Remembering JOHN LENNON - Murdered 25 yrs ago toda

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Like I used to write on all my school books :

"No Man Dies Until The Last Person On Earth Ceases To Speak His Name. JOHN LENNON 1940- FOREVER!"

Here's some news articles about today's 25th anniversary of the tragic shooting and death of John Lennon, age 40, on Dec 8 1980. I was ten years old when he died; and I felt it as a personal loss... the first time anyone's death really 'touched' me in some way.

Any other John Lennon fans here? Add your rememberances or comments...

I'm posting some news articles...

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Imagining legacy of enigmatic Beatle star

Lennon is an enigma, even in death








Lennon in photo taken days before death.


Mourners in 1980.


The Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park

John Lennon tried on all sorts of personalities during the 40 years of his life, so it's no surprise we're still sorting them out 25 years after his death.
It was 25 years ago tonight - an unusually mild December New York evening during which the biggest event was expected to be the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree - that Lennon was shot to death as he entered the Dakota.

He was a fascinating figure then. He remains so. But are we any closer to figuring out what to make of him, or his music?

With the passage of time and the wash of sorrow over his murder, "Some people see Lennon today as St. John," says WFUV and Sirius Satellite Radio deejay Vin Scelsa. "I'm not sure he'd be pleased by that."

On the other hand, the years immediately before and after his death often saw him portrayed at the opposite extreme: as a vain, self-absorbed and yet depressed man who had lost his musical muse and made up a fairy tale about being a househusband to his and Yoko Ono's son, Sean.

"Most of the scandals have disappeared," says Ken Michaels, who hosts the Beatles show "Every Little Thing" on XM Satellite Radio.

"John was as close as any celebrity could come to being an open book. There's almost nothing you can say about him that he didn't say about himself. When [his first wife] Cynthia writes a book saying he could be violent, we already knew that."

Before the opening of the musical "Lennon" on Broadway earlier this year, Ono said the goal of the show was to use his solo music to explore his life.

"He wasn't an angel," she said. "He had demons, and he tried to fight them."

"Lennon" folded quickly, through no fault of the music. Most reviewers suggested the premise was just too ambitious.

What may have changed from the early 1980s, when the late Albert Goldman was writing his sneering biography of Lennon, is that most discussions of Lennon today turn back to his music - what he made and what he never had the chance to make.

"There would have been more," says Meg Griffin, a longtime New York deejay now on Sirius. "And that we never got to hear it is a tragedy, because we needed John Lennon's truth through the Reagan years."

In some ways, the music world has not yet come to a consensus on Lennon's solo career.

"A lot of the solo sides are great," says Michaels. "But almost no one plays them, so most listeners only know the two or three, like 'Imagine,' that are in rotation at classic-rock stations. It's frustrating."

Joe Raiola, who, along with the Actors Theatre Workshop, is presenting the 25th annual Lennon Tribute tomorrow and Saturday nights at Lincoln Center's Clark Studio Theater, says he finds fans appreciate the whole range, as long as it's presented in Lennon's spirit.

"They don't want a kiss-a-- evening," he says. "John was a complex man."

This fall, Dolly Parton filmed a video in Central Park for a new version of "Imagine," whose "Imagine ... no religion" lyric would seem to make it an unlikely Red State anthem.

Parton isn't simply ignoring that line, a technique some singers use when they treat "This Land Is Your Land" as an uncritical ode to America.

She says she thinks Lennon's real meaning is a greater truth: "If we could just stop pointing fingers as to who's not going to heaven, who's definitely going to hell, whose religion is better than whose ... we could at least know a little heaven on Earth. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could love each other, share the world and live in peace?"

The larger, unanswerable question about John Lennon, of course, is whether the man himself, who would have turned 65 two months ago, would have shed a few more of his younger selves as time went on.

Bill King, editor of the respected magazine Beatlefan, for one, believes that, however Lennon evolved, he would have held to certain basic values.

"I think he'd be pretty appalled by the Patriot Act mentality today," says King. "And I'm sure he would be opposing the current war.

"I figure if he were alive today, he'd be just as controversial."

NY Daily News

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Is Lennon still an icon to the young?
By Stephen Dowling
BBC News



What does John Lennon mean to the people of Merseyside, UK?


In pictures

The Beatles may still be revered, but is John Lennon's music and message of peace resonating with young people today - 25 years after his death?
John Lennon was one of the most iconic men on the planet in the 1960s and 70s, revered by young people all over the globe.

His fiery wit and artistic vision was an inspiration to millions across the globe, as he provided a creative foil to Paul McCartney and forged an artistic and politically-active partnership with second wife Yoko Ono.

Lennon's death, shot by deranged fan Mark Chapman outside his Manhattan apartment building on 8 December 1980, caused a wave of mourning.

The Lennon legacy survived his death - buoyed by the posthumous re-release of his humanist anthem Imagine - and the continuing influence of The Beatles ensured Lennon's iconic position.

Massive influence

Even into the early 1990s, Lennon still enjoyed godhead status, especially during the Britpop boom in the UK. The Gallagher brothers of Oasis revered Lennon as a visionary songwriter and style icon.

But what about now?

In a music scene where reality TV stars such as Will Young and Girls Aloud are chart-toppers, where 50 Cent and the Sugababes hold sway, is Lennon still relevant?

When you look at Lennon, especially in the later years of his life, he was as famous for his campaigning as he was for his music

NME's Julian Marshall

Julian Marshall, news editor at music weekly NME, believes he is still a massive influence on music-loving teens and fledgling musicians.


"I think a huge amount of bands, regardless of what generation they are in, look back at the beginnings, at where rock 'n' roll started, and that means Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

"And for a lot of people, Lennon was the most important member of The Beatles."

Mr Marshall believes it is not just the music but Lennon's political bent that has also aged well.

After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, Lennon and his second wife spent their honeymoon in a hotel room bed in Amsterdam to campaign for world peace. The search for peace became one of his overriding aims.


If you talk to anybody in a proper band now they will count Lennon as an influence - or at the very least as someone they respect

Q editor Paul Rees

"When you look at Lennon, especially in the later years of his life, he was as famous for his campaigning as he was for his music.

"This generation of musicians are angry about different issues, but they've carried on that aspect of his personality," he says.

"In the last few years we've seen it with things like the protest over the Iraq War by Damon Albarn and Massive Attack, and the Live8 and anti-poverty campaigns this year."

The BBC's Newsround website recently asked its readers if they had heard of Lennon, his music and his campaigning.

One reader, Amatis, posted the message: "The world needs more people like John Lennon. And sadly no-one nowadays even comes close to filling his shoes."

Paul Rees, the editor of rock magazine Q, also believes Lennon's influence still resonates with young people today.

"It's because he's one of the last of that generation of pop stars who stood up for what they believed in. That sort of rebellion people respect.

