John Lennon: 24 years ago.

[AKA]

On Monday, December 8, 1980, John Lennon was shot multiple times and murdered outside his apartment by a deranged "fan" as he was returning from a recording session. His wife was by his side.

John has been gone almost as long as I've been alive, but his impact is too strong to ever be forgotten by the world.

In tribute, I've temporarily uploaded some tracks from his solo catalog to my webspace.

[Songs deleted]

The photograph below was taken on the morning of December 8, 1980 by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz (who you can see reflecting in the window).

[crystals]

It's so sad. To think of all the music he could have done. It's so sad.


John Lennon Oct. 9th 1940- Dec. 8th 1980

[crystals]

Double post. The pic above is weird because my paint shop program is acting up again.

[crystals]

A 2nd pic. Hopefully this will work.

[Penny Lane]

:(

[Jrnygrl]

WE MISS YOU JOHN!:crying: :crying: :crying: peacesign: peacesign:

[Penny Lane]

:(

[MaryElizabeth]

:( I'll never forget when I was little, and just discovering The Beatles' music. I was asking my dad a ton of questions about the members of the group and who they were. And I happened to ask him if they were still alive. And he told me that one of them wasn't. I asked him who wasn't alive and he told me that John Lennon was murdered. I was shocked and extremely upset.

I may not have been alive when he was around, but I feel his impact.

peacesign:

[AKA]

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1980
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/attachment.php?s=&postid=1686343


John and Sean Lennon on their shared birthday (John's 40th, Sean's 5th), 1980
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/attachment.php?s=&postid=1993243

[Janice]

I was 22 and remember it very well. It still seems so unreal to me. It's one of the saddest stories in the entertainment industry.

[AKA]

Songs written in tribute to John Lennon:

From the 1981 George Harrison album Somewhere In England. The song also featured Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

All Those Years Ago
(Harrison)

I'm shouting all about love
While they treated you like a dog
When you were the one who had made it so clear
All those years ago

I'm talking all about how to give
They don't act with much honesty
But you point the way to the truth when you say
"All you need is love"

Living with good and bad
I always looked up to you
Now we're left cold and sad
By someone the devil's best friend
Someone who offended all

We're living in a bad dream
They've forgotten all about mankind
And you were the one they backed up to the wall
All those years ago
You were the one who imagined it all
All those years ago

Deep in the darkest night
I send out a prayer to you
Now in the world of light
Where the spirit free of the lies
And all else that we despised

They've forgotten all about God
He's the only reason we exist
Yet you were the one that they said was so weird
All those years ago
You said it all though not many had ears
All those years ago
You had control of our smiles and our tears
All those years ago

From the 1982 Paul McCartney album Tug Of War.

Here Today
(McCartney)

And if I said
I really knew you well
What would your answer be?
If you were here today.

Well, knowing you
You'd probably laugh and say
That we were worlds apart.
If you were here today.

But as for me
I still remember how it was before
And I am holding back the tears no more
I love you.

What about the time we met?
Well I suppose that you could say that
We were playing hard to get,
Didn't understand a thing
But we could always sing.

What about the night we cried?
Because there wasn't any reason left
To keep it all inside,
Never understood a word
But you were always there with a smile.

And if I say I really loved you
And was glad you came along,
Then you were here today,
For you were in my song
Here today.

From the Elton John album Jump Up! (1982)

Empty Garden (Hey, Hey Johnny)
(John/Taupin)

What happened here,
As the New York sunset disappeared?
I found an empty garden among the flagstones there.
Who lived here?
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot,
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop.
And now it all looks strange.
It's funny how one insect can damage so much grain.

And what's it for,
This little empty garden by the brownstone door?
And in the cracks along the sidewalk nothing grows no more.
Who lived here?
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot,
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop.
And we are so amazed! We're crippled and we're dazed....
A gardener like that one, no one can replace.

And I've been knocking, but no one answers.
And I've been knocking, most all the day.
Oh and I've been calling,oh hey, hey, Johnny!
Can't you come out to play?

And through their tears,
Some say he farmed his best in younger years.
But he'd have said that roots grow stronger, if only he could hear.
Who lived there?
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot,
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop.
Now we pray for rain, and with every drop that falls.....
We hear, we hear your name.....

And I've been knocking, but no one answers.
And I've been knocking, most all the day.
Oh and I've been calling,oh hey, hey, Johnny!
Can't you come out to play,
In your empty garden?
Johnny?
Can't you come out to play, in your empty garden?

