Remembering JOHN LENNON - Murdered 25 yrs ago toda

[CCADP]

Imagining Lennon
25 years after death, his songs remain strong in hearts and minds
By Fred Shuster, Music Writer




For More Info

• Video: John Lennon's death lingers for witnesses
• Video: 25 years later, Lennon legacy stands



John Lennon's music continues to stir generations of listeners, many of whom were born in the years since the Beatles broke up, and his signature is instantly recognizable 25 years after his death.
In the beginning, Lennon performed cover versions of '50s rock 'n' roll before finding a writing partner in Paul McCartney, whom he met at a church picnic in 1957. The pair quickly began churning out originals that would strike a chord around the world.

The duo essentially stopped composing together in 1965, but because of contractual and personal arrangements, their individual songs were credited to Lennon and McCartney. But it remained clear whose song was whose. Lennon was plainly the instigator of such inward-looking Beatles classics as "Norwegian Wood," "Strawberry Fields Forever," "In My Life," "Julia" and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away."

The mark of those songs and such post-Beatles tracks as "Imagine" and "Working Class Hero" is the sincerity of Lennon's voice and an inclusive sense that we know as much as he does. Rarely maudlin, he didn't insult the intelligence.

Lennon continues to fascinate: Three new books on the ex-Beatle are just out: "Lennon Revealed" by friend Larry Kane, "Memories of John Lennon" edited by Yoko Ono and "John Lennon: The New York Years" by photographer Bob Gruen. Lennon's story is also told in the new Beatles biography by Bob Spitz, and his post-Beatles music was showcased this year in the Broadway show "Lennon."

Tributes today include a gathering of Lennon fans at 6 p.m. in front of Capitol Records in Hollywood. And his legacy will be celebrated with a four-hour "Lennon Live" concert at 11 a.m. today on Sirius Satellite Radio, featuring performances by Dave Matthews, Paul Weller, Jamie Cullum, Dr. John, Daryl Hall, Stereo MCs and Lulu originating from London's Abbey Road Studios and the Sirius studios in New York.

Also marking the 25th anniversary of his death is a covers project organized by Amnesty International to feature the Cure, Black Eyed Peas, Snow Patrol, the Postal Service and Avril Lavigne.

To mark the anniversary, we asked residents, music buffs and musicians for their favorite Lennon song and why.

"If I Fell," chosen by Valley marriage and family therapist Stephanie Prince, 33. "It's a beautiful song that speaks to all kinds of relationships, not just romantic ones. It reflects what people go through in terms of questioning and sincerity. Every time I hear it, it makes me stop and think.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advertisement


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



It's very rare to have a questioning type of song like this that's so poetic and gorgeous."

"I'm Only Sleeping," "I Am the Walrus," "I'll Be Back," "Look at Me," "I'm So Tired," chosen by Chris Carter, Sherman Oaks-based host of "Breakfast With the Beatles" (8 a.m. Sundays, KLSX-FM 97.1). "It's too difficult to pick one favorite, so this is my all-time Lennon top five, which always seem to stay the same. These are personal favorites and not necessarily what I'd select as his best compositions."

"No. 9 Dream," chosen by West Hollywood keyboardist Morley Bartnoff, 45. "Paul gets credited all the time for amazing song structure, but this one goes through three sections of chords and moods. A very intelligently written song - melody, structure and lyrics."

"Instant Karma," chosen by Sherman Oaks author and record producer Harvey Kubernik. "This song, from John's Plastic Ono Band period, makes more sense to me now than it did a third of a century ago. I love the production, which owes much to Phil Spector's involvement, and I know it was done pretty impulsively. John and Phil were going for a raw Sun Records sound."

"Jealous Guy," chosen by Woodland Hills singer-songwriter Chris Greene, 27. "It has a unique melodic phrase and deals with a feeling everyone can relate to. Lennon had a hell of a knack for capturing the essence of a common human emotion and communicating it artistically."

"Across the Universe," chosen by Sheman Oaks computer engineer Kevin Nolte, 49. "It's so poetic. You can tell immediately it's a John song because of his thoughtful, poetic lyrics. It's a beautiful song."

"Imagine," chosen by West Hills resident Kevin Olson, 55, a manager at Blue Cross. "It opens up the listener's mind to the possibilities of a better world. This is what Lennon did best - introspection that everyone can relate to."

---
Fred Shuster, [phone] and [e-mail]

[CCADP]

25 years later, John Lennon still lives


Larry Kane

is a longtime Philadelphia journalist

Too many modern celebrities - many of them with only marginal talent - revel as they walk the red carpet, glamour and self-indulgence written in their superficial and forced smiles.

It is really our fault. We idolize and live vicariously through the famous faces we watch. And today, on the 25th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, I think about how different he was - how relevant he made himself to a generation of admirers, not by wanting to be adored, but by hoping he would be respected.

He is what I call the poster boy for imperfection. In life, and in his amazing afterlife (he's still all over the radio), we see him as a person whose personal decisions we would want to avoid, but whose personal convictions and search for the truth are things to admire.

Adoration never came easily to Lennon. His father abandoned him; his mother was rarely around. He grew up angry and determined to make the establishment aware of his presence by acting out in school. When that phase ended, be began burying himself in sketching, and thankfully for us, music. His band, the Quarrymen, became the Beatles. Lennon sensed early that his talent alone was not enough. His decision to invite Paul McCartney to join the band was courageous and, as it turns out, historic.

The irony of his life is that the more successful he was as an artist, the more traps he fell into as a person. Pill-popping turned to alcohol and drug abuse, which plagued him until the mid-1970s. But unlike the stars who lived in a bubble, Lennon was not afraid to share his private side in public. Almost every song he wrote was about how he was feeling at the time. "I'm a loser," he wrote at the age of 25, "and I'm not what I appear to be." When he was 30 and in love with Yoko Ono, he penned the beautiful "Imagine," a song that did not become one of the bestselling recorded hits of all time until Lennon was dead. Why? Because he dared to say, "Nothing to kill or die for/ No religion, too."

His angriest music was written in 1973, when he was fully invested in drugs. Yet, in 1980, he wrote "(Just Like) Starting Over," an affirmation that after five years as America's most famous stay-at-home dad, he was back and ready to entertain again.

His life was filled with mistakes and redemption. He was a womanizer who loved only three women - wives Cynthia Lennon and Yoko, and May Pang, the alluring and insightful secretary with whom Yoko fixed him up. He was a womanizer who became an ardent feminist in the late '70s, a pacifist who became one of the most public supporters of police and firefighters, a domestic abuser who transformed himself into a student of the frustrating social history of women.

Lennon, who could display daunting selfishness, was unselfish in his pursuits, giving his music away to other artists, to the detriment of his own career. He was also, delightfully and dangerously, one of the few people I've ever known who said in public what he thought in private, a man who spent much of his adult life thinking about other people, whether it was victims of bigotry in his native Britain or migrant laborers in California, those who had little, those of abundance who gave little.