"Plus, with Lennon there's that tragic aspect," adds Mr Rees. "It's like he's been freeze-framed."
BBC News

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Liverpool, NYC remember Lennon

Thursday, December 8, 2005 Posted: 0924 GMT (1724 HKT)

Ono is comforted by music mogul David Geffen after the murder.
Image:

JOHN LENNON
Born: October 9, 1940, Liverpool, England

Died: December 8, 1980, New York, New York

Married: Cynthia Powell, 1962-1969; Yoko Ono, 1969-1980

Children: Julian (1962- ) and Sean (1975- )

Notable solo songs: "Give Peace a Chance," 1969; "Instant Karma," 1970; "Imagine," 1971; "Mind Games," 1973; "Whatever Gets You Through the Night," 1974; "(Just Like) Starting Over," 1980; "Watching the Wheels," 1980

Tidbits: "Imagine" is the official song of the human rights organization Amnesty International; the area in Central Park across from the Dakota, at 72nd Street and Central Park West in Manhattan, is called "Strawberry Fields" in Lennon's honor. RELATED
Gallery: The impact of John Lennon

• All those years ago
• For people there, Lennon's death lingers
• Review: Beatles myth, Beatles facts
• Review: Lennon, 'Revealed' and remembered
• Cynthia Lennon: In her own write
FACT BOX
Songs for John Lennon

Here is a list of songs at least partially inspired by Lennon's death:

"All Those Years Ago," George Harrison

"Here Today," Paul McCartney

"Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)," Elton John

"Life Is Real (Song For Lennon)," Queen

"Not Now John," Pink Floyd

"Edge Of Seventeen," Stevie Nicks

"Moonlight Shadow," Mike Oldfield

"The Late Great Johnny Ace," Paul Simon

"Fragile," Sting

Source: Beatlelinks (www.beatlelinks.net) YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS

John Lennon
Music
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Manage Alerts | What Is This? (Reuters) -- Liverpool and New York prepared to honor pop icon John Lennon on Thursday with floral and musical tributes and a candle lit vigil close to where he was shot dead 25 years ago.

In a ceremony in the center of the northern English city where Lennon was born and raised, fans and officials will create a shrine beneath a statue of the legendary Beatle, gunned down in New York by a fan in the presence of his wife Yoko Ono.

Later in the day, the city holds a memorial service for the man who created some of the best-known tunes in pop and is considered one of the most influential songwriters of all time.

In New York, hundreds of mourners are expected to gather at the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park and light candles at 10:50 p.m. ET (0350 GMT Friday), the time Lennon was shot.

Friends in Liverpool remembered Lennon with fondness, but also felt he distanced himself from them after meeting Ono, the woman who many fans blame for breaking up the Beatles in 1970.

"You couldn't approach John at the end, and looking back it was from the moment ... he met Yoko Ono," said former friend and fellow musician Billy Kinsley, who knew Beatles Lennon and Paul McCartney in the 1960s.

"It was sad. He was my hero from when I was a 15-year-old kid, and he was always approachable, always said hello, and had a little chat. But after he met Yoko, that went out the window completely."

His assessment of Lennon and the Beatles as musicians, however, has never changed.

"It really did make a big impression on me seeing the Beatles on that first night at the Cavern, because it just changed my outlook," he told Reuters in a makeshift recording studio in his garden, recalling the night in February 1962.

"I thought 'My God, I have just seen the best thing that I could ever see', and since then it's been downhill because I've never seen anything as good as the Beatles."

Kinsley will perform "Beautiful Boy", which Lennon dedicated to his second son Sean on his "Double Fantasy" album, at a memorial service in Liverpool later on Thursday.

In New York, Ayarton Dos Santos will be at the "Imagine" mosaic, named after one of the Lennon's most famous songs, just as he has been nearly every day for the last 13 years to arrange petals, acorns, apples and bagels into a peace sign.

"It's all about peace, love and happiness. It's for brother John," Dos Santos, 41, said.

"You come here, you feel his spirit. His spirit is so alive in here," he added.

Yet the man who brought a generation such pleasure with seminal tracks like "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Give Peace and Chance" and "Imagine," also caused pain to those who loved him.

Both his first wife Cynthia and their son Julian recently voiced their sense of rejection when Lennon left them for Ono.

Cynthia told Reuters earlier this year that she and Julian were "airbrushed" from the Beatles' story and that Ono made it clear she did not want her in New York after Lennon's death.

In a statement on his Web site, Julian added: "I have always had very mixed feelings about Dad. He was the father I loved who let me down in so many ways ... it's painful to think that his early death robbed me of the chance for us to know each other better."

Ono's spokesman Elliot Mintz said he had received more than 500 requests for interviews with Lennon's Japanese-born wife.

"It's just too painful for her to discuss," he said.

Copyright 2005 Reuters. All

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All those years ago
John Lennon still casts long shadow, 25 years after death
By David Bauder
Associated Press


Wednesday, December 7, 2005 Posted: 2138 GMT (0538 HKT)

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, New York, 1980.
Image: "Fragile," Sting


Music
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Manage Alerts | What Is This? NEW YORK (AP) -- The song was only six years old, but might just as well have been 60.

Walking out of a college dormitory after visiting a friend one December night 25 years ago, I heard John Lennon's sweet song of longing, "#9 Dream," wafting out from an open door. It sounded wonderful. It sounded odd.

Why would a radio station or stereo be playing that? So much had happened since. Disco. Punk rock. Lennon had reconciled with Yoko Ono after a separation and was only then beginning to publicly emerge from a period where he concentrated on home life more than music. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard the song.

I walked home. Then, when I saw a cluster of friends quietly gathered around a television set, the reason became sickeningly apparent.

It was December 8, 1980. A mentally disturbed fan who had collected Lennon's autograph earlier in the day waited outside of the Manhattan apartment building called the Dakota for the singer to return from a recording session. Mark David Chapman opened fire. Lennon didn't survive the trip to the hospital.

The musical hero of a generation was dead, and anyone who had ever sung along to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" or chanted "give peace a chance" also remembers where they were when they heard the news.

In his typically blunt manner, Lennon had told Beatles fans a decade earlier that "the dream is over."

Now it really was.

Twenty-five years later, the day stands as a cultural black hole. Lennon became an instant legend, even more so than before, but it was hardly worth the price. Millions of people who never met him felt they knew him, felt they knew all the Beatles. His music often felt like personal letters; on "Watching the Wheels" he explained why he needed to step off the merry-go-round of stardom. A friend was gone.

"I still miss him massively," former songwriting partner Paul McCartney told The Associated Press. "It was a horrific day for all of us."

'Everyone was so heartbroken'
That night, an ambitious young woman who had just moved to New York to make it as a singer or dancer was out walking a few blocks from Lennon's home on the Upper West Side. She heard the sirens, saw a crowd beginning to gather. A curious Madonna joined them outside the Dakota.

"I remember walking up and going 'What's going on? What's going on?"' she recalled. "And they said John Lennon was shot. It was so weird."

Madonna was a toddler during the feverish days of Beatlemania. But she later recorded Lennon's utopian vision of a peaceful world, "Imagine," which has matured into an anthem and, 25 years from now, will likely be Lennon's best-remembered song.

Another version of "Imagine," by country singer Dolly Parton, is in music stores now. In her own tribute, Parton shot part of a video for the song in Strawberry Fields, the Central Park memorial for Lennon. Sharp-eyed viewers will spot the Dakota in the background.

Parton had been on a plane from Nashville to Los Angeles the night Lennon was shot. She was supposed to go out with friends, but instead they all went to her house to watch the news and talk about it. "Everyone was so heartbroken," she said.

"Like all young teenage girls back then, I fell in love with the Beatles," she said. "Back there in the Smoky Mountains, it was like something had been dropped from outer space."

Also in California, rock singer John Fogerty felt the loss of a kindred spirit. In 1969, Fogerty's band Creedence Clearwater Revival had sold more records than the Beatles, then an astonishing accomplishment. But both men spent the latter half of the 1970s publicly silent; Fogerty because of a business dispute, Lennon because he was "watching the wheels."

"I thought about him every day because he was that important to me," he said. "I was still a recluse but I was working on music in some fashion every day, and I would say to myself, 'I wonder what John Lennon is doing?' For several years we didn't hear from him and I would always think about that fact."

Singer Neil Diamond had been in New York that December night for the premiere of his movie "The Jazz Singer."

Diamond had been a struggling songwriter when the Beatles hit. No one was interested in hearing him sing. No one was particularly interested in his creativity, either: They just wanted him to churn out songs that sounded like current hits. The Beatles made it standard for musicians to interpret their own songs, and to experiment.

"Aside from being broken-hearted about the loss of this man, I felt I owed him something," he said. "My life would not have been the same without the Beatles."