[laceyinthesky]

He's still missed. :(

[Ian]

He's still missed, and his music has passed the test of time.

Fifty years from now the Clay Aiken's of the world will be long forgotten, and John's music will still be in record players... cd... what ever the hell they'll be using to listen to music, his music will still be heard. Timeless. :(

[Shine]

Rest in Peace John peacesign:

[AKA]

Here's another photo snapped by Annie Leibovitz on the morning of December 8, 1980.

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/attachment.php?s=&postid=1591175

It wound up being on the cover of the magazine's January, 1981 issue. It was the first and only time Rolling Stone ran a cover without comment.

[AKA]

Strawberry Fields, the John Lennon memorial located in Central Park.

[AKA]

John dropped out of the public eye in 1975, and many people were wondering what he was up to. Here's what he and Yoko had to say, in an open letter published in the New York Times on May 27, 1979.

A Love Letter From John And Yoko
To People Who Ask Us What, When, And Why

The past 10 years we noticed everything we wished came true in its own time, good or bad, one way or the other. We kept telling each other that one of these days we would have to get organized and wish for only good things. Then our baby arrived! We were overjoyed and at the same time felt very responsible. Now our wishes would also affect him. We felt it was time for us to stop discussing and do something about our wishing process :The Spring Cleaning of our minds! It was a lot of work. We kept finding things in those old closets in our minds that we hadn’t realized were still there, things we wished we hadn’t found. As we did our cleaning, we also started to notice many wrong things in our house: there was a shelf which should never have been there in the first place, a painting we grew to dislike, and there were the two dingy rooms, which became light and breezy when we broke the walls between them. We started to love the plants, which one of us originally thought were robbing the air from us! We began to enjoy the drum beat of the city which used to annoy us. We made a lot of mistakes and still do. In the past we spent a lot of energy in trying to get something we thought we wanted, wondered why we didn’t get it, only to find out that one or both of us didn’t really want it. One day, we received a sudden rain of chocolates from people around the world. “Hey, what’s this! We’re not eating sugar stuff, are we?” “Who’s wishing it?” We both laughed. We discovered that when two of us wished in unison, it happened faster. As the Good Book says—Where two are gathered together—It’s true. Two is plenty. A Newclear Seed.

More and more we are starting to wish and pray. The things we have tried to achieve in the past by flashing a V sign we try now through wishing. We are not doing this because it is simpler. Wishing is more effective than waving flags. It works. It’s like magic. Magic is simple. Magic is real. The secret of it is to know that it is simple, and not kill it with an elaborate ritual which is a sign of insecurity. When somebody is angry with us, we draw a halo around his or her head in our minds. Does the person stop being angry then? Well, we don’t know! We know, though, that when we draw a halo around a person, suddenly the person starts to look like an angel to us. This helps us to feel warm towards the person, reminds us that everyone has goodness inside, and that all people who come to us are angels in disguise, carrying messages and gifts to us from the Universe. Magic is logical. Try it sometime.

We still have a long way to go. It seems the more we get into cleaning, the faster the wishing and receiving process gets. The house is getting very comfortable now. Sean is beautiful. The plants are growing. The cats are purring. The town is shining, sun, rain or snow. We live in a beautiful universe. We are thankful every day for the plentifulness of our life. This is not a euphemism. We understand that we, the city, the country, the earth are facing very hard times, and there is panic in the air. Still the sun is shining and we are here together, and there is love between us, our city, the country, the earth. If two people like us can do what we are doing with our lives, any miracle is possible! It’s true we can do with a few big miracles right now. The thing is to recognize them when they come to you and to be thankful. First they come in a small way, in every life, then they come in rivers, and in oceans. It’s goin’ to be alright! The future of the earth is up to all of us.

Many people are sending us vibes every day in letters, telegrams, taps on the gate, or just flowers and nice thoughts. We thank them all and appreciate them for respecting our quiet space, which we need. Thank you for all the love you send us. We feel it every day. We love you, too. We know you are concerned about us. That is nice. That’s why you want to know what we are doing. That’s why everybody is asking us What, When and Why. We understand. Well, this is what we’ve been doing. We hope that you have the same quiet space in your mind to make your own wishes come true.