My travels with him (and the other Beatles) were electric. My arguments with him about war and peace and his public righteousness made us both red in the face and dry in the mouth. He was especially vitriolic and profane when he told me I was an (expletive deleted) fool to leave New York to come back to broadcast in Philadelphia.

Even now, you hear the question: "Where were you on the night of Dec. 8, 1980?", just as others once asked, "Where were you the day John Kennedy was shot?"

I can still remember the words of Frank Rizzo, then Philadelphia's mayor, who had warned me during a 1975 Lennon visit to Philadelphia that Lennon should have more protection. I picked him up at 30th Street Station, where he came alone on an Amtrak train. When he met the thousands of people behind the Channel 6 studios, he stood fearless, enjoying the moment. He had come to Philadelphia to host a weekend charity broadcast. Weeks before he died, he told me he'd met more people in the flesh on that Philadelphia weekend than at any other single time in his life.

Ultimately - again, despite his frequent self-absorption - Lennon was in love with people more than with his daunting celebrity persona. Today we remember him as a man who made beautiful music. We also should remember him as a continuing challenge: to overcome our worst aspects, to learn to think less about ourselves, and more about the world and the people around us.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Larry Kane ([e-mail]) is author of Lennon Revealed.

[CCADP]

Local fans of Lennon imagine

BY JILLIAN COHAN

The Wichita Eagle


Twenty-five years ago today, a deranged fan fatally shot John Lennon in front of the former Beatle's upscale New York apartment building.

In the years since, Lennon's song "Imagine" has become an anthem, not just to those who got caught up in Beatlemania but also to those who saw Lennon as the musical voice of a generation.

On the anniversary of his death, The Eagle asked members of Wichita's music community to reflect on the song's meaning and its relevance today.

"Even though the lyrics state 'imagine no religion' the song is very much a prayer that people could 'live life in peace,"' said Ron Eric Taylor, program director at KFXJ 104.5-FM.

"Its anthemic quality is of unity, and when a group of people hear it, or sing it, they all get that message."

Lennon didn't write songs as complex as Paul McCartney's, but he used his gifts to his best advantage, said Kathy Sullivan, owner of Old Town's Center Stage Club and leader of the Kathy Sullivan Band.

"When he died, I personally felt it was an attack on me as a songwriter. Not knowing the man, I still felt like we were deprived of a national, or even an international, treasure."

Above all, "Imagine" taught her about lyricism, Sullivan said.

"You can write a song with a catchy rhythm and people will forget it. But if you put inspirational, meaningful lyrics on it, that song can live forever."

As the Beatles cultural legacy has become evident, the band's work has entered the canon of music history.

J.C. Combs, head of the percussion department at Wichita State University, includes the Beatles in a course on American popular music that he teaches every spring.

Lennon was perhaps the strongest creative force in the group, Combs said, but the power of the Lennon-Paul McCartney songwriting team came from their ability to innovatively fuse elements of American blues and R&B with other influences, including world music, to create a definitive sound.

"It's impossible to cover the Beatles," he said. "Their recording defined what the effort was."

When Lennon died, baby boomers lost an activist whose reach extended across the globe, said Dave Clothier.

"Lennon was one of the greatest we've ever seen in popular culture," he said.

Clothier, a geologist, used to operate a store called British Sound. The business, which closed last year, restored and sold vintage equipment of the type the Beatles used.

"'Imagine' is the peak you could ask for in a career," Clothier said. "It's a simple song, but it really gets the message across."

The first time she heard "Imagine," Michelle Townsend said she knew it represented the state of the world in the 1960s and '70s.

"I think the lyrics are even more relevant today," said Townsend, manager of the Beat, a local Beatles tribute band.

"Common people from every culture want the same things, the things John Lennon was talking about."

Like many who learned of Lennon's death in 1980, Wayne Gottstine heard the news from sportscaster Howard Cosell, who interrupted a Monday Night Football broadcast to announce that Lennon had been killed by Mark David Chapman.

"I was stunned, and my stepfather, who had introduced me to the Beatles, sat in disbelief with tears silently streaming down his face," recalled Gottstine, a former member of the band Split Lip Rayfield, who now fronts the Sluggos.

"I didn't cry for John Lennon, until a few years ago," Gottstine said.

He doesn't consider Lennon the strongest songwriter in the Beatles -- he gives that credit to Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr -- and he felt Yoko Ono was the true peace activist, while Lennon harbored a lot of anger at the world.

But on a visit to New York, Gottstine found himself in front of the Dakota Apartments, near the spot where Lennon was shot. He visited the Central Park memorial to the singer, and while he was there a young man started playing "Imagine."

"It was terrible," Gottstine said. "His guitar playing was lousy, his voice was wretched, and he just wouldn't stop. Then out of nowhere, I just started weeping."

Like other public figures who died young, Lennon still has a mystique stemming in part from his unfulfilled potential, said Curt Melzer, owner of several area bars, including John Barleycorn's.

"Perhaps the greatest tragedy of his premature death wasn't the loss of the writer of such great songs as 'Imagine,' but the loss to the world of unrealized works such as.... Well, one can only imagine."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contributing: Bob Curtright of The Eagle.
Reach Jillian Cohan at 268-6524 or [e-mail].

[CCADP]

