A Life In The Day

When I was 8, 9, maybe 10 years old my brother and I used to spend the afternoons at my Aunt's house. Both my parents worked, so we ended up over there after school. My Aunt had two daughters and a son at the time. All three were older than my brother and me. The oldest daughter was a junior or senior in high school. The other daughter and son were about five to six years older than us. Needless to say my brother and I thought these three were the coolest kids in the world. What was really cool was that the two younger cousins let us hang around them. The oldest, Debbie wasn't around much, she was just this really cool older cousin.

Debbie was a big Beatles fan. This was around the time they were breaking up, but for her she grew up with the Beatles. I don't know if her liking the Beatles rubbed off on me or not, but I ended up a big Beatles fan.

The first piece of music I ever owned was a 45 from the Beatles. It was Eight Days A Week/I Don't Want to Spoil The Party. The first full length album (I know all these terms might not mean much to all you youngsters out there, but that's what they were called before cds) I bought was the Beatles 65. Most of my albums I owned were Beatle albums for a long time. As a kid, even at $3.50 an album I could only buy so many and that wasn't many.

I became a Beatles fan. I adored them. I checked out the biography of them by Hunter Davies. I couldn't afford to buy it at the time, not a hardback book, that was way too expensive.

The Beatles music was with me throughout my life. I've enjoyed their music throughout every even in my life.

For awhile I was confused by John Lennon. When he left the Beatles and started his bed ins and other ventures for peace I was ten, eleven and at that age I just really didn't get what he was doing. I thought he was acting pretty weird.

For awhile it was easy not to like him. He was saying the Beatles were rubbish. He wanted to ignore his past, tear down everything that I liked and thought meant something to me.

Still I couldn't hold a grudge for too long. He was putting out some great music. And after reading the interviews with him I started to see how he could think some things.

In a previous post I mentioned people that had influenced me. I listed John Lennon. I have few real heroes...John Lennon was one of them. At the height of his fame he wanted to try and help the world. He was willing to act the fool if he thought it might save the world. John Lennon wasn't perfect, he was far from it, but I think in the end it was his imperfections that helped make him the hero for me.

It was on this day in 1980 that Mark David Chapman stepped out of the shadows of the Dakota building and asked "Mr. Lennon?" before firing several rounds into the body of John Lennon. John and Yoko had just come for The Hit Factory where they were working on music for Yoko's upcoming release. After years of being angry with the Beatles, with the world...John seemed to be at peace. He had just released a new album and he was out giving interviews and meeting the press. In his interviews he seemed truly happy and content. His son Sean was five and John had spent the last five years helping to raise him outside the spotlight of being a Beatle or being John Lennon.

I heard the news that night, after the news had come on and went off. I was watching an episode of MASH when they cut in for a newsbreak to inform the viewers that John Lennon had been shot and was apparently dead in New York City.

The next few days were spent with the world mourning the loss. Very few people, much less a pop star, had touched as many people as John Lennon had. I rember that weekend when Yoko asked for a few minutes of silence in remembrance of her slain husband.

It's twenty six years later and it still hurts when I think of the loss. The loss of the music he would have created. The loss of the husband. The loss of the father. The loss of the man.

John Lennon...1940-1980.