If you think of us next time, remember, our silence is a silence of love and not of indifference. Remember, we are writing in the sky instead of on paper—that’s our song. Lift your eyes and look up in the sky. There’s our message. Lift your eyes and look around you and you will see that you are walking in the sky, which extends to the ground. We are all part of the sky, more so than the ground. Remember, we love you

John & Yoko
May 27, 1979
New York City

P.S. We noticed that three angels were looking over our shoulders when we wrote this!

[vashti1999]

I was in school back then. I don't think some kids even knew who he was but it was such a major story, especially taking place here in New York City, I remember it being all anyone talked about for days. The vigils in Central Park. Definitely a sad time.


I had no idea that Annie Leibovitz/RS cover was shot the same day.

[Cactus Jack]

Thats so sad :( RIP John

[*Pleasant Tomorrow*]

I'd like to pay tribute, too. RIP :(

[AKA]

Originally posted by vashti1999
I had no idea that Annie Leibovitz/RS cover was shot the same day.

Yeah. A lot of John Lennon photos from December 8, 1980 have surfaced, most of which are the Leibovitz photos.

This December 8 Leibovitz photo wound up being used as the front cover for the 1982 compilation The John Lennon Collection.

[AKA]

And here's another. This was also used for The John Lennon Collection.

[AKA]

There's also a famous photo of John signing an autograph for his killer just hours before his murder. I have posted it at SO before, but I refuse to post it in this thread.

[vashti1999]

Originally posted by vashti1999

I had no idea that Annie Leibovitz/RS cover was shot the same day.

Just re-read this, it might be mistakenly read as a pun. Maybe a bad choice of words, I wasn't trying to be funny. peacesign:

[ABlairican Pie]

The Beatles were the first memory I have of anything. I heard "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" played repeatedly on the radio when I was real little.

I'm almost embarrassed about December 8, 1980. Why? I had gotten back from a Bible study and my younger brother told me that John Lennon had been shot and killed that evening. My reaction? Smugness. "Served him right, after what he said about Jesus 14 years earlier." I was a young Christian back then, and very stupid as well--intolerant, insensitive, self-righteous, and ignoring the fact that the music was so great. So many of his songs addressed the kinds of things that led to his murder, like "Imagine" and "God", and others. The next weekend I went to a Beatles party with my friends where we sat around listening to their albums and eating pizza and drinking pop and I was thinking, my Gosh, the Beatles had some GREAT songs!! That
night changed my way of thinking. It stuck with me.

Unfortunately, one of friends at school the next day, a kind of "born again bully" who was intimidating and thought he had all the answers, was thoroughly unimpressed by my Beatles party and verbally chastised me for going to such a heathen event.:rolleyes:

[ABlairican Pie]

Here's my picture of John:

[Brian Damage]

One of the greatest song writers ever.

[laceyinthesky]

Since we're posting pictures, I'll post a couple.

I had this picture as my avatar for the longest time when I first joined:
http://img72.exs.cx/img72/2937/065ll.jpg

Here's another pic I use at another site:
http://www.johnlennon.it/beatles%20pics/doctor-of-the-earth.jpg

[laceyinthesky]

Originally posted by laceyinthesky
Since we're posting pictures, I'll post a couple.

I had this picture as my avatar for the longest time when I first joined:
http://img72.exs.cx/img72/2937/065ll.jpg

Here's another pic I use at another site:
http://www.johnlennon.it/beatles%20pics/doctor-of-the-earth.jpg

Can you tell I love black and white pictures?

[MaryElizabeth]

Originally posted by laceyinthesky
Can you tell I love black and white pictures? I used to hate them. Now they're my favorite kind.

[Crapple]

Last year, around 7:50pm PST, the moment Lennon was shot, I posted this in my blog. I hope you all enjoy it:



It was 23 years ago today, at this very moment, that John Lennon was in the process of being shot by a deranged fan who shall remain nameless.

And at the risk of sounding trite, I'm mad as hell.

It's often eerie to me that I've been a near-lifelong Beatles fan and yet I have never known John Lennon while he was alive. I started listening to the Beatles around the age of three, when my dad would play "Sgt. Pepper" (original mono vinyl, no less) as we played with trucks. I have incredibly vivid memories of this (and other events of 1980), and yet I can't recall Lennon being shot. It must have been sometime after Lennon's death that I was asking my dad questions about the Beatles. I have a vivid recollection of staring at the cover of "Sgt. Pepper" and asking my dad questions about the band. I asked something along the lines of "when is the next Beatles album coming out?" and he told me that it wouldn't happen, because John Lennon was dead. I remember staring at the picture of John on the cover, clad in a lime green faux-military uniform, with a big walrus moustache, and not being able to intellectualize the "death" of John Lennon. I was far too young to understand what death was. I only remember feeling very eerie. I don't recall my dad giving me the details of Lennon's death, but something felt vacant. Maybe it was because I spent much of my days listening to this colorful, wonderful, evocative music...and yet one of its creators did not exist. It didn't compute...it was like living in a black hole.

