Happy Birthday, John. You were an immensely gifted man and you shared that gift with the world. We’ll never forget you.
He’d be 73.
My understanding is that he had some tremendous personal failings, especially the way he treated his family, but he was a very good musician.
Yeah, he threw his first wife and his son Julian over for Yoko. And he had abandonment issues. His father ran off. His mother basically left him for his aunt to raise and she was killed before he really got to know her. He was a flawed human being, but aren’t we all? But his music was great and he was part of one of the most popular and successful groups in history. I think his personal flaws will be forgotten long before his music.
??
Didn’t his aunt die in the 90s?
I think they meant his mother died before he really got to know her.
Duh. That would make more sense.
Sorry about that.
How old was Lennon when his mom died? Late teens, maybe?
Yeah that’s what I meant. She was hit by a car when John was 17. But she was more involved with him than I thought. She saw John regularly, taught him how to play banjo, and bought him his first guitar. Still, 17 is a pretty young age to lose your mon.
He’s on my very short list of “I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news, and I always will”.
John Lennon.
First shuttle explosion.
9/11.
Second shuttle explosion.
Very short list for me too.
Today is also the thirteenth anniversary of my father’s death, so he died on Lennon’s sixtieth birthday.
Despite his reputation as a generally nasty person, the John Lennon I like to remember is from a scene in Magical Mystery Tour. It’s a short bit with him on the bus playing with little Nicola, totally relaxed and obviously just enjoying the moment with her. As Paul says in the commentary track, it’s a side of Lennon that hardly anyone ever saw, including his bandmates.
Another rock star named John was born on this date too: John Entwistle.
Heh. If you remember the Rutles, the character modeled after John Lennon, played by Neil Inness, was named “Ron Nasty.” 
Interesting to contemplate what kind of a man he would be like at age 73.
My guess is he would still be controversial, pissing off both the left and right, and probably having an even larger body of musical work that would have been awesome to hear.
Much more pleasant to think of what could have been, rather than what happened.
I’m sure we wouldn’t be mentioning him in the “Modern-day 70s Elvis equivalent” thread.
Interesting question, though, and possibly one for a new thread: If John had lived, would he have reunited with Paul, George, and Ringo in 1995, or was the Beatles’ Anthology project only possible because John was dead?
I can definitely imagine (no pun intended) him working again with Paul, George, and Ringo, individually and/or collectively. The idea of putting out a “new Beatles record” might have been a bit of a hard sell, but if you caught him in the right mood, I could see it happening.
A birthday story by John Lennon, from his book In His Own Write.
**A Surprise for Little Bobby **
It was little Bobby’s birthmark today and he got a surprise. His very fist was lopped off, (The War) and he got a birthday hook!
All his life Bobby had wanted his very own hook; and now on his 39th birthday his pwayers had been answered. The only trouble was they had send him a left hook and ebry dobby knows that it was Bobby’s right fist that was missing as it were.
What to do was not thee only problem: Anyway he jopped off his lest hand and it fitted like a glove. Maybe next year he will get a right hook, who knows?
Most of the Anthology, as I recall, was previously recorded film of performances and interviews with a sprinkling of new talking head or voice over interviews. There were also some, let’s call them “realtime interviews”. And the two Lennon demo songs that the remaining Beatles, um, filled out (?). I suspect, unlike Let It Be, the other fellows wouldn’t permit Yoko to appear in any realtime interviews with all the Beatles. Or at any recording sessions.
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television [set], then there’d be peace.”