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OT: The Death of John Lennon
Dec. 8th, 2010 12:08 pmToday marks the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder.
I was 11 years old at the time and I remember it well. Lennon was poised for a huge comeback with his new album “Double Fantasy” after being MIA for most of the ‘70s. I remember going to the local drug store that night with my mom for something and seeing on the stands all of the magazines featuring interviews with Lennon promoting the album. I went to bed that night around 10 p.m. and when I reported for breakfast the next morning, my mom told me some crazy man had killed Lennon overnight. It was all over the morning news shows and they couldn't stop talking about it at school.
Even an era when there was only one 24 hour cable news network, which we didn’t have at Chez lazypadawan at the time, or the internet, I recall the endless wall-to-wall coverage. Remember how it was with Michael Jackson or Princess Diana back in ’97? You pretty much have the same idea, only with a smaller number of outlets.
Lennon’s death was a very big deal. Not only was yet another beloved rock ‘n roll icon from the baby boomers’ youth gone prematurely, as with Elvis Presley three years earlier, two things happened with the end of Lennon’s life. What was perhaps the most crushing consequence at the time was that it forever ended any possibility of a Beatles reunion, something its legions of fans had hoped for since The Fab Four called it quits in 1970. But the other consequence was far darker. John Lennon was the first major celebrity to die at the hands of an obsessed fan. The explosion of popular media in the 20th century ended up making entertainers targets for assassination in the same way only politicians or aristocrats had been targeted in the past. Celebrities for the first time had to fear their public. The end of the studio system in Hollywood took away the protection that came with studio control. Lennon had no bodyguards and it was no secret where he lived. The man who killed Lennon, Mark Chapman, had a pretty easy time finding his target.
Chapman wasn't the last obsessed "fan" to end up in the headlines nor was Lennon the last victim. John Hinckley tried to assassinate President Reagan in 1981 to impress the object of his obsession, Jodie Foster. Actress Theresa Saldana survived an attack by a stalker in 1982. Actress Rebecca Schaeffer was murdered by a fan in 1989. Celebrities like Madonna and Brad Pitt have had stalkers and crazy people break into their homes. David Letterman had to contend with for years a woman who claimed she was his wife.
Lennon was neither a hero or a villain to me but he was a talented, confounding figure full of contradictions. The guy who sang about how nice it would be not to have possessions was quite wealthy. The guy who had been an absent father to his first son Julian was very hands-on with his second son Sean. In the '60s, he (in)famously said The Beatles were more popular than Jesus, but at one point in the '70s, he'd become a born-again Christian. I once saw an appearance he did on The Dick Cavett Show, re-run on VH-1, and he talked about the value of marriage. Yet he cheated on first wife Cynthia and on Yoko Ono, though Yoko helped pick out the mistress. Oh, don't get me started on Yoko. Lennon was very much a symbol of the '60s-'70s antiwar era but he wasn't always on board with whatever idea was trendy at the moment. At the time of his death, he had given up the hard drugs and had reunited with Yoko. He seemed he had it together again. Would he have kept it together over the long-term? We'll never know.
I was 11 years old at the time and I remember it well. Lennon was poised for a huge comeback with his new album “Double Fantasy” after being MIA for most of the ‘70s. I remember going to the local drug store that night with my mom for something and seeing on the stands all of the magazines featuring interviews with Lennon promoting the album. I went to bed that night around 10 p.m. and when I reported for breakfast the next morning, my mom told me some crazy man had killed Lennon overnight. It was all over the morning news shows and they couldn't stop talking about it at school.
Even an era when there was only one 24 hour cable news network, which we didn’t have at Chez lazypadawan at the time, or the internet, I recall the endless wall-to-wall coverage. Remember how it was with Michael Jackson or Princess Diana back in ’97? You pretty much have the same idea, only with a smaller number of outlets.
Lennon’s death was a very big deal. Not only was yet another beloved rock ‘n roll icon from the baby boomers’ youth gone prematurely, as with Elvis Presley three years earlier, two things happened with the end of Lennon’s life. What was perhaps the most crushing consequence at the time was that it forever ended any possibility of a Beatles reunion, something its legions of fans had hoped for since The Fab Four called it quits in 1970. But the other consequence was far darker. John Lennon was the first major celebrity to die at the hands of an obsessed fan. The explosion of popular media in the 20th century ended up making entertainers targets for assassination in the same way only politicians or aristocrats had been targeted in the past. Celebrities for the first time had to fear their public. The end of the studio system in Hollywood took away the protection that came with studio control. Lennon had no bodyguards and it was no secret where he lived. The man who killed Lennon, Mark Chapman, had a pretty easy time finding his target.
Chapman wasn't the last obsessed "fan" to end up in the headlines nor was Lennon the last victim. John Hinckley tried to assassinate President Reagan in 1981 to impress the object of his obsession, Jodie Foster. Actress Theresa Saldana survived an attack by a stalker in 1982. Actress Rebecca Schaeffer was murdered by a fan in 1989. Celebrities like Madonna and Brad Pitt have had stalkers and crazy people break into their homes. David Letterman had to contend with for years a woman who claimed she was his wife.
Lennon was neither a hero or a villain to me but he was a talented, confounding figure full of contradictions. The guy who sang about how nice it would be not to have possessions was quite wealthy. The guy who had been an absent father to his first son Julian was very hands-on with his second son Sean. In the '60s, he (in)famously said The Beatles were more popular than Jesus, but at one point in the '70s, he'd become a born-again Christian. I once saw an appearance he did on The Dick Cavett Show, re-run on VH-1, and he talked about the value of marriage. Yet he cheated on first wife Cynthia and on Yoko Ono, though Yoko helped pick out the mistress. Oh, don't get me started on Yoko. Lennon was very much a symbol of the '60s-'70s antiwar era but he wasn't always on board with whatever idea was trendy at the moment. At the time of his death, he had given up the hard drugs and had reunited with Yoko. He seemed he had it together again. Would he have kept it together over the long-term? We'll never know.
