And a Little Bit About The Beatles
At around 10:50 p.m. (EST) on 8 December 1980, as Lennon and Ono returned to their New York apartment in the Dakota, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times in the archway of the building. Lennon was taken to the emergency room of nearby Roosevelt Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:00 p.m. (EST).
One of the first agency reports on the death of John Lennon.
If anyone thinks they are going to read anything very new, impressive or very clever here, they are mistaken. You should turn to a new page. I have just written a little sentimental rambling about my memories of Lennon and The Beatles.
So, when the Beatles appeared in the early sixties, those were the years when I also became interested in music. In the evenings and nights we listened to Radio Luxembourg. With all the creaking and interruptions. We wore vinyl records to school dances that were crackling. The record player needle skipped, but nothing disturbed the atmosphere. Some of us had slightly longer hair and were called long-haired, hooligans and who knows what else. One of my professors at the time made me go to the hairdresser in the middle of a lecture. Of course I went, but not to the hairdresser. And I got unexcused absences because I didn’t show up that day.
In the mid-sixties, a few friends and I formed a band. A kind of garage version. We had no idea about music. But we had a lot of will and enthusiasm. I tackled the bass guitar because, I thought, it was the easiest. Two chords, a little up, a little down and that was it. The first song I mastered was House of the Rising Sun by Animals. Of course, the experiment failed pretty quickly.
In my collection, I have almost all of The Beatles’ records, as well as those from their solo careers. The first album I bought was Help.
I still have the original business card of the first official fan club – Northern Fan Club – in my collection.
On the way to my father’s weekend, there is a small hill where a lonely tree grows. As an amateur photographer, I took pictures of it countless times in all seasons. It always associated me with Paul’s song The Fool on the Hill.
When Lennon’s album Double Fantasy was released towards the end of November 1980, I got it through some strange connections and from a military warehouse in Trieste the first week.
At that time, I never dreamed that in two weeks Lennon would be dead …
I still remember that Monday afternoon I was sitting in the Evropa café in Ljubljana with a girl we called YesYes. Due to the time difference, I only found out the news the next morning. It was shock, sadness, anger, pain.
Nothing was the same after that.
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
John Lennon, October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980