Tucsonans recall Lennon's impact
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.08.2005
advertisementJohn Lennon's music, his lyrics, and his sentiments resonate today, the 25th anniversary of his death, as much as they did when he lived. Don't take our word for it - read what some Tucsonans have to say about his impact. Comments have been edited for clarity and space.
I admire the way he was so graceful in making a meaningful point or belief, with a bit of his sarcasm thrown in, in order to be sure the idea gets across. He did that so well!
He was a very sensitive man. This came out in his music over and over.
Erin Cobb, 46
John Lennon's life and music is a testament of the importance of all the humanitarian basics: love, peace and family. He was extremely talented and ahead of his time in his music and logic. His song "Imagine" is my all-time favorite song.
Cynthia Gonzales
I have been listening to Beatles' lyrics since I was 10 years old. Now that I'm 55, one line is very close to me - life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
Pat Crowe
As a budding musician, poet and activist, no one has influenced me more than Lennon. His groundbreaking songs created rock and taught the world to imagine.
Aleksandr Walton
This man inspires me to be who I am. /To think for myself and stand up to the man./ Don't get me wrong, I follow all the rules. /But he taught me to be kind yet sometimes a fool. /I live for his music, his passion, and dance. /All I am saying is give peace a chance./ You know him with his New York City shirt and denim./ This great man I speak of was and still is John Lennon.
Steven Merschen, 18
Jocular Original Healing Nonpareil Lasting Effusive
Nonconformist Novel Omniscient Noble
Allan B. Rudolph
I hope someday the world will live as one like Lennon said in the song, "Imagine." My heart will beat by the words, imagine no possessions.
Cameron Busby, 9
In an elegant and articulate way, we watched Lennon evolve from pop artist to storyteller to activist and demonstrate the power of having a conscience.
Harley Mayersohn, 54
I'm 46 and a beginning guitar student. I now greatly enjoy translating Lennon tunes from English to Spanish. John's appeal is just like "Starting Over!"
Robert G Kramer
Lead on, John
10/16/2005
We rode the wave
to awareness
mind-surfing
in the wake
of the Beatles
as Sgt. Pepper
led us on
a Magical
Mystery
Tour
Allan Sorokin, 52
John Lennon, through his public behavior and through many of his lyrical topics, opened the door to making it acceptable for every entertainer to have a public social conscience.
Charlie Tucker
John and Yoko were naked on an album cover and, all of a sudden, I wasn't allowed to listen to his music around the house. In fact, any Beatle music more recent than "I'll Follow the Sun" was frowned upon, if not outright banned from the family phonograph.
By the time he released "Cold Turkey," my parents were looking for drug lyrics behind every album cover and my Dad would've noted Lennon's murder in 1980 by saying something like, "Well, that's what happens when you misbehave and go around with those kind of people."
I'll never know for sure. My dad would already have been dead for a little more than a year.
"Now he's part of everything," Yoko told their son Sean (according to the official statement released after John's death). My Dad, I'm sure, would just have poo-poohed such a remark. But, of course, it's true.
Charlie Tucker
John's lyrics "life is what happens while you are busy making other plans" helped me through a painful crisis. I've been a fan for 40 years & still find comfort in their music.
Barbara Miller
I was around 10 years old when I heard my first Beatles song. The radio began playing Beatles tunes in acknowledgement of the passing of John Lennon. Later that same day, KUAT in Phoenix showed the Beatles Concert at Shea Stadium; I was blown away! I couldn't believe that these four guys could create such havoc.
And the sound - oh, my - the sound those four awkward-looking guys from Liverpool put out; well it forever changed my life! My body stayed in Superior, where I lived, but my mind and soul were swept away to England, India, New York, San Francisco, the deep South, "Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton," and "Gibraltar near Spain." I learned so much about the world from listening to their music. They became my favorite study subject.
The Beatles taught me that using your imagination makes anything possible in this great world of ours.
David J. Rodriguez
John Lennon and his music have had a very positive impact throughout my 41 years of life, and I believe it will continue to do so indefinitely worldwide.
Roger Yee
I was 13 when the Beatles hit the Ed Sullivan show. John was my favorite - something about the squint in his eyes when he hit the high notes. However, unlike many of my junior high friends, the "John" thing stayed with me though the '70s.
His lyrics and poetry spoke to me in some very personal way.
The night he died, I was devastated. There was a vigil being held at Randolph Park the next day. I kept my 13-year-old daughter out of school, packed my baby on my back and spent the day there. It was the least I could do to remember John.
Linda Elmquist, 54

[CCADP]

A Living Memorial
By JOEL F. GLAZIER
December 9, 2005

December 8, 2005, marked the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder. Millions of Beatles fans the world over were shocked and saddened by the unprovoked shooting outside Lennon's New York apartment building in 1980. Later that week, they stood for 10 minutes of silence, as requested by Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono.

In Israel, a group of Jewish and Arab teenagers in Safed shared their grief with a social worker. Six weeks later, on Tu B'Shevat, a few trees were planted in Lennon's memory outside the mystical hillside city. Acting at the young people's request, Jewish National Fund, through its New York office, sought and received Ono's consent to establish a John Lennon Forest. Beatles fans could purchase the trees; it would be a living memorial to Lennon in the Galilee.

A letter in Rolling Stone magazine informed those outside Israel of the project and provided an address for donations. Lennon fans responded with donations and offers to solicit interest at Beatles conventions and in Beatles fanzines.

"Supporting this project was something more constructive to do than buying souvenirs and tribute books that were coming out about Lennon," remembered longtime Beatles fan Charles Rosenay of New Haven, Conn. Tables were set up at Beatles conventions in New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and Liverpool. It was a bit daunting soliciting funds for Jewish National Fund in England during the 1982 Lebanon War. Nevertheless the idea aroused some interest, and donations were collected.

Beatles fans, both Jewish and non, purchased one tree at a time and received a certificate from JNF with "John Lennon Peace Forest" typed on it. After five years, donations were received for 5,000 trees — enough to achieve JNF Woodland status. The donations had come from a total of 14 countries. A permanent stone marker was placed near the 46-kilometer marker on the Meron-Safed road.

After the marker was erected, containing words from the Lennon song "Imagine," active fund raising slowed. Ono went to Israel in 2000 to open up an art exhibition at Jerusalem's Israel Museum, but she did not visit the site. The living memorial still grows, inviting all to "lie beneath a shady tree," as The Beatles once sang.

Tree purchases still can be designated for the Lennon forest. Twenty-five years after his death, Lennon is again the focus of a new generation of books and tributes. A newly planted tree will likely outlive them all.

[CCADP]

Lennon’s genius lives on
Musicians reflect on anniversary of former Beatle’s death
by John Boyle, SENIOR WRITER
published December 8, 2005 6:00 am
For a whole generation, the death of John Lennon is a moment that’s etched into memory like Kennedy’s assassination or Nixon’s resignation.

“At first it hit like a rumor that could be true or maybe wasn’t true,” said Asheville blues musician Chuck Beattie, 54. “When I realized it was true, I remember being very confused, very sad — I couldn’t understand any motive, any reason. This was the most peaceful man they could’ve picked out to kill.”

Advertisement
It was 25 years ago tonight that Mark David Chapman, a mentally ill man with a twisted obsession with Lennon, gunned down the famous musician and former Beatle as he entered his apartment building in New York City. Lennon died that night, just 40 years old.

Local musicians like Beattie say Lennon’s influence is inescapable, even if their musical style differs significantly. Lennon’s raw vocal and guitar styles contrasted starkly with that of his writing partner and fellow Beatle, Paul McCartney.

“I definitely consider myself a Lennon fan more so than a Beatles fan,” said Joe’tse Adams, a 27-year-old local singer-songwriter and dancer. “I just felt a kinship with Lennon, and I feel like in Asheville it exists among a lot of the artists. It is art for art’s sake — you create art in the spirit of peace and love.”

Beattie says he too was moved by Lennon’s peace activism. Musically, he’s more influenced by bluesmen but gives Lennon and the Beatles their due for energizing a young generation.

“Also, with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and some of the other groups, this was the first time black music was given its proper due,” said Beattie. “I was very moved by that.”

Asheville resident Bill Kopp, 42, also was moved by Lennon’s activism. Kopp is a Web designer, but he also has a band, The Poppies, that plays a lot of ’60s tunes.

Lennon’s musical genius is an influence that always will seep into his music.

“He was less afraid of failing and more willing to take some artistic risks,” Kopp said. “Paul (McCartney) really evolved later. John was more like, ‘I’ll throw it out there and see what sticks.’”

Contact Boyle at 232-5847 or [e-mail] .


