It isn’t hard to remember where I was when I heard the news. I still smell the old pizza cartons that permeated suite 102 in the Benfer dorm . Muhlenberg College’s right guard , defensive tackle, and quarterback were on one couch and I was sprawled on the lazy boy chair. It was December 8th 1980 and we were watching the Miami Dolphins vs. New England Patriots Monday night football game head into overtime. Despite the tied score the announcer Howard Cosell said he had to interrupt the game to make a very sorrowful announcement . “John Lennon, one of the Beatles ,has been shot twice in the back outside his New York City apartment. He was transported immediately to the nearest hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.” Way before the days of terrorism, school shootings, or celebrity stalking this news shocked the world. The four of us, then college sophomores and juniors, were very young when President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, far too young to feel it the way we did that night. John Lennon was a God to us, and even more we looked at him as a true genius. At the time of Lennon’s death heroes seemed easier to come by than they do today . Even though he was 40 years old, to the occupants in Suite 102 he always had been hooked into our energy. In the three years living together our apartment had never become so still . It was only time I saw any of us cry in the presence of the others.
I have always been impressed with the accomplishments of groups that worked together to achieve incredible results. On rare occasions in business, sports, or music the whole can be better than the individual parts that make it up. Practically, it is impossible to think that four young men growing up in the same little town could come together to form a rock band that would impact the world more than any other to come before or after. The Beatles began blending their magic out of the small city of Liverpool , England. The Fab Four ,leaning mostly on their Blues background, changed the way rock and roll music was viewed and the social mores of an entire generation. It intrigued me that classmates residing in the same town could come together and transcend music . They had so much to say, and such a unique way of saying it , especially for impressionable ears. My favorite was Paul, but it wasn’t until after the group broke up did I realize that John was the pied piper , the mastermind behind the phenomenon. The other three were clever, they were talented, they were cute, but John was a genius. As a young lad I listened hard to all that John was saying beyond the music. I didn’t admit it then, but John was too much of a non-conformist for me, Muhammad Ali with a guitar.
I thought his words were arrogant and flippant , the same way I believed the entire counter culture of the 60’s was off base. John wanted us to Imagine a world with no countries and at the time I was incapable of understanding or comprehending what he meant.
By the time 1969 rolled around, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, America was still fighting in Vietnam, Helter Skelter became a famous Beatles song for all the wrong reasons , the summer of love moved to Woodstock and John Lennon had grown weary of being a Beatle. There was never a more dramatic break–up in the recent world’s social make-up. The fans needed to hold someone or something responsible, how could the greatest group of all time break up in their prime ? There was plenty of blame to go around beginning with Yoko Ono, John’s girlfriend at the time.
Due to crowd size, and noise, the band had to cease touring and were relegated to the studio. George and Ringo wanted more say and more cuts on the albums. There were issues over recording label contracts which of course leads to money problems. Despite all of this backdrop, if you wanted to know why the Beatles were moving on you needed to look no further than John Lennon. To put it simply, he had out grown the other three members of the family. John was aware that he could not continue to evolve as a musician or as a person if he stayed. He had the courage to take on the wrath of a generation who had made the Beatles their way of life. A roof top concert above Abbey Road Studios was the last time the four boys from Liverpool would be seen together. John found out early that “till death do us part” isn’t always meant to be. That strong marriage that we all wanted to last forever was over.
It is true that sometimes a group of people can make a great team. It is hard to argue that the Beatles together were the best musical group that has ever come together. In their case each member alone was a star. Paul McCartney formed his own band (Wings) that ended up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame . George Harrison had great success as a solo artist and collaborating with the likes of Eric Clapton and Tom Petty. Ringo Starr experienced only moderate accomplishments with The Starr Band and was never reach the creative heights of his band mates.
The song that John is probably most famous for,” Imagine”, was written solo in 1971. “You may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one”, speaks right to my soul. Yes he was different, he existed at some higher level, but he knew he had company that he wanted awakened . John believed in things way bigger than the Beatles, the obvious ones being Peace and Love , yet he was aware that his music was the avenue to get his bigger message across. So after five years of laying low, high above New York City recovering from a parting of the ways he had orchestrated, John was ready to come out and remind of us why he was the most powerful individual singer song writer of all time . He released his Double Fantasy album just three weeks before he was murdered. The song “Watching the Wheels “ was a statement of how he spent the 70’s, while the song “Starting Over” gave a glimpsed into where he was headed if he had not been gunned down.
What I admire so much about John is the fact that I did not come to understand much of what he had to say until now. The Beatles had reached a pinnacle and could have stayed relevant for as long as the Rolling Stones have. It turned out it was John who had enough. He saw himself as more than a craftsman getting by on his God given talents . He needed to expand and develop his individual expression and make room for change. He was courageous enough to break up the most successful rock and roll marriage of all time . “Yes we could have kept turning out hits , but for me the Beatles became an example of best friends who don’t want to be married anymore. You have to find someone else to play with.” Ironically the other three Beatles found their individual voices many years earlier than John ever did. He wanted to take a break from being a thinker and a writer to literally become a” house frau “ (his words). At that time, in an interview with Robert Harris, he said something that I came to appreciate years later as my favorite quote from him, “I had to find the room to liberate myself from my own intellect. “ One of the biggest challenges we all have in this life is getting out of our own way.
John understood that the only way to free himself from the merry go round his life had become was to get off.
Mark David Chapman, listening to subliminal messages from J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”, put three bullets into the oldest member of the Beatles at about 11:00pm Dec 8, 1980. John Lennon, arguably the biggest rock icon of all time, husband to Yoko Ono, father of Sean and Julian, and one of the very few who helped me understand what genius means, was gone at the age of 40. Beyond the pure tragedy of a man’s life being taken in his prime was the idea that he had so much more left to offer us all. I think back to the boys in that dorm room all those years ago. We were 19 ,ready to turn 20 , not understanding all the challenges that waited ahead . We had accomplished nothing beyond some backseat high school sex and a few athletic victories. By the time we reached 40 we had families, moved around in careers, and became productive members of society. I cannot speak for Steve, Ozzie, or Grebby , but it was not until I had lived past the age John Lennon died that I began the journey to discover who I am. At 57 I don’t have half the answers that John Lennon had when he died. No telling what we all missed because of John’s premature exit. Whether or not we admit it, we are all playing an enormous game. John was so close to the finish line, and maybe in some strange way that is why he is dead. For the rest of us, with so much time ahead to live, think of all the possibilities and opportunities. I, for one, am determined not to waste them.
