When John Lennon was shot I was only 12 years old. Elvis had died only a few years before, but I didn't care all that much. I didn't really know or understand who Elvis was or what he represented. But I had started to have a great love for John Lennon and the music of The Beatles. Ironically, I was reading a biography of the life of Mohandas Gandhi at the time. The injustice of the world surged through my young mind and filled me with an indignation and sense of injustice that never quite went away.
This was the same year that I got my first copy of "London Calling" by The Clash.
The day that Elvis died I had walked my friend home from school, through a small patch of woods and to the back door of his house. He was what is known now as a latch-key kid. When we reached the back door we could hear his mother sobbing. We entered. She was there, home from work, sitting on the wood floor, music playing, records surrounded her. She was dressed only in cotton t-shirt and underwear. She called us to come to her and she hugged us both, sobbing. She held on to us and cried and cried. I could feel her body shaking with her sobs and her uneven breathing. There was the glass of wine on the table where the record player was.
This is my memory of Elvis, to this day. It is charged with a sexuality and excitement that very little in my life has equalled. But I knew nothing at all of Elvis. I only knew that he gifted me an erection from this soft and sensual creature. My friend, whose name I have long forgotten, had no idea that his mother gracefully and elegantly entered the permanent spank-bank that day. She walked in as if there was no door on the place, only t-shirts and panties blowing in the breeze.
But with Lennon it was very different. I came home from being somewhere, doing something, who knows. The television was off and my mother was reading. I thought nothing of it. I bid her the love of a son and went off to bed, stalking baboons in reddening weather. Such is a mother's love, knowing that one more night of sleep wouldn't change anything, but it is still what she wanted for me.
When I awoke I walked into the room where the tv was and I could see a picture of John on the tv, the type picture they use only when it is over, forever, alone and framed in black, with dates beneath. My mother consoled me, though I don't remember crying, maybe I did. I was in shock. I have memories before this one, and many, but this is the first one that I really felt like I shared with the whole world. Something had been taken from me, and it was never coming back.
It was about this time that I really began to notice that I was dissatisfied with the world, that it was iniquitous and unfair, and that there was really very little that could be done about it, but rail against it you must. I railed and I railed and I railed....
Over the years since, there are certain songs: "Because", "I'm Only Sleeping", "Eight Days A Week", "Deer Prudence", "I'm A Loser", "I Am The Walrus".... "Ticket To Ride", "Julia, "I'm So Tired".... "Strawberry Fields Forever"...
I still wonder how anybody could kill such a man.
"Catcher In The Rye" Phonies, Yes, yes, yes, I read it too...
Even after reading all the articles about Mark David Chapman, I still could never understand why it had happened. I still don't understand, but after 30 years you just sort of Let It Be....
Here is a playlist I put together of my favorite Beatles songs, arranged as if I had made a perfect fantasy Beatles album for myself. It's called An Hour In The Life
http://www.lazpod.com/episodes/lazpod18/
I gave the playlist over to a dj, Damian Lazarus, to release anonymously, but it's something I did many years ago out of love and affection for one of my favorite bands, and a few of my favorite people... and I'm very proud of it, as meager a thing as it is.
Enjoy....
"Cry Baby Cry"
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