Comment on this article.Contact John Boyle at 828-232-5847 or via e-mail at [e-mail].

[CCADP]

Dream, was it just a dream?

The conflicted John Lennon would give peace, Yoko and himself a chance before meeting a violent death

By TIMOTHY FINN

The Kansas City Star


T wenty-five years after he was murdered, our romance with John Lennon endures for several reasons.

First, he used to be a Beatle, and if you’re between 40 and 60 years old, chances are the Beatles insinuated themselves into at least one formative stage of your life, whether you invited them or not. Nothing like them had happened before in popular culture, and nothing has happened since.

They are as attached to their era and its history as any other person or event, be it the moon landing, the Vietnam War, the fight for civil rights and the three big assassinations of the 1960s.

It’s no coincidence that half the band became victims of homicidal violence (George Harrison survived his attack). When you’re that big and so adored, you can make the wrong person seem dangerously small and irrelevant.

Of the four Beatles, Lennon was inarguably the most artistic, if not the most talented and the most popular. He also seemed to be the most complex: a sad, lonely, romantic idealist trapped in the body of a whip-smart, tart-tongued cynic and satirist. As he and Paul McCartney separated and then divorced, Lennon continued to prove that he was more dimensional, that he could express as much love and devotion (“Imagine,” “#9 Dream,” “Beautiful Boy”) as he could anger, fear and resentment (“How Do You Sleep?” “Isolation”).

It also helped his legacy that Lennon died before he could release another bad or mediocre album, before he could become an unfortunate caricature of himself (like Elvis) or before the Beatles could reunite for a show that no one really needed to see or an album no one needed to hear.

The day he was killed, he was still getting favorable reviews for “Double Fantasy,” an album released after he’d spent five years in self-imposed isolation, getting in touch with his feminine side, rekindling his paternal instincts and reviving his devotion to his soul mate and chief financial officer, Yoko Ono.

“The separation didn’t work out,” he’d say after their reconciliation.

In December 1980, it seemed, Lennon had managed to re-establish himself as one of the few, maybe the lone, torchbearer of all the ideals and stereotypes now so identified with the baby boom generation. He had, it seemed, figured out how to give love and understanding another chance. As for peace? That was always part of the equation.

He’d also managed to create the notion that, despite his egregious wealth and enormous celebrity, he was willing to come down from his Uptown high-rise now and then with his wife and young boy, walk in Central Park and mingle with the commoners who so adored him. The most chilling proof of that: The night he was murdered, he bothered to stop and sign an autograph for the guy who would later kill him.

Unlike most rock heroes who kill themselves slowly with drugs or bad habits or quickly with bullets from their own guns, Lennon was murdered by a demented fan. The crime itself would put Lennon in the lofty company of two others who survived their assassins’ bullets within six months of Lennon’s death — a right-wing president (Reagan) and a conservative pope (John Paul) — and raise his status from murder victim to inadvertent martyr.

Had he died, say, of a brain tumor like Bob Marley did five months later (in May 1981), we would still remember Lennon fondly, but it’s unlikely he’d have been so canonized and immortalized. Outrage has a way of inflating grief and tragedy.

Our affair with the notion of John Lennon endures because no one has stepped forward to assume the role he auditioned for and the one bestowed upon him: ambassador of peace and charity (although Bono is getting precariously close). We know now that there was more to him than New Age idealism. We know now that the real John Lennon was as imperfect as we all are, that his first swipes at marriage and fatherhood were failures, and that he could be a raging snot and a cold bastard when the wrong mood hit him. But all of that mortal/human stuff was long ago laid to rest (or cremated).

There will likely be lots of recollecting today about where people were when they heard the news that day, oh boy. But precisely when and where it happened or who told us isn’t really germane to the context of his death, which to a generation of music fans was as big a spiritual loss as the death of Pope John Paul II was to most Roman Catholics, no sacrilege intended.

It’s tempting to complain about media coverage and 24-hour cable TV news and moan about the information glut and how it doesn’t give a decent guy or gal the chance to keep dirty undies out of the spotlight. Even the relatively spotless Princess Diana couldn’t get through her short, noble life unscathed by gossip and scandal.

Our romance with John Lennon survives because he was a Beatle and because he died the way he did and because he was a sincere ideologue who, at least superficially, sustained his battles and causes.

It endures, also, because before and after his death we were spared the insult of sordid rumors, whether they were truths or lies (his legacy is a lot like JFK’s in that vein).

It also endures because those of us who feel like we lost a chunk of our spiritual center when he died know, especially these days, that, like the band that made him famous, we’ll never get the chance to believe so naively in someone like him again.

[CCADP]

Posted on Thu, Dec. 08, 2005



M O R E N E W S F R O M
• Holidays
• Life
• Christmas
• Pop/Rock
• Gerry & the Pacemakers
• The Beatles
• John Lennon




Collecting Lennon for Christmas

By TIMOTHY FINN

The Kansas City Star


War isn’t over, but the Beatle/John Lennon fan in your life will have a merrier Christmas if you put any of these tributes or reissues under the tree with his/her name on it. Some are brand-new; others have been out for a year or even longer:

MUSIC

■ “John Lennon: Acoustic” (Capitol): This demo-quality collection of his hits on acoustic guitar is rickety and unshaven. So why buy it? To quote my own review: “Because the liner notes come with chord notations and chord diagrams Because some of the production is nearly as good as the songwriting. Because “Imagine” never sounded better. Because it feels really good to hear his voice again, even when he’s only whistling.”

■ “Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon” (Capitol): This brand-new, not-quite-definitive collection of hits and album cuts (38 tracks) is sequenced not in chronological order but, it seems, according to the mood and theme of the songs. Thus, “Imagine” slides right into “Watching the Wheels,” which sounds comfortable right next to “Jealous Guy.” Some of these cuts are alternative or remixed versions of the originals (“Whatever Gets You Through the Night”). Like all his hits packages (except the box set), several things are missing, starting with “How Do You Sleep.” Not the best collection, but it works just fine as a panoramic retrospective.

■ “Walls and Bridges” and “Sometime in New York City”: Both of these solo albums were remastered, remixed and re-released last month. Both are, to put it kindly, uneven, especially “New York City,” which critic Robert Christgau aptly called “the most politically ambitious and artistically impoverished music he ever recorded.” Yoko overhauled these projects, going as far as to replace Lennon’s artwork on “Walls” with a portrait of him wearing (it looks like) several pairs of sunglasses and to heavily edit the longer songs on “New York City.” For completists only.

BOOKS

■ Lennon Legend: An Illustrated Life of John Lennon (2004; Chronicle Books; 64 pages; $40): For less than $50 you get several dozen facsimiles of Lennon memorabilia, like a copy of the handwritten lyric sheet for “In My Life,” a Quarrymen business card, the rider/contract for a 1961 show at the Aintree Institute featuring Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Silver Beatles, Japanese “A Hard Day’s Night” movie posters and a “War Is Over! If You Want It” postcard.

