Where Were You When John Lennon Was Killed?

On the night of Dec. 8, 1980, John Lennon returned from a midtown Manhattan recording studio at 10:50 p.m with his wife Yoko Ono. As they exited their limousine, Mark David Chapman's voice who had hours earlier asked for his autograph called him, and then John Lennon was heard to say, "I'm shot."

That tragic senseless event marked the end of an era.

This day marks the 26th anniversary of the death of a man I loved and with whose music I grew up with. From the time I was a very small child dancing to, "Twist and Shout and singing, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" until I was a young woman in my twenties, John Lennon and his music were one of my inspirations. His candidness, his concern, and the words he wrote that spoke of peace, love, and defying a world that kept us down to Imagine a better world lit a dark space in the lives of so many in that generation that still lives today.

I have mourned and played his music today as I have so many days before, and reflected upon a time when even though it looked hopeless at times, we still had hope. I don't feel now what I did then, and I believe it was because of the music of John Lennon and others in that time that so inspired us to not give up that helped us forge ahead. And I will never forget him for giving us that.

Therefore, perhaps we can relay where we were when we heard of his death, and how it has affected our lives.

I had not heard about his death until the next day while watching a News broadcast at home. I just stood frozen in front of my TV not able to move. And then the tears came. I felt so empty at that moment, because I just couldn't understand why anyone would want to take his life. I was in college at the time and didn't attend classes that day. I met up with a few of my friends on campus and we spent the day listening to his music, crying, and wondering where the message would go from there. It hasn't been the same since, because we really don't have musical voices like his these days that truly inspire us and make us think.

I took my own son to Strawberry Fields about ten years ago and just sat there thinking, and again crying. I wondered what kind of world my son will have to grow up in. I used to sing him to sleep to "Beautiful Boy," but now he is grown enough to see that the world isn't all sandcastles and lullabies, and his generation doesn't have the inspiration of a John Lennon, and that makes me sad. So I play his music for him, and I carry it on.

How absolutely unbelievable to me really that the same people who were in the government the day of Lennon's death are still there, and he is gone.

Anyway, please feel free to relay your own memories of him and your favorite music. It is so hard for me to pick a favorite song of his, as all of them are good. Imagine tops the list and I also liked Watching the Wheels, Working Class Hero, and Love. I just love his music period, and believe the world is a better place because of it.

Enjoy your memories, and let them give you hope.

http://www.johnlennon.com/

http://www.john-lennon.com/
Videos/songs

And to those who tried to silence his message, "Instant Karma's Gonna Get You."

Also See:

The U.S. Vs. John Lennon

http://www.theusversusjohnlennon.com/site/

WAR IS OVER
If You Want It

When my am radio alarm went off in the morning I heard the sad news.

I was devastated . I remember my grandparents didn't seem as sad as I.

I'll never forget that night.

Had awakened to the bad news.

(meant to reply to the OP, not trumad. Me bad.

...writing a term paper on gun control. I received an A+ on that very timely paper.

In fact the paper was due the day after Lennon was shot.

Cheers

He shook his head. I have seen him that sad before, but the times have been few.


RIP, John. Your honorable wife is still looking at you.

Talk about bad omens.

It really shocked me to hear the news. Even now, it's a part of life that seems as surreal as a bad dream.

watching Monday night football.Howard Cosell announced it.
I wore a black armband to school the next day.

I was listening to the radio, an album-oriented radio station, and the DJ came on saying that he had been shot. Then later the death was confirmed. Remember it very well.

I leave my radio on all night. Just as I was going to sleep the news came over the radio. I turned on the TV and Howard Cosell was talking about Lennon. I came downstairs, told my wife. We looked at each other in shock. I went back upstairs. My oldest daughter asked what happened. I told her a great man was killed in New York. I went back to bed and continued to listen to the radio, waiting to hear that the news was wrong.

I was going to law school at night, and had driven home and gotten there probably around 10:30 pm. This was an hour behind New York, in Central Time. It was 11:30 in New York.

I was finishing my first semester and was probably in the middle of finals.

My dad (age 70) came out of the bedroom where he watched TV and said "John Lennon's been shot".

My instinctive response was, "They can't do that! That's like shooting Santa Claus."

:cry:

John lives in our hearts and minds. He will never die when he lives in us.


For more explanation of that concept, get the movie "The Keeper:The Legend of Omar Khayyam". Available at WallyWorld, Hollywood Video and www.greatomar.com

Hearing the news was absolutely surreal.

There are times in your life when you hear news and know that something has gone terribly wrong in the universe. It goes beyond sadness and is actually indescribable. That was one of those times.

My father was older than John's generation and I was younger than John's generation.

And we all felt badly about what had happened.

Still do to this very day.

Chilling.

And I thought the bearer of the news was pulling my leg with a cruel joke.

devastating. I still get endless inspiration from this gentleman.

made a few calls and several of us went downtown where there was a candlelight vigil.

But he has become a great influence on my life because of my parents. His music makes me cry when I listen to it becuase it is so beautiful and so far from the truth of this world. I wish his music true every time I listen.

Yeah, I recall it was a few months after I had moved out of our house to a little apartment, separated from my husband, self indulgent, rudderless. Everything from the time I heard on my little radio became smaller as the world became bigger than Mr. Mickey's Dad and Mom.

A few months back we saw The US -v- John Lennon, which left me almost breathless. Anything I couldn't comprehend then came back to me during that movie. It had meaning all over again. It has more meaning and becomes more powerful with each passing day.

