It was 25 years ago today. At night to be exact.
I was working the night shift at the Wichita Eagle, one of three reporters and a tiny staff of editors unlucky enough to have to work the late hours that night. It was a supremely dull evening until an editor rushed over to my colleague and talked to her.
She turned to me, face ashen, and said: “They shot John Lennon.”
My reaction was the same kind of shock I felt and words that I uttered when I was told John F. Kennedy had been shot (and I was not even a huge Beatles fan): “Is he OK?”
But, alas, no he wasn’t…and we scrambled that night to get the react via phone calls and going out to restaurants and other places to get on-the-spot comment. And the “they” turned out to be one lone gunman seeking another kind of immortality.
Lennon and the Beatles were a sea change in music. There were several in the 20th century: the first megastar, vaudeville’s “jazz singer” belter Al Jolson; the first crooner-in-the-mike Bing Crosby; the first bona fide mass market teen idol Frank Sinatra; the first explosive rock star Elvis Presley; and the first group to take all of those trends together into an entertainment plus music plus celebrity plus superstar youth-oriented package, The Beatles. In retrospect, the Beatles also seemed the Last Stand where melody was as vital as beat.
In show biz terms, each of the Beatles had their own personalities which jumped out at you off the TV screens. And up until Lennon’s death there were hopes that some day The Beatles would reunite, even if for a while. The hopes — and an era — vanished that night 25 years ago today.
OTHER RESOURCES:
James Joyner’s Beyond The Beltway has a roundup.
Yoko Ono Accepts Award under circumstances that reflect her role in the group:
Last night, Ono was one of four honorees at the annual dinner given by the New York chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. She came alone, without her son, Sean. She asked him to present her with the heroes award and he declined, a member of the Academy confirmed.
Ono was not accompanied by any friends, just a phalanx of lawyers. She didn’t speak to them much during dinner. Almost no one approached her. She was an island.
Music Fans Remember Lennon
Musicians Remember John Lennon
Pundit Guy has a long, thoughtful piece on Lennon and a batch of great links.
Dean Esmay tries to put it in perspective.
John Lennon’s Strange Sort Of Immortality
Lennon Remains An Enigma
Elie’s Exposition has some thoughts.
Into The Light And Dark Sides still misses him.
The Jammy puts Lennon in musical perspective (and notes that a 2 year old still loves his music)
Random Chaos remembers getting the news at age 10
Life And Times Of A Bored Person looks at “The Day The Music Died”
All Facts And Opinions on getting the news
Other celebrities who met with violent ends
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.