My appreciation of the Beatles expanded pretty rapidly and by the late '80s had turned into an all out obsession that remains with me today.

I'd agree that the man is unfairly martyred at times (something that he never really explicitly asked for in his lifetime) and that his post-mortem deification is more than a little extreme. But when I stop and consider the fact that I never had the chance to witness the man in action--to see what kind of music, good or bad, he may have put out or what crazy antics he may have been up to--it saddens me...nay, sickens me. Just watch the "Beatles Anthology" and see how sorely lacking it is because Lennon isn't there. (Old interview clips over photo stills don't do the man justice.)

Watching my "Lennon Legend" DVD today compounded all this: the DVD is an interesting ride that takes the viewer through a whirlwind of emotions. It's a collection of clips that simply must be taken as a whole. My only real complaint is that much of it comes off as an epitaph, rather than a celebration of the man's life. Perhaps that's why my favorite clips in the bunch were the ones where Lennon was performing: "Cold Turkey" (one of my favorite all-time Lennon tracks) features the song playing over skillfully edited live footage from the Madison Square Garden "One To One" concert of 1972, along with footage of John & Yoko being busted for cannabis possession in 1969. A bonus cut, "Slippin' & Slidin'," features John in the studio working on the "Rock 'N Roll" album and is pretty much a straight performance with the band. Then there's another bonus cut, the bizarre "Lew Grade performance" clip of "Imagine," with John in a red leather jumpsuit and his backing band wearing strange masks on the back of their heads (which I hadn't seen in ten years). To me, these clips are the real treasures here, and, despite the revisionism of some of the other clips, are well worth the price of admission. To see the man in action is just priceless. And while the various and sundry videos full of photo montages and verite footage of John & Yoko are nice to have as well, nothing compares to these performance clips...these all too rare glimpses into what Lennon was really about...especially for those of us who weren't fortunate enough to know the man when he was alive.

Lennon was many things: rebellious, uncontrollable, Utopian, unstable, goofy, naive, stubborn, raucous, helpless, sensitive, tortured, brilliant, maligned, misunderstood...and yet this melange of often contradictory qualities are exactly what made the man such an enigma. You don't get two John Lennons. He's one of those souls that absolutely broke the mold.

And he just happens to have been the leader and my favorite creative force in my favorite band of all time.

More than anything, Lennon was a man who kept pushing forward his whole life. From the moment of his mother's death when he was a young boy, he was on a spiritual, philosophical and political journey that never ceased until the day he died. Lennon searched for peace his whole life...most of all, peace of mind. And for the most part, he never looked backwards...or towards the future, preferring to live in the moment. "Where there's life, there's hope," he said in an interview, just hours before he died.

And yet, in the thirty minutes it has taken me to write this post, 23 years ago, Lennon was shot and died.

Paul McCartney got a lot of flak in 1980 when, just hours after Lennon's death, the press asked him how he felt about it. McCartney, who was about to ride off in a car at the time, said "it's a drag," which led the media to go on an absolute feeding frenzy, pouncing on Macca for being so "flippant." But when you stop and think about it...what else could the man have said? If a microphone was shoved in your face moments after one of your best friends and partners died, what would you say?

The death of Lennon was one of those events in time that had such an extraordinary impact on just about everyone that words simply cannot convey it.

A friend of mine--who grew up with the Beatles in the '60s--put it best last night when he said that when Lennon was shot, "an entire era came crashing down upon our heads."

And I'm still mad as hell.

[Crapple]

http://img29.exs.cx/img29/8053/johnlennon2kg.jpg

[Crapple]

http://img115.exs.cx/img115/1948/ahdn_coke.jpg

[AKA]

[AKA]

[AKA]

[AKA]

"When I was singing and writing this and working with [Yoko], I was visualizing all the people of my age group. I'm singing to them, I'm saying, Here I am now. How are you? How's your relationship going? Did you get through it all? Wasn't the '70s a drag, you know? Here we are. Well, let's try and make the '80s good, you know?"
—John Lennon, 1980

[Dutabi84]

Originally posted by Crapple
http://img115.exs.cx/img115/1948/ahdn_coke.jpg

HAHA! Sniffing coke. Why didn't I think of that?