War is over if you want it.

:grouphug:

about the night Lennon was murdered. I was back in my old apartment. the power was out and a friend from work, the county coroner's office, called me, crying saying " John's been shot...John's been shot." She came over later& we sat in the dark smoking Larks not talking. Neither of us went to work for the next week. pretty much what happened the night he was murdered.
I woke up around 3am and though "shit, it's been 26 years." couldn't get back to sleep. my girlfriend at the time did a "bed in" with one of her other boy friends. I didn't get mad or even jealous. we've talked about it over the years.

on a whim-and got really moved by 'happy xmas' more than usual for some reason.

then it dawned on me what today's date was.
weird.

to answer the topic. i was 2 1/2. i wasn't exactly aware of life and death at that age.

I had the radio on in the background. On the West Side in Manhattan but in Chelsea. She was a huge fan of his. Just a month earlier I remember the skywriting message over NYC to Sean and Yoko(?) for their birthdays. For some reason I photographed it, not knowing who it was intended for. Reminds me of a different era in NYC when everything wasn't all about security, but about mingling with the masses and lots of creative people who didn't have to make a fortune to live there. Unfortunately this devastating action was the beginning of the end of that era. Even in his death, the effect was much larger than him...

I was working nights in a restaurant and didn't get home until around 2:00 a.m. I didn't hear anything about it until the next morning when I turned on the news. I remember thinking, "Okay, who's the idiot who did it!!!". I was just really angry. My college roommate was a huge Beatles fan and worshipped John so I called her to see how she was doing.

I heard about it on the radio the next morning, & I remember people walking around like zombies in school that day.

at the local bowling alley's coffee shop. It was a slow night, we'd just closed, the cook was already gone, I'd already done all the side work and was waiting for my ride to pick me up.

It was a dark, lonely night.

dinner in my bathrobe when the phone rang. It was this older gent from the newsroom in Burbank (where I worked) named Sherman Bazell. He was 60-ish, the network's night supervisor, walked with a pronounced limp, and had this gravelly voice and distinctive, quirky, endearingly out-of-it personality. He was on duty and called me, to tell me "New York just called. One of the Lennon Brothers just got shot." I was stunned. Didn't know whether to laugh or be shocked - my instinct went straight to John and I fought it, "naaaah, couldn't be. CAN'T be." But I called New York (the network news headquarters) and they confirmed the worst.

- I worked for this new (at the time) radio news network that aimed at the 18 - 34 age group - rock stations (that typically did not offer a whole lotta news, but whaddya gonna do? I was on pacific time. It had happened on the East Coast. So they wanted me to do react stuff - try to call some famous people and get their reactions and responses to the shocking loss of John. Talked to Art Garfunkel who wasn't happy to be disturbed at home. Didn't get much farther.

The "Lennon Brothers" reference, for those not old enough to remember "The Lawrence Welk Show," was Sherman's mix-up with a musical act HE knew from his era, and the one he barely understood from ours. "The Lawrence Welk Show" featured a then-popular act of four sisters - the Lennon Sisters, who wore swing skirts with lots of petticoats underneath them, that nice, solid, 50's-era helmet hair and bouffants like your mom might have had done when she went to the beauty shop, sang sweet ballads and other cute things in syrupy four-part harmonies. Your grandma would remember, and probably loved them to pieces. Sherm Bazell would have related to them, and probably had covered them in his day. He didn't know from Beatles.

We all cranked on the John Lennon story all week. Suddenly, the rock stations all were interested in our stuff and we were all over the country - even at odd hours of the night. By the time I could catch my breath it was Friday of that week, and that was the first day I cried.

Later on, I had the great fortune to interview John Lennon's great friend, singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson (http://www.harrynilsson.com/) with whom he'd spent his famous "Lost Weekend" here in L.A., awash in drink, drugs, and dames, when he was having some pretty serious marital trouble with Yoko Ono. I told Harry about "the Lennon Brothers" story while we were in the NBC commissary having some sodas after the interview (which, in a large part, was a look back at his friendship with John). He laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall backward over his chair and break his neck, then and there in the middle of the commissary. When he finally regained his composure, he told me John would have loved that story.

Ahh... what memories... Harry's dead now, too. Wouldn't surprise me if they were still toasting their "Lost Weekend" upstairs somewhere.

We cried ourselves to sleep in front of the TV.

at college. I came home late and my roommates and house guests were in the other room. I was dead tired and I just went right to my room. I had the radio playing for a few minutes before I went to sleep, and the DJ was talking about it. I went out to tell my roommates, but they had heard hours earlier. I was awake half the night.

And unbelievably, in bed asleep. I usually stayed up late back then, but for some reason that I can't remember I went to bed about 10pm central. Very early for me back then.

Woke up the next morning and picked up a newspaper with the news. Shocked to say the least, and couldn't believe it. Drove to school in a fog - the radio was going on and on with crying callers and endless Beatle songs.

I remember the DJ saying after "A Day in the Life," "And now ends the last day in the life of John Lennon."

Got to class - American history 122. One Jamaican student was writing on the chalkboard about Lennon. The professor came in, an older man who didn't relate to his students. Just started his stopwatch and began to lecture. For the first and last time, we had a brief class discussion. I remember one conservative young lady downplaying it, and saying the Beatles weren't that big of a deal. What a bitch. No matter what you thought of their music, the Beatles did matter. No remorse from the bitch. I think she was probably pleased. She also probably voted for Reagan the month before.

I'm still not over it. It remains a bad, bad dream.