Lennon's music has even touched artists who weren't alive when he was, like 21-year-old singer Patrick Stump of the hit pop-punk band Fall Out Boy.

"It is like the Bible," he said. "You can't cite it without sounding cliched, but here's the thing, there's a reason why it's so citable like that. His body of work was so interesting and had so many valid points."

What could have been

Flowers are arranged in a peace symbol in Central Park's Strawberry Fields.What has the world missed in 25 years without John Lennon?

Yoko Ono has grown old without a husband; she still lives in the Dakota and is the caretaker of the work he left behind. Sean Lennon grew up without a dad. He's tried music, too.

John's legacy remains frozen in time and, like James Dean's or Kurt Cobain's, burnished by sudden death far too young. Lennon didn't grow old in the spotlight, didn't have to contend with tired "steel wheelchairs" jokes like his peers in the Rolling Stones. He didn't have to watch his talent fade, his instincts betray him or hear the whispers that he'd lost it. McCartney could tell him a few things about that.

It's impossible to predict from his catalogue where his muse would have taken him.

Truth be told, his track record as a solo artist was wildly uneven in style and quality. The brutal confessional of "The Plastic Ono Band" was followed by the perfectly polished "Imagine." There's the leftist screeds in "Some Time in New York City," the tired wistfulness on "Walls and Bridges" and the domesticated work he made at the end.

Even during the Beatles' intense creative period, author Bob Spitz in this fall's new "The Beatles: The Biography" portrays Lennon as tormented by personal demons and drug abuse. Would it have crippled him as he got older?

"The level of engagement wouldn't have gone away," said music journalist Alan Light. "If he was going to be an activist, he would have been all the way an activist. If he was going to be a father, he would have been all the way a father."

Lennon clearly had courage as an artist. He wasn't afraid to mess up, or to speak up. Lennon mocked Bob Dylan with a song, "Serve Yourself," when he didn't like "Gotta Serve Somebody." It's not too hard to envision him making his own cracks about the Stones during their dreary years. Few others today have the stature or nature to speak up with a contrarian word, and know they'll be listened to.

By moving to New York and walking the streets, Lennon always seemed more accessible, more human than his peers, Light said. No one had more reason to fear the warped effect of fandom than the four men who lived through the hysteria of Beatlemania. Living outside of a bubble made Lennon a target.

'And when they are gone from you ...'
Chapman remains in New York's Attica state prison, where his third request for parole was denied in October. Ono wrote to the parole board urging he not be released. Chapman won't be eligible for parole again for two years.

A legacy of Lennon's death is a lingering uncertainty among musicians about being in public. Tom Araya, lead singer of Slayer, admitted that he's "a little more cautious, conscious of his surroundings" than he might have been otherwise.

Losing the partner to whom he's wedded in history has been difficult for McCartney, in ways he could and could not control. With Lennon lionized, McCartney's reputation shrank in comparison. For a while, it became LENNON-McCartney.

It was unfair, and has since been corrected, but not before breeding an unwarranted insecurity. McCartney has spent years seemingly saying, "Hey, I was cool, too." Light was struck by how McCartney opens his current concert tour with a video reminding fans of his Beatles exploits, when the music can speak for itself.

"He just digs himself deeper into a hole no matter when he does it," Light said. If Lennon had lived, McCartney said he believes they would have written songs together again. It all depended on the state of their relationship, badly frayed in the Beatles' fracture, but improving at the time of Lennon's death.

"We were having long telephone conversations about his cats and baking bread," McCartney said. "Ordinary things, which I think easily could have led us into being mates again."

After seven years of studying the Beatles, author Spitz said he doubted it. Lennon had left the Beatles behind and hadn't gone back before he died. The closest the world got was when McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr transformed Lennon leftovers "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love" into "Beatles" songs.

"I always assumed I would meet him," Fogerty said. "And when they are gone from you, you're almost overcome with the sense that you never got to say goodbye. I never got to touch base from my heart to his heart and I'm sure that millions of us felt the same way."

Lennon's words from "#9 Dream" still echo.

"So long ago. Was it in a dream? Was it just a dream?"

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

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For people there, Lennon's death lingers

Wednesday, December 7, 2005 Posted: 1755 GMT (0155 HKT)

Alan Weiss and Stephan Lynn were both present when Lennon was brought into the hospital.
Image:

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• All those years ago
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Manage Alerts | What Is This? NEW YORK (AP) -- A television news producer. An emergency room doctor. Two NYPD beat cops. Before that December night 25 years ago, they shared little but this: As children of the '60s, the soundtrack of their lives came courtesy of the Beatles.

Alan Weiss, a two-time Emmy winner before his 30th birthday, was working at WABC-TV. His teen years were the time of "Revolver" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." In his 20s, Weiss admired John Lennon's music and politics.

Dr. Stephan Lynn was starting his second year as head of the Roosevelt Hospital emergency room. He remembered the Beatles playing "The Ed Sullivan Show," although he didn't quite get the resultant hysteria.

Officer Pete Cullen, with partner Steve Spiro, did the night shift on Manhattan's Upper West Side. They'd occasionally run into Lennon walking through the neighborhood with his son, Sean. "The Beatles were a big part of my life," Cullen said.

On the night of December 8, 1980, Lynn was in the ER, Weiss was heading home from the newsroom, Cullen and Spiro were on the job -- and Mark David Chapman was lurking outside Lennon's home.

The chubby man with the wire-rimmed glasses stood patiently in the dark outside the Dakota apartment house. He carried a copy of "The Catcher In the Rye," the J.D. Salinger tale of disaffected youth, and a five-shot Charter Arms .38-caliber revolver.

Lennon, just two months past his 40th birthday, returned from a midtown Manhattan recording studio at 10:50 p.m with wife Yoko Ono. The limousine stopped at the ornate 72nd Street gate; John and Yoko emerged. Chapman's voice, the same one that had beseeched the ex-Beatle for an autograph hours earlier, rang out: "Mr. Lennon!"

The handgun was leveled at the rock world's foremost pacifist. Four bullets pierced their famous target.

The voice of a generation was reduced to a final gasp: "I'm shot."

"Do you know what you just did?" screamed the Dakota's doorman.

"I just shot John Lennon," Chapman replied softly.

The cops
Back in 1965, while still in the Police Academy, 23-year-old Pete Cullen's first real assignment was working security outside the Warwick Hotel on West 54th Street. Upstairs, safe from the insanity below, were the Beatles.

Fifteen years later, the officer was staring at a dying John Lennon within minutes after Chapman opened fire. Cullen and Spiro were first to answer the report of shots fired.

Cullen was struck by the lack of movement: the doorman, a building handyman and the killer, all standing as if frozen.

"Somebody just shot John Lennon!" the doorman finally shouted, pointing at Chapman.

"Where's Lennon?" Cullen asked. The rock star was crumpled inside a nearby vestibule, blood pouring from his chest. There were bullet holes in the glass; Cullen went to Lennon's side as Spiro cuffed the gunman.

Two other officers lugged Lennon's limp body to a waiting police car, which sped downtown to Roosevelt Hospital. The cuffed suspect directed Spiro to his copy of "The Catcher in the Rye," which was lying on the ground nearby with the inscription, "This is my statement." And then he spoke: "I acted alone," Chapman said.

"That blew my mind," said Spiro, who suddenly felt like he was in a movie. The veteran officer later thought about Lennon's 5-year-old son, Sean, who was sitting a few floors above. Spiro had a boy the same age.

In the midst of the chaos, Cullen spotted Yoko Ono. "Can I go, too?" she asked as her husband disappeared. A ride was quickly arranged. Cullen and Spiro then loaded Chapman into their car for a trip to the 20th Precinct.

