John Lennon is Dead
That the death of John Lennon
would first reach my ears through the rasping medium of a Howard Cosell
monologue is a droll footnote to a sad tale. I don't know why I was watching
Monday Night Football. It was one of those evenings that shatter one's
pretensions of self-discipline and purpose.
I had probably contemplated reading a good book but ended up giving in
to the addiction of my youth.
It was the week before final
exams, and Boston had grown very cold and subdued. The initial gaiety of the post-Thanksgiving
preparations for Christmas had already subsided and the city was caught in that
funny period between the two holidays.
No matter how hard the merchants and admen try, they cannot obliterate
that dead zone in early December.
But Monday Night Football was
impervious to the subtleties of the season, and Howard and Dandy Don Meredith
were still in their heyday. When the
announcement was made, it reached millions of people and its stunning effect
swept across the country.
My first reaction was shock. Assassination was not an end I could imagine
for John Lennon. Rock stars had not
fared well in the 70's, but they generally died from drug overdoses and
motorcycle accidents, which were more like a professional hazard. Being stalked and gunned down by an assassin
cast Lennon's death in a very different light.
The initial shock began to
transform itself into focused emotions, the most striking of which was a deep
aching melancholy. I began to phone friends, passing the grim news and sharing
memories of a youth that seemed suddenly to have ended.
My earliest associations with
music centered around the Beatles. In
1964 I was ten years old. My sister was
an authentic screaming-teen-beatlemaniac. Every day after school she would drag
me down into our basement and we would play Beatle 45s until Mom yelled down
that it was time for dinner.
Sometimes we would dance and she
would show me the latest moves - the monkey, the jerk, the watusi. And always
we would memorize, song after song, verse upon verse. I can still sing along with scores of Beatle
songs, rarely missing a word.
After the Beatles' conquest of
the U.S., I left the tutelage of my sister and forged my own relationship with
the Fab Four. In school I was a recognized Beatle expert. I led the Beatles
songs in the bus on field trips. Three friends and I joined together as a
pretend Beatles group, and the girls in our class were willing to pretend right
along with us, so powerful was the elixir of Beatlemania.
By the end of 1965 the album
Rubber Soul had come, and with it a transition out of the cuteness and
innocence of their early image. I was
horrified by their longer and disheveled hair and the unabashed display of
smoking on the album cover. But the new
sound in their music enchanted me and soon I was growing and changing too, just
a few paces behind the lads from Liverpool.
Junior high, with its painful
initiation into the rites of social intercourse, was the time when music first
became a solace to my oft-injured soul.
And though I did not understand the details of their own quest - their
age and sophistication were well beyond my tender years - somehow the
combination of rebellion and truth-seeking in the Beatles music was comprehensible
and comforting to me. I was searching too.
By the time I reached high school
and began grappling with the issues of war, civil rights and social justice,
the Beatles were in the final stages of collapse as a group. I have never
regretted their breakup. The Beatles had
been able to stay one step ahead of the "rock impressarios" up to
that time, but it was inevitable that they would have become yet another big
business band and a monument to self-parody had they continued.
I continued to listen to Beatle
music through college and beyond. Though
my interest in rock music offered up other heroes it was never the same. Other
groups might capture my feelings for a few months or even a few years, but the
Beatles were like lifelong good friends.
We had learned about the world together and nothing would ever change
that.
Those four British boys were
uniquely gifted as a group, creating songs and a sound that were far greater
than the sum of the parts. Their solo
efforts never came close. There was plenty
of individual talent, and a generous portion of charm and wit, but their
incredible impact on this world was circumstantial - a perfect union of those
mystical forces that create an historical moment.
The day after the shooting, I
walked over to MIT and found that Lennon's death was the topic of every
conversation. All of my friends and
co-workers were grieving in some fashion. Radio stations played nothing but Beatle
music and stores were quickly sold out of every Beatle album. In a review
session that I attended, an Iranian graduate student announced, with eyes
glistening, that he was dedicating the session to the memory of John Lennon.
Throughout that day and the next
few, I wrestled with my memories of the Beatles and tried to reconcile
sentiment with reason. John Lennon, whatever his faults or vanities, had
stubbornly spoken for the idealist in all of us. Why can't we just give peace a chance? Why can't we imagine a world without war or
hatred?
On the Sunday following his
death, a rally and candle vigil was held in downtown Boston at Copley Square - timed to coincide
with a worldwide ten minutes of silence for the fallen legend. The day was
brutally cold, but still thousands came.
The embers of the 60s had
smoldered and glowed throughout the 70s. Many had hoped that the gentle
integrity of Jimmy Carter might fan them into life again, but it was not to be.
Then, suddenly, a reaction of cynical pragmatism gripped the nation. Dreams of social
equality and international peace were abandoned in a frenzy of greed and
nationalism.
The year 1980 rang the death
knell for the innocent questing spirit of the 60s. The Soviets were in Afghanistan, the hostages
were in Iran, and a disgruntled public voted in Ronald Reagan as president a
month before the death of John Lennon.
The Beatles had served as an
alter-ego for our generation. And now, a part of them was dead, shot down as if
to exclaim once and for all the absurdity of believing that love could change
the world.
The cold and the wind forced the
crowd to huddle together for the ten minutes of silence. The closeness had an electric effect, and I
could see many around me weeping, yet smiling through their tears. I felt those
twin currents of hope and despair surging through the crowd, but somehow the
mood was triumphant. It was the end of an era, but love would carry the day.
