Imagine John Lennon at 80. and, I wanna hold your ha-a-a-and.
These Beatles songs were different than anything we’d ever heard.
I’m not kidding when I say it changed our whole direction in life.
My three best friends and I instantly said, we need to start a band!
John, Paul, George and Ringo they basically started every band you hear today.
John and I became great friends later on, even though we were polar opposites.
He was outspoken and loved politics.
I loved horror and comedy and thought music should be an escape from current events.
But what fun we had.
John Lennon is dead.
I swear, there was like a vacuum in the room.
Everybody just got up and left and didn’t say a word.
Honestly it was like your parents dying.
Like, Hey, your mom and dad just got killed in a plane crash.
You couldn’t digest it.
The next day, almost every musician I knew started carrying a piece.
I had a little .22-caliber Walther PPK, and everybody had some sort of weapon just in case.
We didn’t know if John’s death was part of a conspiracy or what.
Our innocence was gone.
The loss was irreplaceable.
That was the day the music died.
Professional Jane was really trying to hold it together, but the girl inside me was losing it.
The second we wrapped, I started sobbing.
I was in the back of the rafters and the screaming was nonstop.
The generational attachment was that profound.
That night in 1980 feels so long ago now.
But the memory is so precious.
I can’t drive by the Dakota to this day without thinking about it.
He shaped pretty much everything for me.
In the 70s John was such a towering figure that it was almost like hanging out with a god.
I was a lowly magazine publisher.
He was a Beatle.
When you’d spend time with him, you had to be on top of your game and quick-witted.
He was so sharp, so smart, so funny.
His energy could be scary.
I heard about his death on the news.
The feeling went from sad to horrifying to tragic.
I cried a lot.
The next morning I came into theRolling Stoneoffice late and closed my door.
And he was a great rock n roller.
It’s hard to imagine him now.
Would he be the same old eccentric, curmudgeonly man?
He still lives inside my head with his lyrics.
/ But now these days are gone, I’m not so self-assured.
/ Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors."