"He was apologetic," Cullen recalled -- but not for shooting Lennon. "I remember that he was apologizing for giving us a hard time."

The producer
As the wounded Lennon made the one-mile trip to Roosevelt Hospital, Alan Weiss was already there. The TV news producer's Honda motorcycle collided with a taxi around 10 p.m., and he was awaiting X-rays.

A sudden buzz filled the room: A gunshot victim was coming in.

The ER doors opened with a crash as a half-dozen police officers burst through, carrying a stretcher with the victim. Doctors and nurses flew into action. Two of the cops paused alongside Weiss' gurney.

"Jesus, can you believe it?" one asked. "John Lennon."

Weiss was incredulous. He bribed a hospital worker $20 to call the WABC-TV newsroom with a tip that Lennon was shot. The money disappeared, and the call was never made.

Five minutes passed, and Weiss heard a strangled sound. "I twist around and there is Yoko Ono in a full-length fur coat on the arm of a police officer, and she's sobbing," he said. Weiss finally persuaded another cop to let him use a hospital phone, and he reached the WABC-TV assignment editor with his tip around 11 p.m.

The editor confirmed a reported shooting at Lennon's address. Weiss returned to his gurney, watching in disbelief as the doctors frantically worked on the rock icon. A familiar tune came over the hospital's Muzak: the Beatles' "All My Loving."

It was surreal. And then too real.

"The song ends. And within a minute or two, I hear a scream: 'No, oh no, no no no,' " Weiss said. "The door opens, and Yoko comes out crying hysterically."

Weiss' tip was confirmed and given to Howard Cosell, who told the nation of Lennon's death during "Monday Night Football."

The doctor
Dr. Stephan Lynn walked to the end of the emergency room hall where Yoko Ono was waiting in an otherwise empty room. It was his job to deliver the word that John Lennon, her soulmate and spouse, was dead.

"She refused to accept or believe that," Lynn recalled. "For five minutes, she kept repeating, 'It's not true. I don't believe you. You're lying."'

Lynn listened quietly.

His 15 1/2-hour shift had ended at 10:30 p.m., with Lynn returning to his home in Lennon's neighborhood. His phone was soon ringing; could he come back to help out? A man with a gunshot to the chest was coming to Roosevelt.

Lynn arrived by cab just before his patient did. The victim had no pulse, no blood pressure, no breathing. Lynn, joined by two other doctors, worked frantically. Gradually, they came to realize that they were trying to save the life of one of the world's most famous men.

Twenty minutes later, they gave up.

Ono left the hospital to tell her son the news, leaving Lynn to inform the media throng that Lennon was gone.

Back in the emergency room, Lynn arranged for the disposal of all medical supplies and equipment used on Lennon -- a move to thwart ghoulish collectors.

It was almost 3 a.m. when he began walking home up Columbus Avenue. His wife and two daughters were there; one of them attended the same school as Sean Lennon. Many nights, the Lynns and the Lennons sat in the same restaurant eating sushi. Often, the famous family strolled down 72nd Street.

That world was gone along with Lennon.

"I never again saw Yoko and Sean walking the streets," the doctor said. "Going out in public? That ceased to take place."

Getting together, getting away
Yoko Ono never remarried, and still lives in the Dakota. She tends to the Lennon legacy, which includes convincing the state parole board that Chapman should die behind bars. He comes up for parole next year.

The cops from the 20th Precinct hold a reunion every two years. Cullen comes up from his home in Naples, Florida, to hang out with the old gang. They don't talk about the Lennon shooting.

Weiss, after getting the scoop of his career, wound up leaving the ultra-competitive news business. "The major events of my professional career all had to do with other people's tragedy," he said. He now produces a syndicated show with teens reporting the news for teens.

Lynn is still working at Roosevelt Hospital, still the director of the department. As December 8 approaches each year, he gets phone calls from reporters, from fans, from kids born years after Lennon's murder.

"It's hard to imagine it's 25 years," he said.

Imagine.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

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Musicians recall the Lennon they knew
By Steve Morse, Globe Staff | December 8, 2005

Memories of John Lennon, Edited and introduced by Yoko Ono, HarperEntertainment, 310 pp., illustrated, $24.95

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Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts Say what you will about Yoko Ono, but she has done a remarkable job in keeping John Lennon's legacy alive. Today marks the 25th anniversary of his death, but instead of leaving his fans grief-stricken, she released this uplifting book of insights about him from such artists as Mick Jagger, Elton John, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Carly Simon, Bono, and Pete Townshend, along with record-industry giants and journalists and photographers who covered Lennon during the early years.

Lennon in all of his multiple personalities -- Beatles songwriter, political activist, family man, and prankster -- is revealed in generally flattering terms, but throughout he is very human. Jagger reveals how they used to get drunk and go sailing off Montauk, Long Island, while Charles recalls how the Beatles were just regular guys who opened for him in Hamburg and Stuttgart, Germany, in the early 1960s.

''Backstage afterward, we would sit . . . and say we loved each other's music -- the typical thing that people in our musical brotherhood do," Charles notes. ''See, we were just common people, working together."

Singer Jackie DeShannon remembers opening for the Beatles in their first extensive tour of the United States. ''We played jokes on each other and had countless pillow fights," she says of Lennon. And Ronnie Hawkins, whose group later became known as the Band, talks of how John and Yoko stayed at his house in Toronto -- they ate macrobiotic food, but he caught them down at his fridge in the middle of the night sneaking bologna.

Some artists contribute drawings to express their feelings. Bono sends a caricature of a wire-rimmed Lennon with the caption: ''For the first time in my life I could see." And Joan Baez adds a strange pencil drawing showing Lennon exulting with a free soft drink he got out of a hotel vending machine in New York.

Lennon's playfulness resonates frequently. Lewis reminisces about Lennon kissing his boots after a gig at the Roxy in Los Angeles. ''Thanks, Killer, for showin' me how to rock 'n' roll," Lennon tells him. Iggy Pop recalls going to a topless bar with him. And Brit folkie Donovan remembers that he and Lennon stayed at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in India and went up to the roof of their bungalow to swap acoustic-guitar licks, and that Lennon was eager to have Donovan teach him to finger-pick.

Of course, there are heavy moments as well. California state senator Tom Hayden recalls FBI agents roaming the crowd at Lennon's benefit for jailed marijuana user John Sinclair. And a neighbor at the Dakota, in Manhattan, chillingly reveals how, for days after Lennon's death, crowds gathered around the building to sing ''Give Peace a Chance."

But most of this book, which is divided by chapters from the various participants, deals with the joyous side of the man. Townshend of the Who talks of opening for the Beatles in England and having Lennon happily join the band for a song, though he hid behind a curtain so the audience wouldn't see him. And close adviser Elliot Mintz offers this eloquent assessment: ''It really didn't matter if you thought of [Lennon] as saint or sinner, mediocre or brilliant, heroic or naive, a working-class hero or an isolated dreamer . . . everybody had an opinion. He touched you."

© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.

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The soundtrack of our lives
By HANNAH BROWN


If you're old enough to have once had a favorite Beatle, then you probably know that today - Dec. 8 - is the 25th anniversary of the day John Lennon was murdered. For many people in the 40-and-over age range, that day was the first one in which we experienced a where-were-you-when-you-heard moment.

John Lennon, first as a Beatle, then later as a New York-based singer/songwriter teamed up with wife Yoko Ono, was an icon whose importance in contemporary music cannot be overstated. It was hard not to feel a personal sense of loss when he was suddenly gunned down outside his home at the Dakota on Central Park West in Manhattan. I grew up just 20 blocks away from that building and I remember walking by there after school with my friends, hoping to catch a glimpse of him (preferably without Yoko), never dreaming that he would be killed right next to the spot where so many came to wish him well. It's almost as hard to take in the fact that 25 years have passed since that day, but they have and the anniversary is being commemorated around the world, including right here in Israel.

