, in duty-bound, we have to take. Frank?
I got the news from Howard as well. How odd that those two people will always be linked in my memory.
Another really vivid memory is from the 14th during the 10 minutes of radio silence. During those minutes I was browsing through my Beatles and Lennon memorabilia, thinking about much enjoyment he and his mates brought into the world. When the silence was broken by “Imagine” I shed more than a few tears.
17-year old me was pretty well plugged into the Hollywood Punk scene by the end of 1980. A year earlier I listened to nothing but the Beatles. I didn’t care for John & Yoko’s recent album so, although I was sad about his death, I didn’t feel we were going to miss out on any great future Lennon music. The biggest impact for me was that because of the attention given to the assassination, I didn’t learn about the almost concurrent suicide of Darby Crash (of the Germs) until several weeks into the new year.
I wasn’t the biggest John Lennon fan, but I didn’t hate him*. I preferred Wings and McCartney for my solo Beatles.
I was surprised he’s been dead longer than he was alive. It’s one thing for someone like Beethoven, sure, but someone that was in my lifetime? That’s just so depressing.
But when I heard about his murder, my first reaction was “crap, now they’re going to play nothing but Beatles on the radio for days.”
And they did.
*I did despise Double Fantasy. Still do. Give me the good 70s solo songs.
A Rolling Stone reviewer infamously said that John Lennon was “dead”-in a review of Double Fantasy, several weeks before the actual deed. I came across the review about a week after the event, note, and was utterly appalled. He probably never lived it down even if meant it in a creative sense natch.
I was 20, the following day friends and I piled into a car and drove to the city. We brought a floral bouquet to leave at the front gate - the crowds were unbelievable. Many tears, people singing, playing guitars… such a loss
Two to three years later I was back at the Dakota, unbelievably doing John Lennon’s audit for NYSIF. Met with the accountant, I think it was an office in the Dakota’s basement (so long ago now). Sean came in, with I guess his nanny/babysitter. He ran around the office a bit, then left.
Always liked “Nobody Told Me”, which came out posthumously in 1984…around the time when I was really starting to discover The Beatles at the age of eleven. Love that jangly guitar riff.
I was around 8 at the time, so my education as far as music and current events was like:
Guy named John Lennon is on the radio. Has cool songs, watches wheels, etc. I like him.
Someone shoots him dead. I guess that’s a thing that happens.
Come to find out he was in the Beatles too! Crazy coincidence, small world.
Reagan gets shot. I guess that’s a normal thing that happens to famous people. I wonder if Reagan was in any bands.
It’s weird that I knew a lot more solo Lennon & McCartney songs than I did Beatles songs (at least back then) and didn’t put it all together until the mid-80’s. Kind of wild to look back and realize I was alive when all the Beatles were still alive, at least the tail end of it.
It was the morning of my 16th birthday, as the news reached Europe the day after the fact. They said it on the radio and I remember vividly how sad I was. Still am, when I think of it. I have managed to forget the name of the idiot who did it.
Suddenly I am 61… imagine what could have been.
I was 12 when it happened, and John Lennon was only “my” second rock’n’roll dead after Bon Scott had died earlier that year. I had fell in love with AC/DC after “Highway To Hell” came out, and a few weeks after that Bon died, so that made a big impression on me. But I already had had an infatuation for the Beatles, though having been born in 1968 and being too young to have known them in their own times, I had learned about them and their music from older cousins of mine, and already got some of their albums, especially the Red and the Blue albums, which I wore out the grooves off, before discovering AC/DC. And though I was only in my third year of taking English classes, I knew that Bon was mostly singing about girls and booze, while songs like “In My Life” and “Nowhere Man” and countless others went much deeper. So Lennon’s death hit me harder, although his band hadn’t existed for ten years and never in my conscious days. I had a grasp at that time what an eminent figure John had been.
I don’t remember where I heard the news, but it was probably on the radio or TV.
