I was 26 in 1980. Can’t remember how I first heard about it, but my immediate thought was, “so much for the Beatles getting back together.”
On a street corner in Charles Village in Baltimore, heading to my classes at med school. I saw it in a newspaper box. I stood there, quite stunned. I was unhappy. I bought the paper, and read the news on the bus ride to classes.
I was sitting at the top of the stairs in my dorm room (we were the top floor), smoking a cigarette when this guy (whom no-one liked, he was odd) came up the stairs, crying with a black arm band (it was his sock) on and a bunch of Beatle’s albums in his hands. This was a co-ed dorm. We asked him why he was crying and he said, Lennon was shot last night. (we didn’t have TVs in our dorm rooms-there was just the old musty one in the common room–TV was not a priority in college for us, so no-one had watched it). I think we all just sat there, not knowing what to say.
I remember feeling sad, and thought oh, well, no more Beatles (I had heard bout the break up of the Fab Four on the school bus going home years before–the driver had the radio on–and I remember being much more upset about their break up than I was about Lennon’s death).
However, I got interested in music (just a bit-nothing like people here) and as I got older and I found that Lennon expressed alot of the same thoughts and feelings that I had. I became more and more interested in the Beatles and Lennon in particular. His music was unpredictable, and I liked that.
Now I realize just what the pop world lost. And before people pooh-pooh the pop world–music is one of the threads that bind us together as a culture and a people. Not so much now that there has been a splintering of markets, but even as late as the early '80’s, people remember the the songs that helped define their adolescence and share those songs with others near their age. This is a gift, to my mind. Just like my parents enjoy Benny Goodman on a level that is not possible for me (much as I like him), so it is with pop music. I don’t “get” the popularity of ColdPlay or whoever (I know nothing of current pop music), but it will become (like it or not) a memory trigger for those to whom it means something (good or bad).
So it is with Lennon. But such was his talent and influence that he speaks not only for those who were teens when he was, but also several generations after that as well. That is not something easily said about anything or anybody, pop music or no. Some here may well loathe Lennon and his music–but there is no denying his influence or the fact that he is a known figure–I doubt he will fade into a obscurity for quite some time.
Ooh-sorry, started to ramble. Just some thoughts. I tend to admire Lennon more than McCartney because while McCartney is the better musician, Lennon is the more genuine. Left to himself, Sir Paul slops into schmaltz pretty damn quick. Lennon kept him up to the mark. I really don’t see Paul’s influence on John.
sorry, wandering OT…
My parents, I think, had just started dating. I’ll go ask one of them…
I was in high school, grade 13. I was at home in the living room watching the evening news, like usual. Oddly, the memory is mixed with a TV set and a living room that I know we moved out of in 1978, so I’m not sure how accurate it is.
To support what eleanorigby said about John.
If you have never heard it or at least not recently. Listen to John’s Working Class Hero. This is almost as good as Imagine.
Also as far as reach out to other generations. I know some 18-24’s that think his “So this is Christmas” could have been written today. It touches on feeling about the Iraq War and they can’t wait until the refrain “War is Over” can be sung joyfully again.
Jim
I was 28 and well aware of Lennon and the Beatles. I first heard about it in bed the next morning (I didn’t – and still don’t – watch TV news if given any other option, including silence). My clock radio went off and there was no music. People were calling in, talking about something that had happened without saying exactly what. We got the impression that someone had been assassinated, and I wondered if it was the president. Then, after about ten minutes, they said what had happened.
I was at the Raincheck Room in West Hollywood (just about the only non-gay bar on Santa Monica Blvd. in that part of town). We were watching the game and shooting pool when the news interrupted the broadcast. My buddy was a bigger Lennon fan than I, but it was still pretty shocking. We drove up to Blue Jay Way, in the Hollywood hills where the lads lived during their LA period. I remember having “the house” pointed out to me once, although I was never sure of the accuracy of the information. Blue Jay Way is a very tight, winding road, and if you don’t know to look for it you could never find it. But there was no fog upon LA, and we did not lose our way. 
We got high and listened to the endless stream of radio callers crying about John until a police helicopter chased us away. :mad:
Wait… John Lennon’s dead? Oh my God! This is terrible!
Okay, sorry, couldn’t help that. I was only five when he died, too young for it to have made any sort of an impression on me. Actually, I recall as a teenager being surprised to realize that he died several years after I was born. I’d sort of filed all things Beatle-related as Stuff That Happened Before I Was Born.
I was 16. Was home, in my bedroom, listening to LPs all evening the night it happened, not watching TV or listening to radio, so I heard nothing about it until the following morning, when I woke up and turned on the radio (KKEG, Fayetteville, Arkansas). My stereo was beside my bed so I didn’t even have to get out of bed to turn it on – that morning, I stayed in bed for what seemed like hours, though I did get up and go to school, so it couldn’t have been that long. I don’t remember exactly what I heard, but I knew something was terribly wrong within a few seconds, and it was only a minute or so before they recapped the story. I was a huge Beatles fan at the time, so it hit me and my cadre of friends pretty hard.
One of the most vivid memories of my childhood. I was actually only two blocks from where I am right now, in the first house we had in Vancouver. I was ten.
I remember seeing it on the news – and what I remember the most about it was the way that Lloyd Robertson delivered it – he wasn’t just reading the news, he was breaking bad news that he hoped we’d be able to bear. He was grown up, but he looked sad and perplexed.
I loved the Beatles. I’d probably listened to Sgt. Peppers a thousand times, on these goofy '70s-style headphones. When you had the Beatles on headphones, nothing could possibly be wrong in the world.
I went into my room and lay down and cried like someone in the family had died. I can remember exactly the position I was in, and remember being angry at small noises of everyday life from inside the house and out intruding on the quiet. Didn’t they understand that John Lennon had been killed for no reason? No reason at ALL?