[Jrnygrl]

Originally posted by AKA
"When I was singing and writing this and working with [Yoko], I was visualizing all the people of my age group. I'm singing to them, I'm saying, Here I am now. How are you? How's your relationship going? Did you get through it all? Wasn't the '70s a drag, you know? Here we are. Well, let's try and make the '80s good, you know?"
—John Lennon, 1980


Thank you AKA! :crying: :crying: :crying: peacesign:

[Jrnygrl]

Originally posted by Dutabi84
HAHA! Sniffing coke. Why didn't I think of that?

:lol: :lol: :lol:

But he's very clean!;)

[musicradio77]

AKA, I found these clips from the Musicradio 77 WABC site. It has the bulletin on John Lennon's death on the scene and includes tributes to John Lennon. You should try the following links, AKA:

WABC News Bulletin on John Lennon's Death (http://musicradio.computer.net/images/lennonshot12-8-80.ram)
Howard Cosell's Breaking News on John Lennon During "Monday Night Football" (http://musicradio.computer.net/images/coselllennondeath.ram)
Dan Ingram On a Day After He Died (http://musicradio.computer.net/images/ingramlennon12-9-80.ram)
Dan Ingram on a Tribute to John Lennon (with Commercials) (http://musicradio.computer.net/images/ing12-9-80.ram)
John Lennon Tribute on many NYC stations, December 14th, 1980 (http://musicradio.computer.net/images/lennontrib12-14-80.ram)

[Crapple]

That fourth link doesn't work. :(

[AKA]

First published December 8, 2000

It Was 20 Million Tears Ago Today....

By Martin Lewis

Paul McCartney's instantly-notorious first public comment on John Lennon's murder in December 1980 - "it's a drag" - was at the time held up as an example of gross insensitivity by an estranged friend. In reality it was the understatement of devastation. There's a telling line in Sidney Lumet's 1983 film "Daniel" - a fictionalized account of the struggles of the two children of executed "spies" Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. "Why don't you console her?" asks someone about the suicidally-distraught daughter at one point. The answer is chilling in its intensity. "Did it ever occur to you that she might be inconsolable?"

The world has had to come to terms with the senseless murder of John Lennon twenty years ago. But for the millions around the world who were deeply enthralled and touched by Lennon's gifts - the ache remains.

Early and tragic death of a hero, a leader or a cultural icon always produces reactions of greater intensity than the sad passing on of a revered figure at a grand old age, Our loss is not just the pang of regret that a much cherished person has finally shuffled off the mortal coil. It is also the burning pain of what might have been.

It is certainly true that when John Lennon was shot he was immediately eulogized, mythologized and indeed canonized. And if you weren't a follower - or were too young to experience the Lennon impact in 'real time' - you could be forgiven for reacting suspiciously to all the 20th anniversary hoopla. "I mean he was just a pop singer right? Married to that kooky Japanese woman. I'm sorry he died - but why the fuss?"

Did we over-react to Lennon's death in 1980? Are we pining for a mythological cipher now?

Those are healthy questions. I don't begrudge them. The weight of 20 years of soliloquies hangs heavy on the uninitiated. So let the answers be given.

John Lennon was not God. But he earned the love and admiration of his generation by creating a huge body of work that inspired and led rather than simply following. The appreciation for him deepened because he then instinctively decided to use his celebrity as a bully pulpit for causes greater than his own enrichment or self-aggrandizement.

For several key years in the late 60's and early 70's - he and Yoko Ono consciously turned turned their lives into a virtual "Truman Show" to promote the issues they believed in.

One of Lennon's many gifts was his humor. He knew - but accepted that many people were laughing at them. He didn't care. He cared that the message was being heard. If disbelievers were going to ridicule his peace protests that was at least preferable to them being engaged in violence. One of the secrets of Lennon (and indeed all four Beatles) was that he took his work seriously. But he never took HIMSELF too seriously.

