I have this memory of being in the car really early on a Summer morning when I was five or so. We are driving around Montreal, there for Expo 67 or Man and His World, and it is the day a Bealtes album was released and the car radio is just playing the lp straight though. I also remember the day that the Bealtes broke up a few years later in 1970, Mom remarking that it made the TV news. But 25 years ago this morning when I heard that Lennon was shot it was the morning of my Grade 12 English exam and we were playing lockerball waiting to be let in the room to write. Lockerball was just volleyball with a scrunched up ball of paper hit back and forth over the rock of lockers, one on one. You couldn't see where the other guy was going to hit it. Like a good game of hack or bumball, it was one of those games that was only played in one place for a few weeks by a few people and then it passed.
Lennon was in a revival. We had copies of Double Fantasy and picture sleeve 45s of "Starting Over" and all had braced ourselves a few times on false alarms that the Beatles were going to play Saturday Night Live even though we also listened to the Talking Heads and the other new music. We grinded away at their songs on guitar in friends basements and argued by the resevior on Friday night who was more the most useless Beatle over whatever bad red Hungarian wine someone had been able to get. I had sold all my X-men comics one day on a trip to Halifax to buy German pressings of Beatles releases. I still have them. Lennon dying seemed to start a spate of shootings or maybe was the height of them. I heard Reagan was shot when I jumped in the car after soccer practice and the Pope was shot around then, too. But Lennon died and when I was 17 it was really bad, cursing by the lockers before the exam began.
Comments
Knut Albert - December 8, 2005 8:20 am
I was on guard duty in the army when I heard it on the radio. As you say he was back again making music after being grounded following his lost weekend.
If you want to hear his last recordings in a proper way, disc 4 in the (sadly deleted) Lennon box set has all the John tracks from Double Fantasy & Milk and Honey and all the Yoko tracks omitted. Anyone read the new book from Cynthia?
cm - December 8, 2005 9:27 am
It was John Arsenault's birthday and for me in grade 9, that was really important. But when the clock radio came on and I heard that John Lennon had been shot, I knew that was even more important, even though all I really knew about him was that he had been a Beatle and his new record was a big deal.
ry - December 8, 2005 10:49 am
I was five years old. Didn't get the importance of it then, and don't get it now. Like the Cobain suicide I have to just shrug. Lennon was an entertainer. YOu guys are making this out to be like it was more important than the Munich assasinations, Kennedy being assasinated, or Anwar Sadat!
Get a grip. He was a Beetle. He made music that some people liked and thought of as important--I don't as it sounds like pretentious lounge music to me, but your milage may vary. But was it something that altered the fate of the world like the death of Anwar Sadat did? Did it push the world to the brink of WW3, as the Russians were afraid about what they were hearing out of Washington during the crisis over who ran the country.
He died. It's a tragedy. Just as all senseless deaths are tragedies. But no more important than the thousands that go on everyday.
(donning riot suit and digging foxhole in anticipation of much abuse).
Alan - December 8, 2005 11:18 am
No, that is fine, ry. I find nothing inthe Cobaine suicide of any point - kinda like Georgie Best. And if it had not been a murder at a point of his awakening renewal of popularity and my delicate teens, it might not have mattered. It is more, as always, about me.
Robert - December 8, 2005 7:21 pm
Saw the Beatles in Dingwall in 1963, Dylan in '65 at Leicester and Hendrix twice in August 1967. A bonified Brit musicaphobe, child of a glorious explosion of musical voices and ideas with more stories than my mum cared to know about. Bathed in the whole fertile British scene of that era and wouldn't trade it for the world. Though it doesn't look and isn't too important in the scheme of things, as Ry suggests, it stacks up very nicely against todays safe, passive, vanilla, politically silent entertainment crop and may account, at least a little, for the high regard many had for Lennon. Anwar Saddat stood and fell like hundreds of his counterparts for over the centuries but assasination of entertainers is a rarety.
Matt Fletcher - December 9, 2005 12:29 pm
Blogging nit-pick alert:
"We are driving around Montreal, there for Expo 67 or Man and His World"
The 'or' of this sentence makes it sound as if these were two different events. I know this was before my time, but I'm pretty sure 'Man and His World' was the official theme of Expo 67.
Alan - December 9, 2005 12:39 pm
No, it defines two separate times. I am not certain which year I recollect.
ry - December 9, 2005 3:55 pm
"Anwar Saddat stood and fell like hundreds of his counterparts for over the centuries but assasination of entertainers is a rarety."---Robert
True, many politicians have been assasinated. But the killing of Sadat by the Brotherhood ensured that Egypt would remain antagonistic toward Isreal. Meaning that the US would have to send troops to the Sinai and the 30 years of Arab/Jew conflict would continue. Trully shaping modern history. Lennon? Nice bit of trivia. Rather than fade in skill and eventually be ridiculed for his music(like Stevie Wonder or Paul McCartney as they have aged) he was cemented into a pop-culture saint, like Buddy Holly or Richie Valens. St. John of the Bed In(though, little talked about, in a taped interview he nearly repudated his actions as part of the Peace movement).
I get what you're saying Alan. It's like the Challenger shuttle explosion that made me realize the US was not all powerful when I was in the fifth grade, and started me on a path toward anarchism/punk ethos(of which I have obviously repented and left behind). It's a milestone moment in your life that needs no explanation or rationale. It just is. It's a feature on the landscape which helps you naviagate thru your past. It is what it is.
I was just annoyed over the orgy in the news down here about it when there was little to nothing said about Pearl Harbor remembrances the orevious day. One moment changed the course of world events for 50 years by making the US a major player on the world stage and an agressive one. THe other moment didn't change much of anything. AS you said, it seems to be more about the uterrer than anything else.
Alan - December 9, 2005 4:08 pm
That Pearl Harbour silence was a bit odd. We (or maybe me as a Haligonian of a sort) have our Halifax Explosion remembrance the day before and usually we feel that the biggest pre-atomic man-made explosion should at least equal the Pearl Harbour anniversary news. This year it was definitely bigger news.<p>But what really I meant that it is always more about me...whatever it is.