The biggest organized celebration is at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque at midnight. A group called Progrock is sponsoring a program of rarely seen Beatles films and clips, including footage of them performing in Japan on their last world tour, and also of their first American tour. There will be a screening of Gimme Some Truth, a documentary about the making of John Lennon's Imagine album, directed by avant-garde filmmakers Jonas Mekas and Andrew Solt. The program will be hosted DJ MosheL and will last about three-and-a-half hours.

There will be some special programming on television, although not nearly as much as you'd hope. Yes 2 is broadcasting the 1994 Backbeat tonight at 6:10 p.m. It's a fictional account of the Beatles' early days performing in Hamburg, and focuses on John Lennon's relationship with Stu Sutcliffe, his childhood friend. Ian Hart is excellent as the young John. At 1 a.m., Starworld features what is billed as A Tribute to John Lennon, while Channel Eight is showing a documentary called The Beatles' Biggest Secrets at 11:20 p.m.

If none of these tributes work for you, then you can rent some videos or DVDs about Lennon and the Beatles. The easiest documentary to get hold of is Imagine: John Lennon (1988), a Yoko-approved film directed by Andrew Solt that features great clips of Lennon, interviews with those who knew him and a great deal of home movie footage provided by his widow. Another option would be to rent some of the Beatles‚ classic movies, such as A Hard Day's Night (1964), a faux-documentary look at the early days of the Beatles, which many still believe to be the best rock movie ever made, or the 1965 Help!, which features the Beatles playing themselves in a slightly dated but still charming madcap Sixties caper. John briefly flirted with acting and you may be able to find a DVD of his one role in a mainstream picture, How I Won The War (1967), in which he played a Cockney soldier in World War II, for which he received mostly favorable reviews. All three films were directed by Richard Lester. Magical Mystery Tour (1967), is a fantasy musical and Let It Be (1970) is a look behind-the-scenes at the making of that record album. Although John Lennon didn't provide the speaking voice for his character in Yellow Submarine (1968), he did do his own singing, and this cartoon musical is as fresh and inventive today as it was when it was first released. Children will love it, although it might be too intense for the under-eight set.
Of course, you can always just put on your Lennon and Beatles CDs and dream back to the days when Lennon was alive and imagine that you're listening to an actual performance.

Or imagine anything else...

Jerusalem Post

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Looking back at Lennon
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
John Lennon, killed by a deranged fan 25 years ago Thursday, left a towering legacy as a member of The Beatles. But he also enjoyed a fruitful solo career before he was gunned down outside the Dakota apartment building. For those who may be more aware of his Bed-In for Peace with Yoko Ono, his immigration battles or his Mr. Mom retreat to raise son Sean, USA TODAY presents a sampling of essentials. (Related story: The newest takes on Lennon's legacy)

John Lennon performs live at Madison Square Garden in August 1972.
AP file photo

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band

Lennon's official solo debut in 1970 is a chilling but ultimately inspiring diary of candid venting. Alternately introspective and brimming with pain-fueled rage, he reveals his disillusionment with stardom, family and colleagues.

Imagine

Lennon's last great release (1971) is gentler and more accessible than Plastic, but his ferocity simmers in such rockers as How Do You Sleep, a slap at Paul McCartney. Even the sweet Jealous Guy and peace anthem Imagine can't disguise Lennon's fears and shattered world view.

Musical musts

Lennon’s entire solo catalog
is now available online at several
digital music services. Suggestions
for a customized primer album:


Working Class Hero
Imagine
Jealous Guy
Nobody Told Me
How Do You Sleep
God
Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
Mind Games
Instant Karma
Gimme Some Truth
Borrowed Time
Out of the Blue
#9 Dream






Rock 'n' Roll

This marginalized 1975 album may owe some of its reckless charm to the tense, ramshackle studio sessions and Lennon's refusal to take it too seriously. He started with Phil Spector, then took over production himself on breezy and brash recordings of such retro favorites as Be-Bop-a-Lula, Stand by Me and Peggy Sue.

Double Fantasy

After five years under voluntary house arrest, Lennon returned to the pop scene in 1980 with sentimental songs about domestic harmony. The tragedy of death waiting at his doorstep casts a sad shadow over his mood of serenity and optimism. Lennon isn't at his peak, and a single Fantasy without Ono's wobbly pop would have been twice as good. A heart-tugging swan song.

Inside John Lennon

(Passport DVD, $14.98) An 80-minute unauthorized documentary offers a concise and unfussy overview of Lennon's career. Anecdotes and soundbites include spontaneous and insightful input from his sister Julia, producer George Martin and bandmates from the pre-Beatles Quarrymen.

Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon

(Capitol DVD, $22.98) Home movies, rare stage footage, concept films and photo montages create a visual feast that dovetails the original Lennon Legend CD. The sound is superb, and though some of the video is substandard, it's poignant and intriguing (except the John-and-Yoko treacle).

In His Own Write

(Simon & Schuster, $15) The Times Literary Supplement called this slim volume, published in 1964, "worth the attention of anyone who fears for the impoverishment of the English language and the British imagination." An equally bewitching book, A Spaniard in the Works, followed in 1965.

Skywriting by Word of Mouth

(Harper Paperbacks, $14) Lennon offers a frank, sarcastic and heartfelt account of his transition from The Beatles to solo status and dwells on his struggles with drugs and fame.

Lennon Remembers

(Da Capo, $20) In the full transcripts of 1970 interviews conducted for Rolling Stone by publisher Jann Wenner, Lennon is bitter and clearly psychologically strained shortly after The Beatles' break-up. He later disavowed many of his comments. Still, his candor, personal revelations and eagerness to deflate his own mythology are breathtaking.

Lennon: The Definitive Biography

(By Ray Coleman, Harper Paperbacks, $21.95) This exhaustive probe of Lennon's life and ancestry explores family relationships and their influence on his personality and music. Particular emphasis is placed on the pivotal roles of women, especially his mother.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All

[CCADP]

An Unhappy 25th Anniversary

by Joal Ryan
Dec 7, 2005, 4:55 PM PT



Music, activism, vigils.

Things that were so much a part of John Lennon's life are being used to mark the 25th anniversary of his death.

a d v e r t i s e m e n t






In New York City, fans of former Beatle will gather Thursday night outside the apartment building where he was shot to death on the evening of Dec. 8, 1980.

Not far from the imposing facade of the Dakota, others will pay their respects at Strawberry Fields, the Central Park oasis dedicated in 1985 to the memory of Lennon.

In London and New York, Dave Matthews, Paul Weller, 1960s pop star Lulu ("To Sir With Love") and others will perform Lennon music in a live concert Thursday for Sirius satellite radio and the BBC. Lennon Live, a planned four-hour event, padded with an hourlong documentary, is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. (ET).

ABC News Radio has put together its own special, Lennon: The Loss, the Legacy, for non-paying customers of over-the-air radio. The hourlong show has been airing on various ABC Radio outlets since last week.

For those who like their Lennon with a New Age twist, flautist Michael Rose has weaved "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" into the first movement of his new opus, Imagine: A Flute Serenade. The 12-minute cut will be available for free download from Thursday through Jan. 2 at www.SapphireRecording.com.

While the Amnesty International downloads of a batch of new Lennon covers aren't free--they're 99 cents each--the proceeds will benefit the non-profit human rights organization.

Downloads of the Black Eyed Peas' version of "Power to the People," the Cure's take on "Love," and more will be available starting Friday at www.amnesty.org/noise--their releases timed to International Human Rights Day. An Avril Lavigne Lennon cover will be released by the Make Some Noise project early next year.

With Lennon raking in $22 million annually, per Forbes' most recent ranking of the top-earning dead celebrities, a certain amount of commerce is also part of the tributes.