That’s all stuffed and stocked within a biography that includes a CD featuring a 60-minute interview with Lennon and a live performance of “Imagine.”

■ Memories of John Lennon (2005; Harper Collins; 310 pages; $24.95): Yoko Ono edited this brand-new collection of eulogies and paeans to Lennon from friends, peers and people in art and entertainment. The list of devotees includes everyone from Ray Charles, Donovan, Bono, Pete Townshend, Elton John and Mick Jagger to Alicia Keys, Kate Pierson of the B52s and comedian Paul Reiser (huh?). Who’s not included? Paul and Ringo. “Each writer was so sincere in their love for John,” Yoko writes in her introduction. And anyone who wasn’t, no doubt, was not included.

DVDs

■ “The Dick Cavett Show: John and Yoko Ono” (2005): This new three-disc set catalogs the three appearances by Lennon/Ono on the Cavett show in the early 1970s. It shows Lennon for what he was: a charming artist and a funny, unrepentant opportunist. It also exhumes the sound of Elephant Memory, a band that took cacophony to another plane.

■ “Ed Sullivan Presents the Beatles” (2003) This documentary showcases the band’s first appearances on the Ed Sullivan show back in 1964. More than just a look back at the Beatles’ phenomenon, this DVD illuminates the state of TV entertainment and pop culture in general (including the commercials) just after President Kennedy was assassinated.

■ “Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon” (2003): Engaging videos, live performances and documentary footage of Lennon as a solo, ex-Beatle.

■ “A Hard Day’s Night” (2001): No matter how much Blender praises “This Is Spinal Tap,” the Beatles’ first movie, filmed in 1964, was the most important film in rock/pop-music history, if only because it introduced the earliest concept of the music video (apologies to Elvis), and it mixed drama, comedy, satire and spontaneous farce with real-time documentary. This DVD version of the film has plenty of detractors, mostly because the sound is ordinary and because no Beatles appear in the bonus material. Fair enough. But the film remains timeless and ahead of its time.

■ “The Beatles Anthology” (1995): Eight discs and eight hours of history that goes back to each Beatle’s birth and upbringing. The companion book and CDs are also worth owning.

MEMORABILIA

■ If money is no object, try something from the John Lennon lyric portfolio (lennonart.com): For as little as $295 (“Little Flower Princess” and “Stepping Out”) or as much as $6,495 (“In My Life”) you can buy a serigraph of a handwritten lyric sheet. Each song is framed with “two linen mats, museum mounting and a matte black frame,” according to the Web site. And just in time for the holidays, four new serigraphs have been created, each for less than $650, including “Drive My Car” and “Instant Karma.”

■ If money is an object you have in obscene abundance, go to historyforsale.com and buy signatures from all four Beatles, framed together “gallery style.” The cost: $8,990.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RADIO TRIBUTES

■ Starting at 6 a.m. and continuing through midnight, New York public radio station WFVU (wfvu.org) will pay tribute to Lennon. From 2 to 6 p.m., “City Folk Afternoon” will replay coverage of Lennon’s murder from radio stations in Liverpool and New York and on “Monday Night Football,” where the late Howard Cosell broke the news to millions of Beatles fans.

■ Sirius satellite radio (Channel 18) and BBC Radio 2 will simulcast a four-hour tribute to Lennon from 1 to 5 p.m. today. The special includes a one-hour documentary, an interview with Yoko Ono and live performances (Dr. John, Stereo MCs, Dave Matthews), including several from Abbey Road Studios

[CCADP]

Pools of sorrow
EDITORIAL BOARD
Thursday, December 08, 2005
I was the walrus,

But now I'm John,


1972 ASSOCIATED PRESS

(enlarge photo)
John Lennon performing in a charity concert in New York's Madison Square Garden in 1972. Lennon, a former Beatle, solo artist and political activist, died 25 years ago today.


MOST POPULAR STORIES
Texas loses Williams for season; Carey quits team
One dead, one injured in U.S. 290 accident
Got an ice scraper? You might need it
Cold front arrives ahead of schedule
They're crushed, because their cars were

And so dear friends,

You just have to carry on,

The dream is over.

— John Lennon in the song "God"


Last month in Houston, Paul McCartney stood in front of about 20,000 fans and asked for a moment of silence for "John, George and Linda."

The place fell silent in memory of John Lennon, George Harrison and Linda McCartney. A minute later, the loudest cheers of the night thundered through the stadium and cascaded down on the former Beatle for nearly five minutes.

The Beatles have always had that effect on people. Thirty-five years after the Fab Four broke up, fans still pack stadiums to see McCartney, who's almost 64. And millions will mourn Thursday, the 25th anniversary of Lennon's death.

After taking several years off from music, Lennon found his voice again on Nov. 17, 1980, with the release of the album "Double Fantasy." Just weeks later, on Dec. 8, Mark David Chapman silenced him. Stepping out of the shadows at Lennon's Dakota apartment building in New York, Chapman fired five bullets into Lennon, who was coming home with his wife, Yoko Ono, from a recording studio. And the dream was over.

Lennon left us at age 40. He joined a list of musical greats who left us too early, including Bob Marley, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Kurt Cobain, Glenn Miller, Otis Redding, Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, Selena, Hank Williams and Jim Morrison.

But Lennon's death, because of his history as a singer, songwriter and social activist, hit particularly hard. And it still hurts. But as much as it hurts us, he left behind a family who must feel it even more. Lennon had a rocky relationship with his oldest son, Julian, from his first marriage to Cynthia Lennon. Julian is left pondering what could have been. He posted this on his Web site about the 25th anniversary of his father's death:

"I have always had very mixed feelings about Dad. He was the father I loved who let me down in so many ways. Who knows how our relationship might have developed if he had not been murdered. It's painful to think that his early death robbed me of the chance for us to know each other better."

What would Lennon be doing today if he weren't killed? Would The Beatles have gotten back together? The New York Post reported a few days ago that McCartney's 1979 contract with CBS Records included this clause: McCartney is permitted to make any recording with "John Lennon, Richard Starkey and George Harrison recording together as The Beatles."

Although Lennon always shied away from talk of a reunion, May Pang, his former girlfriend, has said repeatedly that she believes that Lennon would have reunited with his former bandmates.

So if Chapman had not killed Lennon 25 years ago, what would Lennon be doing? Would he be leading the protesters in Crawford in "Give Peace a Chance?" Or would he have been on stage with McCartney in Houston?

Imagine.

[CCADP]

World keeps spinning, but it's poorer for John Lennon's death
By Daniel Durchholz
SPECIAL TO THE POST-DISPATCH
12/07/2005

FILE PHOTO: John Lennon, photographed by Jack Mitchell in 1980.
( Handout)



How strange it is to mark the anniversary of an assassination.

Those of us who are old enough still pause on Nov. 22 and think of where we were when we heard that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. In the case of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it's the day of his birth that we celebrate, still keeping in mind his untimely passing on April 4, 1968.

And, for the rest of our lives, Sept. 11, 2001, will be a day that lives in infamy, just as Dec. 7, 1941, was for a previous generation.