What is the Lennon legacy? There is the astonishing body of music. The jaunty anthems he wrote in the early Beatle years (1962-1965) may have been teen love songs - but they displayed an exuberant joy that is surprisingly undiminished by the passage of time. Then, once Bob Dylan showed him that lyrics could be personal - Lennon tapped into his feelings and revealed a gift for sensitivity and self-awareness that completely belied his oft-proclaimed status as "just a rocker"

>From mid-1965 onwards in both his Beatles canon and his solo oeuvre - he learned how to direct-inject his feelings into his songwriting.

One thinks of the reflections in "In My Life" - "Though I know I'll never lose affection for people and things that went before..." And the lines in "Help!" - "When I was younger , so much younger than today...." He was still only 24 when he wrote those words. An old soul indeed.

Poets and playwrights wrote of insecurity. Pop singers may have (justifiably) felt it. But they certainly didn't sing about it to their fans. Lennon did. "Every now and then I feel so insecure..." he sang in "Help!" He also admitted to jealousy, suicidal depression and (in "Cold Turkey") heroin addiction.

When he undertook primal scream therapy under Dr. Arthur Janov in 1970, he instinctively took painful revelations and turned them into cathartic art for a world raised on denial of emotion.

Lennon had been abandoned by his father before birth - and then again when he was 5. And his mother gave him up to be raised by her sister. Lennon lost his mother again when he was 18, when she was run over by a drunken policeman. 12 years later, Lennon philosophized it simply and heart-breakingly. "Mother... you had me - but I never had you. I needed you - but you didn't need me."

And in the song's stunning coda, Lennon set to music a repeated plea that was primal and universal. "Mama don't go... Daddy come home..." His howls of anguish - quite unheard of before in popular music - were truth at 33 revolutions per minute.

His gut decision to turn his life into art set Lennon apart from McCartney in terms of style. (Lennon was a diarist - and McCartney - no less artistically - was a dramatist.) Indeed it set Lennon high above the others in his own tree. There were many who joined Lennon or who followed Lennon into the new world of singer/songwriter-dom. But few matched his poetry or honesty. For Lennon, confessional songwriting was much more than just the prominent use of the first-person pronoun - which seemed to be the norm in the self-obsessed 70's.

It is interesting to read the original (pre-murder) reviews of Lennon's 'comeback' album after his five years dedicated to the raising of his second son Sean. The 1980 album "Double Fantasy" included several paeans to the joys that maturity was bringing John Lennon. His love of Yoko "Woman please understand - the little child inside the man..." And his rueful warning to his five-year old son that "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." A lot of reviewers were bemoaning the album - complaining of its gentler lyrical themes. As usual Lennon had grown up before his critics. The tragedy of December 1980 overtook those foolish reviews and the sentiments were forgotten. Indeed the poignancy of the lyrics assumed unbearable weight. But the lyrics were beautiful BEFORE the loss. It took the "other plans" of a deranged human for some people to get the message.

Lennon was certainly no saint. His personal life did not always match his philosophy and aspirations. When he fell in love with Yoko One - who was truly his soul mate and muse - he treated his first wife rather shabbily. Her financial settlement - while broadly in line with the conventions of the day - was not the act of a generous or gracious man. His laudable devotion to his second son Sean was partly in reaction to the guilt of his neglect of his first son Julian. Though he was just starting to make amends to Julian - his murder took place before the reparations were that far along. Julian to this day bears the scars of the shortfall between intention and action that affects many parents. But for the son of a suddenly canonized dead father - there was nowhere to go to get that love. And castigating a murdered hero wins no friends.

Lennon's admirers accept those faults just as Martin Luther King's personal failings are put in perspective by the greatness of his achievements. We know that heroes are flawed. And we are sad for those they hurt. However, those weaknesses don't diminish the overall achievements. They are simply a reminder of human limitations.

Of all Lennon's legacies - one of the most enduring and - perhaps the most impressive is who his enemies were.

I'm not referring to jealous rivals such as Mick Jagger - who has never recovered from Lennon writing the Stones' first hit "I Wanna Be Your Man" (after begging John and Paul for a song) only to discover that John had given him a throwaway so weak that Lennon then threw it into the Beatles roster as a Ringo vocal!

Nor to the inexplicable bleatings of detractors such as REM's Michael Stipe who implausibly claims never to have been influenced by Lennon or the Beatles and to regard them as "elevator Muzak" (Actually close analysis of Stipe's lyrics reveals that he is telling the truth. He is much more influenced by the Monkees.)