Tuesday saw the DVD release of Imagine: John Lennon--Deluxe Edition, the disc debut of the 1988 documentary which allowed its late subject to tell his own life story.

Also relatively new to stores, issued earlier this fall to coincide, in part, with what would have been Lennon's 65th birthday in October: Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon, a double-CD set of his greatest post-Beatles hits; Life: Remembering John Lennon: 25 Years Later, one of countless coffee-table tributes suitable for gift wrap; and, John, a warts-and-all look at the icon from ex-wife Cynthia Lennon.

Cynthia Lennon, as Amazon.com points out, is not one of those to offer observations on her former husband in Memories of John Lennon, yet another new book title, released just last week. Edited by Lennon widow Yoko Ono, the collection of reminisces also notably does not include those by surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. It does, however, feature contributions from Elton John, Bono, "fifth Beatle" Billy Preston and more.

In the introduction to Memories of John Lennon, according to Amazon.com, Ono, now 72, writes that she wasn't yet up to writing at length about her late husband, bandmate and bed-in partner: "I could not open that part of my heart while it's still shaking."

Ono was with Lennon when he was shot four times by former Boy Scout leader Mark David Chapman, then 25. Lennon was pronounced dead at a New York hospital within a half-hour of the attack. He was 40.

"I still miss him massively," McCartney recently told The Associated Press. "It was a horrific day for all of us."

Ono will have make no statements or appearances on Thursday, her spokesman told the A.P.

In Britain, meanwhile, Lennon's killer will be the subject of his own TV special.

I Killed John Lennon features newly released tapes of Chapman discussing his muddled motives for the shooting. The tapes were heard by stateside audiences last month on Dateline NBC.

At the time, Ono denounced the NBC special as "macabre." And according to the BBC, the Chapman tapes aren't playing any better to Lennon's family in the United Kingdom.

"It's very sad for the family when it's all brought up again," Stanley Parkes told the BBC. "The anniversary of his death is upsetting enough without this as well."


eonline

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Floral, musical tributes for Lennon 25 years on
Wed Dec 7, 2005 11:42 PM GMT
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By Mike Collett-White

LIVERPOOL (Reuters) - Liverpool prepared to honour a famous son on Thursday with floral and musical tributes to mark the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death.

In a ceremony in the centre of the city where Lennon was born and raised, fans and officials will create a shrine beneath a statue of the legendary Beatle, gunned down in New York by a fan in the presence of his wife Yoko Ono.

Later in the day, the city holds a memorial service for the man who created some of the best-known tunes in pop and is considered one of the most influential songwriters of all time.

The focus then shifts to New York, where Lennon was living at the time of his murder aged 40.

Friends in Liverpool remembered Lennon with fondness, but also felt he distanced himself from them after meeting Ono, the woman who many fans blame for breaking up the Beatles in 1970.

"You couldn't approach John at the end, and looking back it was from the moment ... he met Yoko Ono," said former friend and fellow musician Billy Kinsley, who knew Beatles Lennon and Paul McCartney in the 1960s.

"It was sad. He was my hero from when I was a 15-year-old kid, and he was always approachable, always said hello, and had a little chat. But after he met Yoko, that went out the window completely."

His assessment of Lennon and the Beatles as musicians, however, has never changed.

"It really did make a big impression on me seeing the Beatles on that first night at the Cavern, because it just changed my outlook," he told Reuters in a makeshift recording studio in his garden, recalling the night in February 1962.

"I thought 'My God, I have just seen the best thing that I could ever see', and since then it's been downhill because I've never seen anything as good as the Beatles."

Kinsley will perform "Beautiful Boy", which Lennon dedicated to his second son Sean on his "Double Fantasy" album, at a memorial service in Liverpool later on Thursday.

TOURS, TRIBUTES

The Magical Mystery Tour that takes tourists around the main Beatles sites by bus is still going strong.

Earlier in the week, it took an English couple who had travelled from Hong Kong, honeymooners from Italy and Andrea and Andrew Lewis from Los Angeles to see the Strawberry Field orphanage, immortalized in a Beatles song, and Lennon's childhood home in Menlove Avenue where he grew up with his aunt.

"They sort of laid down the blueprint for everything else that came after," Andrew Lewis said. "They probably meant more to music than any other band could."

Yet the man who brought a generation such pleasure with seminal tracks like "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Give Peace and Chance" and "Imagine", also caused pain to those who loved him.

Both his first wife Cynthia and their son Julian recently voiced their sense of rejection when Lennon left them for Ono.

Cynthia told Reuters earlier this year that she and Julian were "airbrushed" from the Beatles' story, and that Ono made it clear she did not want her in New York after Lennon's death.

In a statement on his Web site, Julian added: "I have always had very mixed feelings about Dad. He was the father I loved who let me down in so many ways ... it's painful to think that his early death robbed me of the chance for us to know each other better."

Ono's spokesman Elliot Mintz said he had received more than 500 requests for interviews with Lennon's Japanese-born wife.

"It's just too painful for her to discuss," he said.



© Reuters 2005.

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From Malaysia

Rallying Lennon anew

Compiled by DARYL GOH

JOHN LENNON and the homegrown music scene – now isn’t that a tricky combination. No Lennon tributes in sight this weekend? Well, it might be possible Lennon’s music isn’t hip enough with the young crowd today and he doesn’t have a ring-tone as catchy as that Kanye West one. Everyone is either too busy with some ordinary James Blunt album or stuck in a self-absorbed scene filled with insignificant rap-rock outfits, fake angst-rock careerists and fashionable belt buckles to care about one of the greatest singer-songwriter icons of any generation.


Loque
How many local bands are even aware of his death anniversary today and how many individuals in the music scene here can even articulate their thoughts on probably the most intriguing and captivating of the Fab Four. Thankfully, the local rock community isn’t totally devoid of musicians (and true fans) that care about Lennon and his legacy. From punk rock and indie pop to mainstream singer-songwriters and folk rock artistes, here are some that remembered:

"NO Elvis, Beatles, or The Rolling Stones,” sneered The Clash on their over-the-hill rock-star-bashing manifesto 1977. At 13-years-of-age, I suddenly found a reason to hate Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Santana, Elvis The Pelvis and any other dinosaur in my elders’ record collection. Suddenly it all became clear to me; The Beatles was as banal as The Bay City Rollers, Leo Sayer and ABBA; nothing but mindless, toothless pop tarts! Go away and gimme raw, crude and rude rock ‘n’ roll, I said. But that view was a bit skewed when I picked up Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon’s first proper solo album. Released in 1970, Plastic Ono Band didn’t have Lennon playing it pretty boy grinning mop top anymore. In fact, it was bristling with self-loathing and turmoil. It was also simplistic, crude and devoid of “art”, bringing immediate sincerity to the fore. It was Lennon in a bad day mode, and I dug it! However, soon I discovered that in 1971 John and Yoko hung out with political-pranksters, the Yippies in New York. He played benefit shows for framed activists, and generally got up the big nose of Nixon’s government. Again, it was crude and basic; but John Lennon was not a chin-stroking leftie scholar of “ism-skism,” nor was he a staunch Black Bloc anarchist. He was just another guy trying hard not to be that “Nowhere Man”, chipping in whenever he could and most importantly, giving it to the MAN! – Joe Kidd, Carburetor Dung guitarist/singer-songwriter

IT wasn’t so much of what he was saying but how it sounded that struck me. He had this strange tone to his voice that sort of detached himself from the wit that often coloured his public Beatles personality. There’s a constant dark undertone whenever he sang in both his voice and how it ran parallel or against with what he was singing about. It worked both ways. Something was always lurking beneath the surface when he sang, almost otherworldly in its sweet plaintive melodies. Double-tracking his voice only enhanced it, which was great. – Azmyl Yunor, folk rock musician