But those are the anniversaries of attacks on leaders of church, state and our nation. Could the death of a pop star affect us just as much?
Advertisement



In the case of John Lennon, the answer is yes.

It was 25 years ago Thursday that Lennon, returning with his wife, Yoko Ono, to his home in New York City's Dakota apartment building, was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman, a disturbed fan who earlier in the day had sought and received an autograph from Lennon.

The shock that registered throughout the world seems impossible to fathom now, in an age when worldwide communications make information available instantaneously and round the clock, yet somehow turn even cataclysmic events such as war, pandemics and natural disasters into just another distraction.

Click.

But in 1980 - a time of just three commercial TV networks and no Internet - many learned of Lennon's death from Howard Cosell, of all people, who read the bulletin live on "Monday Night Football." Word also traveled via radio stations, which immediately began playing Lennon's music, something most of them hadn't done in a decade. Old friends called each other and reminisced about Lennon, his life and what it all meant.

And what exactly did it mean?

For many, Lennon symbolized the '60s and all the nobler ambitions of that era: promoting peace and love, seeking life's deeper meanings, achieving a higher state of consciousness.

Because Lennon also stood for absolute truth and knowledge of self, he had to be aware of the flip side of that quest: the ravages of drugs, relationships that had been sundered and the fact that, despite our best efforts, the world keeps spinning in the same sad fashion.

Lennon was a man of many contradictions. It couldn't have escaped his attention that, even as he sang "imagine no possessions," he was a fabulously wealthy man. He sang about love, yet had coldly abandoned his first wife and child. In a particularly heart-wrenching passage in Cynthia Lennon's new memoir, "John," her young son Julian says, "Dad's always telling people to love each other, but how come he doesn't love me?"

Perhaps the impact of Lennon's death was also increased by the fact that we'd only recently gotten him back. Before the release of "Double Fantasy," his 1980 album with Ono, Lennon had been on a long self-imposed exile from recording and performing in public.

Then, too, his solo career up to that point had been a checkered one. His albums had often seemed more like therapy sessions, with Lennon exorcising demons of abandonment by his mother, his Beatles past, and the hold drugs had on him.

Still, his songs were provocative, philosophical and deeper than most anything heard on the radio since. "God is a concept against which we measure our pain," he sang at one point. "Woman is the nigger of the world." "Imagine all the people/Living life in peace."

That was Lennon. Simple, direct and unafraid to put an idea out there and see what came back.

Yet, the further we get from Lennon's life, the harder it is to get a clear picture of him. That much is obvious from the many books that continue to be published about him and his former mates. Some get it mostly right while others are mere hagiographies. Still others attempt to even the score against a man who is no longer here to defend himself.

And that's what's most missing: his presence. It's easy to forget now, when most rely on Lennon's music to define who he was, but he was actually someone whose art flowed through all aspects of his life. He sent it out in various forms, including songs, drawings, poems, films, press releases, full-page newspaper ads and "happenings."

It's intriguing to imagine what a 65-year-old Lennon might be like. Would he be touring the world like his former mate Paul McCartney? Would he, like McCartney, have accepted a British knighthood? Could he have made as much political impact in recent decades as he had in the '70s?

And what would he say about music being reduced to a series of zeros and ones and being carried around in a small device made by a company named, of all things, Apple, the same as his record label?

We'll never know, of course. We were robbed of that opportunity 25 years ago. His friends and family were robbed of so much more.

But for those of us who felt close to him because of who he was and what he stood for, the pain of that day and the myriad lessons of his life continue to resonate.

What is your favorite John Lennon song?

"'Imagine.' It asks us to put ourselves in a place that we'd really like for ourselves and the world to be, and though we may not be there at the moment, the music invites us to think of change as a real possibility."

- David Robertson, music director, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra


"'Across the Universe,' mostly because of the floating melody and beautiful words. But I love hearing what people think John is singing with 'Jai Guru Deva, om.' My favorite is a friend who thinks it's 'Kang-a-roo Jack, huhhhh?'"

- Brandy Johnson, singer-songwriter


"'Cold Turkey.' Talk about your roots of punk rock! (It's) full of angst - honest and scary at the same time. You really feel his pain from withdrawal."

- Joe Schwab, owner, Euclid Records


"I was probably a freshman in high school when the 'White Album' came out, and I just wore the grooves out of it. I always liked 'Julia,' which he wrote for his mother. There's a lot of weird stuff on that album but, being a ballad, that one stands out. It's really such a pretty song."

- Mark Klose, radio personality, KIHT

A library of Lennon

Thursday is the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death; Oct. 9 marked the 65th anniversary of his birth.

The dates have been greeted by a miniboom in the publishing world. With numerous books on Lennon and the Beatles filling the shelves, here's a quick guide to help separate the fab from the drab.

"Life: Remembering John Lennon: 25 Years Later"

By Life Magazine Editors
Life Books
128 pages
$17.95
A passable retrospective of Lennon's life, as typically told by Life magazine - with numerous photographs and scant, mostly bland text.

"John Lennon: The New York Years"

By Bob Gruen
Stewart, Tabori & Chang
176 pages
$29.95

For nine years, Gruen was John and Yoko's personal photographer, snapping pics for the couple's own use and for posterity. Gruen's photos are both intimate and iconic; one of them is the famous rooftop shot of Lennon in his "New York City" T-shirt. Gruen's vivid tales of how many of the photos came to offer genuine insight into some of Lennon's most private moments.

"Memories of John Lennon"

Edited and introduced by Yoko Ono
Harper Collins
310 pages

$24.95
An odd selection of contributors - everyone from Mick Jagger, Bono and Joan Baez to Jello Biafra, actress Jane Alexander and comedian Paul Reiser - offer memories and appreciations of Lennon's life and work. Disappointingly, Yoko Ono, who edited this volume, is one person who has yet to weigh in at length on the subject.

"Lennon Revealed"

By Larry Kane
Running Press
296 pages
$29.95

A longtime radio and TV journalist, Kane received a golden "Ticket to Ride" when he traveled in the Beatles' entourage on their 1964 tour of America. He befriended Lennon and kept in touch over the years, but his portrait of the artist is strictly boilerplate, delivering far less revelation than is promised by the title.

"John"

By Cynthia Lennon
Crown
306 pages
$25.95

A potent reminder that there was another side to the Lennon legend, a legacy of pain and abandonment felt by Lennon's first family, wife Cynthia and son Julian. A bittersweet tale - sweet first, then bitter - "John" is a substantial upgrade from Cynthia's slight 1978 memoir, "A Twist of Lennon."

"With the Beatles"

By Lewis Lapham
Melville House
168 pages
$12.95

In 1968, Lapham, editor of Harper's Magazine, wrote a Saturday Evening Post story on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the visitors to his ashram in India - among them the Beatles. This book expands on that story, recounting one of pop music's most well-intentioned misadventures.

