Wow… just realized that the assassin is up for parole AGAIN in august of this year…
wonder who gets out first him or Sirhan or a manson family member… ??
Elvis had a huge impact when he died as well … i was trying to cool off that day in august by sleeping in the yard in a tent with a small portable tv on an extension cord. I remember they literally were playing elvis movies around the clock for the next week or so.
I was doing homework and listening to the radio for Lennon’s death.
Neither Lennon nor Elvis impacted my life particularly.
I was sitting with my girlfriend in the front room of her house. Her father strolled back and mentioned matter-of-factly that he had just heard on MNF that Lennon had been shot. I’m sure it was matter-of-fact to him, but it wasn’t to me. It was a crusher. I left work the next day over it. I can’t describe how important the Beatles have been in my life, and Lennon in particular was a hero. 
I was living with my new husband in a basement apartment in Huntington, New York (on Long Island) and was getting ready for bed. SNL was on TV (it was probably about 11:45 that night, which I guess was a Saturday?), and I went over to turn it off when I saw a breaking news announcement running along the bottom of the screen. It said John Lennon had been shot in Manhattan. We didn’t have CNN (was it even around then), so we explored the few channels we had looking for more news but couldn’t find it, so we went to bed.
It’s embarrassing to have to respond that I have no idea what I was doing at the time. I do remember being shocked and upset when I heard the news, but I don’t even remember where I was when that happened. I would have been just a few days from my 39th birthday and I was yet to complete my first year at the job I wound up retiring from 20 years later. I know where I was living, same place as now. All three kids would still be living at home. First wife was still alive.
I remember clearly where I was when JFK was shot, when Elvis died, when Chet Baker died, when Paul Desmond died, when Reagan was shot, and of course the 9/11 things.
And I liked Lennon okay. Not a big fan, but I liked him.
Ditto.
But I wasn’t 9.
I was 26, had grown up with the Beatles, and was gutted to hear the news.
I do remember this. I was play solitare on the kitchen table and listening to WBBM Newsradio 78 in Chicago. I heard them break in and say Lennon was shot.
I recall when Karen Carpenter died to. I was driving in the car and they broke in on the radio then played “(They Long To Be) Close To You”
I was, oddly, in a bar no more than three or four blocks from the Dakota (the apartment building in which Lennon lived and at which he was shot). The news came over the television and everyone in the place (there weren’t many) was a bit shocked. Lennon was thought of as kind of a neighborhood guy. I remember reading that one of the things he liked about living in New York was that he could walk around the streets in his neighborhood without too much trouble.
I wasn’t that affected by his death. I knew who he was, of course, but I was (and still am) pretty unfamiliar with his work with the Beatles, or afterwards.
I was 14 and found out about it from the Daily News when it arrived on Sunday. I was surprised but had never thought about his later, post-Beatles life and assumed he’d die with drugs like so many singers from the 70s did. Not many ripples in HS the next day either, he was sort of an old news rich hippie and far from our Bronx lives. “Imagine” was the sort of song we made fun of.
Homework.
I was in junior high and watching MNF by myself when Cosell made the announcement.
It didn’t really bother me that much, as I was not into the Beatles much, but I understood the bad news about this man who preached love and peace being murdered. I made it a point not to tell the sister that was two years older than me about it because she really loved the whole John / Yoko thing. She pretty much believed everything he said. I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news for her.
Edit: I just remembered while reading the rest of this thread that I had a crush on a girl named Julie in one of my classes. Julie totally *adored *John Lennon. She didn’t show up for school the next day.
I was totally not there. It was other kids. You can’t prove anything!
I was asleep. It happened during my student days, and at the time I lived in a ‘hall of residence’. I went down to breakfast and a girl I knew sat down opposite me and asked me if I’d heard that someone shot John Lennon. I guess she never learned about breaking bad news gently.
How old were you?
This is what I was doing,I was 12.
Howard Cosell’s comments were very moving but I cant find the whole clip,just the initial report.He goes on to talk about John and how he liked him.
Chalk up another one who heard about it from Howard Cosell. I also heard about the 9/11 attacks from Mike and Mike on ESPN radio, if you see any sort of pattern here.
Sleeping. I had actually gone to bed feeling a little sick, and woke up a few hours later (sleeping as I normally did with my radio on), and noticed that “They sure are playing a lot of Beatles tunes.” At some point the DJ mentioned the news. This would have been about 2:00 AM Eastern.
I was on the air at an FM station in San Luis Obispo, CA - and had to break the news to my listeners.
That was not easy.
When he died? I was probably begging for just one more bedtime story. I was three and a half, and dragged bedtime out as long as possible.
The next day, though, they kept playing Beatles songs, and my parents explained that they were sad because of the the men signing had just died. Not only is it the first news event I remember, I think it was the first time I realized that songs on the radio weren’t being sung live.
Honestly? I was 18, and I heard the news somewhat randomly in the car the next morning, driving from someplace to someplace. I was shocked and horrified by the crime, that someone should stalk this man and murder him essentially because of his celebrity. Having said that, I didn’t and don’t feel a strong personal connection to Lennon or the Beatles, even though I was a young amateur musician at that time. The facts of the crime were compelling enough without injecting my personal reaction into the mix.
This is probably the thing that pissed me off in my life so far. Of all the people to make an announcement like this …