I LIKED his voice, the songs he wrote and the rebellious non-conformist, gung-ho attitude he portrayed. He was a “British Empire” chap who wrote cynical, absurd, nonsensical, sometimes surreal/honest lyrics that in the end, inspired, moved and touched “dreamers” everywhere. He was also musically radical and adventurous since he brought feedback and reverse guitars into a “pop record.” Furthermore, I personally think that he laid the template for the new standard in writing lyrics. What other big names like (the late) Kurt Cobain, Chris Martin and Thom Yorke are singing about, evidently, are more or less the same as what Lennon preached some 30 years ago. In short, he is more relevant today than he was before. – Loque, Butterfingers guitarist/songwriter

I KNOW of no popular musician who does not aspire to speaking for an entire generation the same way that Lennon spoke for his. I also know of no musician who is able to instil the sort of simple magic that characterises a Lennon song. From the idiosyncratic Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds to the Utopian Imagine, his work defined the power of popular music to simultaneously capture and shape the spirit of our times. Don’t ask me how he did it though, for I know not. I only know this – that as soon as news broke of his death, I’d already begun to miss him. – Pete Teo, singer-songwriter


Azmyl Yunor
OF course you read that he’s cold and hard but listening to his voice and his songs should be the only impression worth really keeping, without having to know the flaws of the person. The message I identified most with of John’s, before I ever read anything about him, is still “all you need is love”, because wherever there is love and art at all in pop music, it goes back to what Lennon and the Beatles achieved. – Izuan Shah, frontman of modern rock outfit Auburn

IT’S sad that John Lennon’s genius as an artiste is often overshadowed by his politics, and by Yoko. It’s sad that his devastatingly honest songs, and even more devastatingly honest voice are almost forgotten. For me, the real Lennon (and what makes him so special) can be found in songs like Across The Universe, Love, Oh My Love and (Just Like) Starting Over. They’re windows to his soul. And probably to yours and mine too. – Aidil, frontman of indie pop outfit Couple

PEOPLE can say anything they like about a person who’s dead, because they can’t defend themselves. This is my reaction to all of the things that have been written about Lennon. Like of him being a hypocrite for writing All You Need Is Love and being an a***hole in real life – it’s easy to call him a hypocrite, as he’s not around. All of us are hypocrites, with good intentions that we don’t necessarily keep to. Lennon was a person with a lot of pressure in his life. For someone to be able to write some of the most beautiful songs and do some good in the world despite it all ? it just says something about the person. – Hassan Peter Brown, folk singer-songwriter

I’M not really an authority on John Lennon or the Beatles, but what I do know was they were responsible for some pioneering studio work. Some things like Revolution #9 were unprecedented. It was like primitive musique concrete, (Lennon) playing around with flange and effects and whatnot – and they (the Beatles) were doing it all before Pink Floyd was doing it. It didn’t sound referenced – it sounded like they had a lot of fun. They were one of the first to use technology as a composing tool, as an instrument in itself. There were a lot of artistic movements back then, and I think beyond innovative music Lennon and the Beatles brought what was already known by only a few to attention. – Ronnie Khoo, frontman of indie rock outfit Furniture

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John Lennon's music still shines on
Wed Dec 7, 2005 8:11 PM GMT
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By Dean Goodman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Time has been kind to John Lennon, the former Beatle who was killed 25 years ago on Thursday just as he was starting over.

Despite some erratic solo work and questionable political alliances, the "smart one" in the Fab Four has been canonised by music fans as a thoughtful songwriter, courageous activist, and devoted father -- to one of his sons, at least.

His songwriting partner Paul McCartney lived long enough to receive a knighthood, but sainthood has been more elusive. The "cute one" is viewed by some as the lightweight half of the pair, and has achieved the near-impossible feat of making his nemesis, Lennon's widow Yoko Ono, look slightly sympathetic.

Credit the imbalance to a handful of tunes that will never go out of style as long as there is war and injustice, anthems like "All You Need is Love" and "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine."

McCartney may have sold more records, been just as politically active and written "Yesterday." "Helter Skelter" and "Let It Be," but Lennon is the Working Class Hero.

For Rolling Stone magazine editor and publisher Jann Wenner, who put Lennon on the cover of his first issue in 1967, the Paul vs. John debate is no contest.

"What are you going to remember?" he asked, citing some of their respective songs. "'Silly Love Songs' or 'Give Peace a Chance'? 'Band on the Run' or 'Imagine'? 'Helen Wheels' or 'Whatever Gets You Thru the Night?'"

"EXTRAORDINARY SINGER"

Others take a more diplomatic stance, perhaps mindful that his song "Forgive Me (My Little Flower Princess)" or the album "Two Virgins" are not exactly classics.

"If John were alive, he might be saying, 'Hogwash, it's all just a bunch of good songs,'" said Aerosmith vocalist Steven Tyler, whose band covered "Come Together" in 1978.

A good voice also helps, and Lennon's was arguably the greatest in rock 'n' roll, said Interscope Records president Jimmy Iovine, who helped record the Lennon albums "Walls and Bridges" and "Rock 'n' Roll."

"It never gets talked about. That guy sang his ass off," Iovine said. "He was an extraordinary singer, very, very spontaneous, never needed a lot of takes, but always with such feel. This is as if he was completely straight, or, not!"

Lennon was not afraid to share his inner turmoil, singing about such painful chapters as the death of his mother, the demise of the Beatles or his turbulent relationship with Ono.

Influenced by Bob Dylan, Lennon also thought he could use his talent to try to change the world. After the Beatles broke up in 1970, Lennon and Ono famously took to bed to promote peace. The Nixon administration spied on him and tried to get him deported.

His pacifist songs gave way to more strident tunes like "Power to the People." But not everybody was buying it. His 1972 album, "Sometime in New York City," featuring the ironic single "Woman is the Nigger of the World," was a flop.

If he were alive today, "I bet he'd like hip-hop," Iovine added with a laugh, "because of the potency of the lyrics. What was ever going on in his head, in his gut, in his life, in somebody else's life, he sang it."

"RODE LIFE LIKE A SURFBOARD"

Iovine said few modern-day rock stars have followed Lennon's lead, citing U2's Bono, Trent Reznor of techno band Nine Inch Nails and Jack White of the blues-rock duo White Stripes as the rare singers who conjure up a primal honesty in their songs.

"(Rapper) Eminem is, attitude-wise, closer to John Lennon than most rock singers are today," he said. (Interscope represents U2, Nine Inch Nails and Eminem.)

Lennon's final album, "Double Fantasy," issued just before he was shot dead outside his Manhattan home at the age of 40, found him in a more reflective mode, happily facing middle age ("Watching the Wheels"), and singing about his love for Ono ("Woman") and their son Sean ("Beautiful Boy").

"He rode life like a surfboard," said Tyler, "and then when he got to the shore, instead of paddling straight back out again to catch the next wave like I did, he sat there for a while and wrote it down, and then went on to something else. And I love that about him."



© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

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Fans can reimagine a working class hero
New collection of music, books and downloads shows Lennon's solo work

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BY STEVE KNOPPER
Steve Knopper is a freelance writer.

December 8, 2005


As they have for the past 24 years, hundreds of John Lennon fans will gather tonight in Central Park's Strawberry Fields near the Dakota apartment building where the ex-Beatle was murdered on Dec. 8, 1980. The crowd will sing "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" as they've done many times over the years.