"The Beatles: The Biography"

By Bob Spitz
Little, Brown
984 pages
$29.95

Exhaustively researched and exhaustingly told, Spitz invests the story of a pop group from Liverpool with the gravitas of a Homeric epic. Considering that that pop group sent shock waves through culture that still resonate today, the heft of the tome - if not always its tone - is justified.

[sclcookie]

John Lennon and The Beatles are main influences of the band Oasis.

Here's a some amusing stuff for you Tracy.

Liam has also had a habit of making incomprehensible statements. He has in the past claimed that he was possessed by the spirit of John Lennon, even going so far as to suggest he is John Lennon in a re-incarnated form, despite the fact that he was eight years old when Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman. However strange Noel claims to find this obsession, he occasionally indulged him, going so far as to buy him Lennon's "dreamcatcher" necklace.

Liam met his first wife, Patsy Kensit in 1994 and married her on April 7, 1997. A son, Lennon Francis, was born September 13, 1999.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liam_Gallagher

[CCADP]

Fans mourn Lennon's passing at Strawberry Fields






NEW YORK : John Lennon fans brought flowers, messages and candles to Strawberry Fields in Central Park on Thursday to mourn the murder 25 years ago of the pop legend.

Lennon was gunned down outside his Manhattan apartment block within sight of the park named after one of his most famous Beatles songs.

Hundreds of fans descended on Strawberry Fields on a cold sunny day to leave tributes on the "Imagine" mosaic that is the centrepiece of New York's tribute to Lennon.

Mourners left a Liverpool football club scarf from Lennon's home city in England. They also left vinyl copies of the songs "Revolver", "Let It Be" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".

There was the name "John" written in candles, incense burned and other items were left.

"I was here 25 years ago," said New Yorker Mark Elsis. "I was driving a taxi.

"I heard a local DJ saying that Lennon had been shot in front of the Dakota" building, he added. "And I swore on his blood that I was going to change the world," said Elsis, who runs a website dedicated to Lennon, his widow Yoko Ono and their son Sean Lennon.

"I felt I had lost a close family member," said businesswoman Darlene Disisto, 49.

"I'm still so sorry that he died that way, such a peaceful and loving man," she said, of the shooting.

Mark Chapman, a deranged fan obsessed by the former Beatle and craving his popularity, shot Lennon five times on the steps of the Dakota building where Lennon and Ono lived.

Eric Gustafson, only 18, from Philadelphia, also felt the influence of Lennon even though he was born after the rock star's death.

"I wanted to stop to see what it is all about, to celebrate the life of John Lennon," he said.

"I discovered his music through the Beatles, digging around for records," he said.

Ken Newnzig, 60, from upstate New York, stopped by on his way to the hospital to visit his wife.

"I remember 1964 when they first came to America. I was a freshman, I remember the TV shows, I couldn't stop watching. Their music was part of my growing up then, of the change of society.

"I liked his honesty, and his courage to speak his truth, despite the disapproval of certain segments of the society.

"He spoke out for peace, he chose to stay at home with his kid, he didn't feel the pressure of the society or the pressure to keep making music, he spoke for the possibility of real peace in the world.

"And today people still want to believe in that, despite what the world is today."

Commemorations were also held in Liverpool, London and other cities around the world. - AFP /dt

[CCADP]

Fans Remember John Lennon's Death
Slideshow: Life And Legacy Of A Legend
Save It Email It Print It
(CBS) NEW YORK Fans are marking the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's assassination and, as he looked back at Lennon's life and death, Harry Smith spoke with a Lennon friend, a Beatles scholar, and the disc jockey who did what was to be Lennon's last interview.

John Lennon's murder 25 years ago Thursday was one of those "where were you" moments.

A true rock icon, the former Beatle remains one of the most influential artists of his generation.

As they did the day Lennon was shot, his fans were gathering in Strawberry Fields in New York's Central Park Thursday to remember the working-class hero.

The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith looked back at Lennon's life, and death.

"My mind was reeling, trying to change it, trying to fix it," Lennon friend and photographer Bob Gruen told Smith. " 'What can we do about it?' and, you know, just the horror of the way it happened, the pointlessness of how it happened."

Though Lennon was regarded as a musical genius, he saw himself as an ordinary working man, Smith points out.

In an appearance captured on "The Dick Cavett Show: John & Yoko" DVD, Lennon said, "I'm not an intellectual, I'm not articulate, I'm working-class, and I use few words. I use the words that people around me used when I was a child. I talk like that."

Gruen lived around the corner from Lennon and Yoko Ono's first apartment in New York, in Greenwich Village.

"Actually, I met them in their bedroom," he told Smith. "They spent a lot of time in bed. �They weren't kind of a sit-at-the-desk kind of businesspeople. They were more of a give-instructions-from-the-bed kind of people; a very nice bed, a very big comfortable bed."

Gruen was there the day Lennon and Ono looked at their first apartment in uptown Manhattan, in the luxury apartment house known as "The Dakota."

He says, of a photo session he did with them at the time, "John and Yoko particularly liked this session. It really shows the kind of communication and the touching and loving between them. It's one of my favorites of the two of 'em."

Gruen was at the Dakota several years later, for the birth of Sean Lennon: "It was probably the happiest I've ever seen him. You know, a big, you know, new father smile on his face.

"John Lennon was a very funny guy. And he put people at ease very quickly. And, you'd always have a good laugh whenever you saw him."

Lennon's famous quick wit and improvisation came through in interviews with talk show host Dick Cavett, who commented to told Smith, "(Lennon) said, 'You know, the whole idea that we're thinking of doing this is 'cause you've got the only halfway intelligent show on television.' And I thought, 'Well isn't that� Now, wait a minute. I've worked all these years to be a halfway intelligent show? Do suppose we'll ever get hired, John?' "

Lennon was also a committed political activist. The FBI wanted him deported on drug charges.

"They're after us because we talk about peace, you know," Lennon remarked to Cavett during the joint appearance with Ono on Cavett's show.

Lennon's final day, Smith notes, was an eerie microcosm of his entire life.

He had just emerged from five years of seclusion with a new album, and began the morning with a photo session for Rolling Stone magazine. Its cover featured a naked Lennon up against a clothed Ono.

Beatles scholar Marin Lewis says, "He just wanted to strip himself naked, bare, and say, 'This is just who I am. I'm just a regular guy, called John.' "

That afternoon, Lennon gave what would be his final interview to disc jockey Dave Sholin, who was working with engineer Ron Hummel, and spoke of Ono, his love and inspiration.

"Certain times during the interview," Sholin remembers, "he would look at her and she would look at him, and it was pretty clear what they were saying, just with their eyes. �I'm glad we captured everything. I just wish there was another ending."

In an ironic statement during that final interview, Lennon said, "I still believe in love, peace. I still believe in positive thinking. �And I consider that my work won't be finished until I'm dead and buried, and I hope that's a long, long time."

The day ended with a recording session, and Lennon rushed home to see his son, Sean.

At the Dakota, Mark David Chapman was waiting.