No - the true measure of John Lennon's greatness was that in the 1970's he terrified the most powerful man in the world. He literally petrified the then President of the United States into a succession of illegal acts of persecution - out of fear that Lennon's popularity would prevent his re-election.

The story - in condensed form - is this. In 1971, Lennon recorded his follow-up to the ground-breaking "Plastic Ono Band" album - the powerful "Imagine" album. Shortly before the album's release in October 1971 - Lennon and Yoko Ono decamped England and moved to New York. The album and the "Imagine" single immediately topped the charts and solidified Lennon's position as the world's most influential rock star - particularly in America.

Lennon was at the height of his political involvement at this time - railing against the war in Vietnam and many other injustices. Within weeks of arriving in the US he was meeting with Jerry Rubin and other members of the New Left. America had just lowered the voting age to 18 - and the upcoming 1972 presidential election would be the first opportunity for America's under-21's to vote.

Lennon expressed interest in partaking in fund-raising, voter-registration anti-war rallies and concerts - which would take place in many of the 1972 primary states. With the full protection of the First Amendment (which protects citizens and noncitizens alike) - Lennon's intended actions were completely legal.

But Congressional Republicans who cherished their beloved President - Richard Nixon - were worried. The popularity of John Lennon could help galvanize the anti-war movement and result in a massive vote against Nixon. After all, Lennon's anthem "Give Peace A Chance" had been sung by over half a million demonstrators at the famous November 1969 anti-war rally in Washington.

On February 4, 1972, a secret memo (now revealed under the Freedom Of information Act) was sent to Richard Nixon by none other than Senator Strom Thurmond (then a youngster of merely 70.) In the memo he railed about Lennon and the danger he could cause the President's 1972 re-election campaign. Fortunately, Thurmond (writing as a member of the Senate Judiciary committee) had a solution in mind. "If Lennon's visa is terminated it would be a strategy (sic) counter-measure." Though he noted that "caution must be taken with regard to the possible alienation of the so-called 18-year old vote if Lennon is expelled from the country."

This memo arrived in the Nixon White House shortly after the notorious 1971 John Dean memo in which he proposed "We can use the available political machinery to screw our political enemies."

As we all know - Nixon followed Dean's advice to the letter. And John Lennon was on the receiving end of a vicious 4-year campaign of FBI surveillance and INS harassment.

(In 1975 the INS chief counsel on the case resigned his position - telling Rolling Stone that the US government was being more vigorous in its attempts to deport John Lennon than it was in its attempts to expel Nazi war criminals.)

Threatened with imminent deportation at a time when he and Yoko needed to be in the US (they were trying to trace Yoko's daughter who had been abducted and taken to America by Yoko's previous husband) - Lennon was forced to tone down his quite legal political activities. Nixon was safely re-elected, and J. Edgar Hoover, who personally supervised the campaign against Lennon, was allowed to pursue the ex-Beatle aggressively.

(Time revealed the true nature of Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover.)

One cannot think of a single artist or entertainer prior to - or since John Lennon - who had that kind of impact. No other creative artist has ever induced that level of fear in a man who is ostensibly the most powerful man in the world.

Ideas, honesty, passion, humor and brilliant empathetic songs it seems were more powerful. Just imagine that....

And that is why today my eyes are red. My heart is heavy. I will play John Lennon music today. I will watch the video of Lennon insouciantly chewing gum as he sang "All You Need Is Love" live to 400 million people by satellite in June 1967. I will laugh as I watch him tweak stuffy pomposity again and again: "Those in the cheaper seats clap. The rest of you just rattle your jewelry." And I will weep still more tears at the loss of a man who inspired me in my childhood - and who inspires me to this day.

Paul got it right. It's a drag. And I'm inconsolable.

Running parallel to his primary work as a political commentator—Martin Lewis is also considered among the world's leading Beatles scholars. He has produced many Beatles-related projects including the DVD Edition of A Hard Day's Night—and he was Associate Producer of the DVD The Ed Sullivan Shows Featuring The Beatles. He was US marketing strategist for the Beatles' Anthology and Live At The BBC projects—campaigns which reunited him with his mentor – original Beatles publicist Derek Taylor. (Lewis started his career as a protege of Taylor in 1971-73)

[AKA]

Originally posted by The Tripster
Good Stuff!! Glad you like it, OU812! :thumbsup:

[musicradio77]

Originally posted by Crapple
That fourth link doesn't work. :(

I edit the forth link. Go here.