On the 25th anniversary of Lennon's death, a collection of music, books and downloads offers new opportunities to explore his legacy. Lennon's entire solo catalog was made available for the first time this week in digital-download form via services such as Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo! Music (but not on Apple's iTunes). Lennon's post-Beatles career - mostly spent in New York City, where he lived with his wife, Yoko Ono - is also the subject of a new two-CD career retrospective, "Working Class Hero," as well as a new book of photos, Bob Gruen's "John Lennon: The New York Years." Ono's "Memories of John Lennon," a collection of remembrances by friends and celebrities, hit shelves last week. Beginning in early 2006, Amnesty International's "Make Some Noise" campaign will release Lennon covers by Black Eyed Peas, the Cure, Avril Lavigne and others as online downloads.











Like his former bandmates Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, Lennon released music that was occasionally brilliant and often subpar. His work lurches from 1970's "Plastic Ono Band," a shrieking masterpiece including pointed songs such as "Working Class Hero" and "God," to "Mind Games" and "Walls & Bridges," both mid-'70s albums of relationship despair and a subdued poignancy.

"Lennon's solo work towers over any of the other three's solo work," says Tim Riley, author of several music books, including a biography of Lennon due in 2007. "There is inconsistency. It is kind of bumpy, but it's bumpy in that Lennon way that's very endearing."

As a result, Lennon's solo legacy is difficult to pinpoint - dozens of artists in all genres have covered "Imagine," including teen-pop singer Aaron Carter and country superstar Dolly Parton; and artists such as Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osbourne and Screaming Trees have taken on his rebel classic "Working Class Hero." Overall, though, with exceptions such as British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock and Big Star frontman Alex Chilton, musicians look far more to "Revolution" for inspiration than "Meat City." Further proof that all things Lennon aren't always a success - "Lennon the Musical," which included three previously unreleased solo songs, closed on Broadway earlier this year after just six weeks.

"Lennon had the best voice, definitely," Hitchcock says by phone from his home in London. "But if he was alive now, he might well have accepted that his best stuff was done in the Beatles days. Once you disconnect their separate parts, none of them were that strong. I always liken it to a photo - if you break it down to blue, green, yellow and red, there's something a bit unsatisfactory about those images. But put them together, or even put their tracks next to each other, and you have this magic that no one has equaled."


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Imagine: Lennon, just a Capital boy
JULIA HORTON

A JUBILANT but otherwise ordinary-looking schoolboy from Liverpool sits on a bus heading to Edinburgh playing The Happy Traveller non-stop on a harmonica to pass the time.

His fellow passengers are none too happy about the incessant noise, but the bus conductor is so impressed by the lad's spirit, that when they get to St Andrew Square bus station he offers to give the teenager a top-of-the-range mouth organ left on the bus the week before.


It was the first quality musical instrument which John Lennon owned. Ten years later, when he returned to Edinburgh as one of the Fab Four at the height of worldwide Beatlemania, it was that same harmonica he played in the opening bars of the band's first hit, Love Me Do.

By then, the 20-something star had no need of public buses, owning a string of fancy cars, including a Ferrari, which was often parked at a Leith garage.

The reason behind John's little-publicised links with the Capital was his close relationship with his aunt and cousin, who moved to the city from Liverpool in 1949, when John was only nine.

For the next five years the future Beatle spent every summer exploring Edinburgh with his older cousin, Stan Parkes, aged 16 in 1949, whom he idolised.

Neither of them could have known that in a few years it would be John who would be worshipped by millions around the globe, and that his fame would ultimately claim his life.

Had he not been shot 25 years ago tomorrow, he might have lived to fulfil his dream of buying his late aunt's home at 15 Ormidale Terrace in Murrayfield and bringing up his own family there. Stan, now 72, says: "In the last letter I got from John in New York, he said he wanted to buy 15 Ormidale Terrace because he had such good memories of his time there. But he left it too late."

Recalling happier times in the early 1950s when he would travel to Liverpool to bring John back to Edinburgh on the bus to stay for the summer holidays, Stan says his younger cousin always loved his time in the city.

"John came up to Edinburgh every year to spend the summer holidays here. He loved the Castle, especially the Military Tattoo. He never forgot seeing that.

"We both loved films, too. I took him to see all the early films. We used to go to the old Roxy in Gorgie Road, which was his favourite cinema in Edinburgh." Stan and his mother Elizabeth Stanley had moved to the Capital when she married Edinburgh dentist Bertie Sutherland, after the death of Stan's father.

Their home was opposite Murrayfield Stadium, where John and his cousin watched the games.

John could be mischievous too, and loved the Scots accent, soon becoming a big fan of classic Scots cartoons such as The Broons.

Meanwhile, his musical leanings were clear from an early age. Stan says: "My mother had a baby grand and I had been taught to read sheet music, but John couldn't. I remember he would sit there and tinkle away on the piano until one day I said: 'How on earth can you sit and write songs like that when you can't read music?'

"He just said, 'Well, you'll notice that I can only play with eight fingers and not the two thumbs'. He was just a natural musician."

Fast forward to 1962 and John's musical talents had brought him and the soon-to-be famous Beatles to Edinburgh for a TV interview to plug their first hit, Love Me Do.

Stan recalls: "He had not really talked much about The Beatles until then. But he arrived at Ormidale Terrace one day saying that they'd made a record.

John was so excited. He told me they were doing this TV interview."

In 1964 John returned to the Capital for The Beatles' first gig in Edinburgh, at the ABC cinema in Lothian Road.

The place was mobbed with the by now familiar Beatles entourage of screaming girls as Beatlemania took over the city.

In Stenhouse, another schoolboy was desperate to be at the gig. But at 11, Doug Healy had to stay at home while the city went crazy over his boyhood hero. It was 30 years before Doug, by then a successful comedian and comedy writer, interviewed Stan for a book he was writing about Lennon's Edinburgh connections and discovered that he had been just a few miles from his idol that night.

In the book entitled John Lennon in Edinburgh, he says: "I was considered too young by my parents to join the hundreds of others sleeping in bags on the pavement around Semple Street and Lothian Road to get a ticket to see my heroes. The feeling that I had missed out on something special stayed with me.

"The night The Beatles performed I retired to my bed in the front room in Stenhouse, wishing I was a few years older. Thirty years later I was to discover that John Lennon had retired that same night to a front room in a house less than two miles away in Currie.

"The following morning John went into an RS McColl shop to purchase a pack of cigarettes. The wee lassie behind the counter fainted when she realised he was in the shop." Other Edinburgh retailers were far more canny when they spotted the legendary Beatle trying to use their shops unnoticed.

Bob Webb still has the photograph he snapped when John, Yoko and their two children from previous marriages, Julian and Kyoko turned up at Lizars' camera shop in Shandwick Place, where he was manager.

Now 66 he says: "He came in with his beard, wearing the trousers from his honeymoon suit, and he bought a pair of binoculars for his aunt. He was very chatty and friendly."

That memorable shopping trip was part of a tour John took Yoko and the children on, of his favourite haunts in Liverpool, Edinburgh and the Highlands.

John drove a modest Maxi in the hope they would not be recognised. But the trip came to an abrupt end when they crashed on a remote single track road, and had to be taken to hospital.

"I was not a particular fan of John Lennon or The Beatles. I've made a bit of money from that picture, although I've not made my fortune," Bob says.

Elsewhere in Edinburgh there is no shortage of fans of the man behind such legendary solo hits as Imagine and Jealous Guy, plus a wealth of Beatles classics. There is even a public monument to him in the heart of the city, in the form of a bench in Princes Street Gardens, paid for by the Edinburgh Beatles Appreciation Society.

And Stan, a retired engineer who now lives in Largs in Ayrshire, is keen for a new memorial to be erected to mark his famous late cousin's Edinburgh ties.

He says: "All you hear about now is New York and Yoko but John loved Edinburgh. I would quite like to see a memorial to keep that connection alive."

Maybe it's time to recognise a little-known act of generosity by a 1950s Capital busman.

This article: news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=2365672005

Last updated: 07-Dec-05 11:58 GMT