"He went into a combat stance, and he fired," says now-retired New York City Police Officer Peter Cullen, who had no idea he was about to be called to an assassination scene.

"A call came over," he recalls, " 'Report of possible shots fired at the Dakota.' "

Five shots, Smith says, that silenced a devoted husband and father, and the voice of a generation.

"That's what John Lennon is," Lewis says, "more than a musician. He's like Martin Luther King: a flawed human being who rose above his own flaws to inspire other people. And you can't ask more of a human being than that."

Mourners in New York will hold a moment of silence Thursday night at 10:50, the time Lennon was shot, and again at 11:15, the time he is believed to have died.

(© MMV, CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

[CCADP]

Fans Mark Anniversary of Lennon's Murder

By FRANK ELTMAN
NEW YORK - Fans brought flowers, candles and their own bittersweet memories Thursday as they gathered in Central Park's Strawberry Fields to imagine what might have been on the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder by a deranged Beatles fan.

"With the country at war, his work and philosophy seem more poignant and more desperately needed than ever," said Kim Polson, 50, who said she fell in love with the Beatles when she saw them on television at age 8.

She was an early-morning visitor to Strawberry Fields, the section of Central Park opposite the Dakota apartment building where Lennon was gunned down on Dec. 8, 1980. Hundreds of fans, some of them born after Lennon's death, gathered on a cold morning.

The scene was much the same in Lennon's hometown of Liverpool, England, where scores of fans from around the world remembered the ex-Beatle with white balloons, flowers and prayers. The balloons, carrying tributes to Lennon, were released into the sky.

"I just wrote 'Merry Christmas John' on my balloon," said James Andrews, a 9-year-old from Bournemouth, England. "I love the Beatles, and especially John Lennon."

In New York, locals mingled with tourists in Central Park. One woman sat with a scrapbook she had assembled over the years, while another man played Beatles music on an acoustic guitar. Visitors piled off tour buses to visit the vigil or walk past the Dakota. Among the floral offerings were a half-dozen white roses and a bough of holly.

Angie Mulbay, 24, traveled to New York from Columbus, Ohio, with her 20-year-old sister Ashley. They planned to spend most of the day in Strawberry Fields.

"John is very important to me, his music and his message," said Mulbay, who was born four days after Lennon's death. "We're here to share the day and meet people with the same interest."

Twenty-five years ago, Lennon _ who had turned 40 two months earlier _ was returning from a midtown Manhattan recording studio with his wife, Yoko Ono. As they approached their apartment building, Mark David Chapman, a fan carrying a copy of J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," opened fire on Lennon.

Police officers put the mortally wounded singer in the back of a squad car and rushed him to a nearby hospital, but Lennon was pronounced dead a short time later.

Tom Leighton, one of the organizers of an ad-hoc memorial committee, said people attend the vigil for different personal reasons, but "primarily it's to pay our respects and share our grief collectively."

Fans hold a moment of silence at 10:50 p.m. _ the time Lennon was shot _ and again at 11:15 _ the time he is believed to have died. Despite an appeal by Lennon fans, city officials planned to close the park at 1 a.m., as they have for several years.

Polson, who lives a block from the Dakota, recalled seeing Lennon in a coffee shop four months before he was killed. She stuck around to listen to him talk to a colleague.

"I came to the office two hours late that morning and my boss was furious, so I said, 'Ask me why I'm late,'" Polson said. "When I told him, he was no longer angry."

"I'll be late for work again today. John Lennon made me late again," she said.

Chapman remains in New York's Attica state prison, where he comes up for parole next year.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)

[CCADP]

Fans gather in Central Park to mark 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder
Updated at 18:50 on December 8, 2005, EST.

NEW YORK (AP) - Some met John Lennon in person, others knew him from the television, still others never knew him at all. On Thursday, they gathered by the hundreds in Central Park's Strawberry Fields to remember the pacifist rock star murdered 25 years ago by a deranged Beatles fan.

Generations from across the world, if not quite the universe, united to celebrate Lennon's life and his message of peace, playing his music, singing his songs, wondering what might have been if the ex-Beatle had survived the Dec. 8, 1980, shooting outside his Manhattan apartment building.

Yoko Ono was among those at Strawberry Fields, walking through a horde of hundreds of Lennon fans before stopping at a flower-covered mosaic paying tribute to Lennon with its one-word message: Imagine.

"His message is still the same: peace and love and live the best you can," said Martha Wagner, who came into Manhattan from Dover, N.J., with a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings about Lennon. She remembered hearing news of the slaying on television: "My heart stopped. I screamed."

Kim Polson, 50, of Manhattan, recalled seeing Lennon in an Upper West Side coffee shop four months before the shooting. She was late for work that day, hanging around and listening to Lennon's conversation.

"I'll be late for work again today," said Polson, one of the early arrivals at Strawberry Fields on the anniversary, a bitterly cold day. "John Lennon made me late again."

The scene was much the same in Lennon's hometown of Liverpool, England, where scores of fans from around the world remembered him with white balloons, flowers and prayers. The balloons, carrying written tributes to Lennon, were released into the sky.

"I just wrote 'Merry Christmas John' on my balloon," said James Andrews, a nine-year-old from Bournemouth, England. "I love the Beatles, and especially John Lennon."

A short service was also held beside a statue of Lennon on Liverpool's Mathew Street, where the Beatles played early in their career at the Cavern Club.

Lennon's songwriting partner, Paul McCartney, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that Lennon was "one of the great men of the 20th century . . . I will always feel some kind of link with John."

In New York, locals and tourists stood side-by-side near the Lennon-inspired Central Park mosaic. One man played Beatles' music on an acoustic guitar, as visitors piled off tour buses to stop at Strawberry Fields. They brought flowers, candles and bittersweet memories.

"He entered people's hearts, and made us softer toward each other," said Cummings Dass, 65, who came to Manhattan from Trinidad for the anniversary. "When he died, a part of the music died with him."

If Lennon were alive, he would have turned 65 in October.

Across the street at the Dakota, the apartment house where Lennon was killed, fans walked respectfully past police and security guards. Traditionally, Ono lights a candle in her apartment window in the evening as a show of solidarity with the crowd gathered in the park.

Lennon, who had turned 40 just two months earlier, was returning with Ono from a recording studio when he was gunned down at about 10:50 p.m., the time that a moment of silence was planned in Central Park.

A second moment of silence was planned for 11:15 p.m., the approximate time of Lennon's death. City officials planned to close the park at 1 a.m., as they have for several years over the objection of fans who want an all-night vigil.

Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, comes up for parole next year. His bids for freedom have already been rejected three times.

For Sarah Koflan, 16, of Bernardston, Mass., her Thursday trip to Central Park was as close as she would ever get to Lennon. Although born nearly a decade after his death, the teen still considers Lennon a role model.

"John Lennon is my hero," she said. "He's the coolest guy. . . . Just being here today, with everyone who loves him, is awesome. It's a beautiful feeling."