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Me And John Lennon

originally published November 30, 2005

Tuesday, Dec. 8 marks the 25th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. Naturally, this means that a lot of people will be recounting to others just exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news - treating these facts as if they are so compelling that their acquaintances will pay admission to hear them. I am no exception.

I was up late that night in 1980, watching Monday Night Football (the Patriots were playing the Dolphins) inside a ranch home that stood in a proper, segregated subdivision in Perry, GA. The town off I-75 neither remembered nor cared who John Lennon was - which I found odd in light of all the Beatlesque moptops sported by Perry lads. I was known as the John Lennon of Perry, a distinction I gained by being the foremost Perry connoisseur of his music and, like the teenaged John Lennon, by drawing lots of portraits of John Lennon.

In spite of my being held in middle Georgia against my will, things were showing signs of looking up. It was my second school year there and I had amassed almost three friends. The Philadelphia Phillies, the team I had abandoned but still loved, had just won the World Series for the first time ever. Perhaps most heartening of all, Lennon’s comeback album Double Fantasy was out, successful and nearly ubiquitous, and fresh interviews revealed him to be a happy, healthy family man. Even Ronald Reagan’s election wasn’t upsetting my mojo, even if I didn’t know what mojo meant back then and don’t think I’m sure what it means now.

The night of Dec. 8 was the ultimate mojo upsetter.

At around 10:50 p.m., my friend Mike Turner called and said that his dad told him he’d heard on the radio that “John Leonard” had been shot and killed in New York City. A little concerned, I switched on the radio; none of the four stations I could get on FM had any news on, but on AM, I heard a very faint report that a former Beatle had been shot in front of his home. When with wobbly legs I returned to the football game, Howard Cosell was saying that this game meant nothing and that the world was in trouble if such a great man could be so senselessly slain. I think then I collapsed in a heap at my mother’s bedroom door, where my night of sobbing began.

Like so many Lennon fans that night, I couldn’t believe this had happened to me. I felt thrust back into the dark tunnel that began with my move to the South in 1979, continued with my refusal to embrace its culture and grew bleaker when I realized none of the girls there found a Pennsylvania boy so exotic that they would barrage him with love letters and phone calls. My sanctuary from my Dixie distress was my room, where I’d put on Plastic Ono Band and wonder if anyone else out there realized it was the greatest album ever made.

Lennon’s death didn’t mean I stopped doing that. In fact, nothing changed in my physical world save for the sudden flood of his songs on the radio.

Yet part of me wanted the world to feel sorry for me. I showed up late for school the next day and didn’t try to hide how devastated I was. When I heard Dennis Peavy utter, “You know he’s been crying all night,” I was happy for the recognition. My humanities teacher consoled me with a moral: “This should teach you not to have idols; they just disappoint you or get shot down.” Instead of kicking him in the shin, I was glad he saw my suffering.

Just to make sure everyone knew how badly this hurt me, I climbed with Mike Turner onto the school roof that night and hung a banner over the entrance that read, “LENNON LIVES ON.” (What did that mean, really? Did I really believe that?) Everyone knew who did it, but the principal didn’t punish me, probably because his daughter was a big Beatles fan.

Before turning in, I stared at the ceiling listening to Plastic Ono Band, just like I probably would have if Mark David Chapman had turned the gun on his own lone, confused ass instead of on the object of my worship.

You didn’t ask, but that’s where I was, mentally and physically, the night John Lennon died and, as an added bonus, the next day. Neither was a very good place. I was just a sad, temporarily lonely misfit trying to horn in on someone else’s tragedy. It took me a lot of growing up before I realized the greatest injustice was done not to Lennon’s fans, but to his family, who were robbed of someone who, after years of troubles and trials and errors, had prevailed in re-inventing himself as a good father and husband.

Greg Benson Greg Benson is a local artist.

Greg Benson

Greg Benson is a local artist.