jb RIP |
12-8-2008 3:33 PM |
| RIP |
PeterFanForever Hows it going caroselambra |
12-8-2008 5:07 PM |
| How's it going "caroselambra?" Thank you so much for sharing your story with all of us and for your honesty. I have heard the same story from other fellow British citizens that I know personally. Bands like THE BEATLES, THE ROLLING STONES and LED ZEPPELIN are not as big or praised as much in their own country like they are here in the U.S. Here in the U.S. all three bands are idolized as Rock Royalty. I am not saying that England does not love these bands because I know that England does. Liverpool, England is, and always will be, the home of THE BEATLES and that is one thing that Liverpudlians should be very proud of. I am not saying in any way that Liverpudlians are not proud because I know in many ways, that they are. This is also a fact that the whole world can never take away from Liverpool. It is great to hear an opinion and point of view from a fellow Liverpudlian, Thank you. ROCK ON! |
|
tangerine RIP John |
12-8-2008 5:19 PM |
| It's official Dec 8th here, so RIP John...you are missed. |
|
PeterFanForever IMAGINE |
12-8-2008 6:16 PM |
I would like to quote the lyrics from another great legendary song that John wrote in 1971. It is a song off the IMAGINE album from 1971. The name of the song is quite simply "Imagine." It goes like this:
IMAGINE
Words and Music by John Lennon
Imagine there's no heaven
it's easy if you try
no hell below us
above us only sky
imagine all the people
living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
it isn't hard to do
nothing to kill or die for
and no religion too
imagine all the people
living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will be as one.
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
no need for greed or hunger
a brotherhood of man
imagine all the people
sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will live as one.
How can a man like John Lennon be Assassinated after writing beautiful lyrics like this? All John ever wanted was Peace in the world and the very best for mankind. How sad. ROCK ON! |
|
Tull I was numb |
12-8-2008 7:10 PM |
| At the time I was living in a studio apartment in Lodi, NJ. Alone on Monday night, I smoked some pot and played my guitar. Not listening to any TV or radio. Fell asleep early. Woke up, got out of bed, noticed a lot of Lennon music being played on WNEW. Went downstairs to get my NY Times. There it was on the cover. I was numb, but I went to work. |
LEGEND December 8 1980 |
12-8-2008 8:27 PM |
I was watching Monday Night Football
It was Miami Vs. New England
Howard Cosell was announcing and
he was the one to break the news about
John Lennon.
Must have been around 11 o'clock give or take.
I could not believe it
A part of my life had just died.
The next day I went to work in the city and went straight to the Dakota.
The crowds
Beatle music
People just crying
Sadness
You could see the bullet shots in the glass in the doorman's booth.
December 8, 1980
John Lennon Announced dead by Howard Cosell 1980
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gcdz1IRVoM
|
|
The Rover December 8, 1980 |
12-8-2009 06:57 AM |
December 8, 1980
The Assassination Of John Lennon
http://www.john-lennon.com/theassassinationofjl.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3o8SRPf2Lc&feature=PlayList&p=0D05A41852507941&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1 |
|
balipsy it still hurts |
12-8-2009 10:19 AM |
| it still hurts |
|
Yukon Corelius RIP |
12-8-2009 1:36 PM |
| RIP |
|
SIBLY Sad day in history |
12-8-2009 8:35 PM |
| Sad day in history |
WoodFloors peace |
12-8-2009 9:30 PM |
| All we are saying, is give peace a chance |
|
TIMES ARIAL 30 year anniversary for John Lennon |
12-8-2010 04:50 AM |
30 year anniversary for John Lennon
RIP |
|
Colette F. Nellis give peace a chance |
12-8-2010 8:13 PM |
give peace a chance
rip
just watched a hard days night
|
|
Philosophical It has been 30 years |
12-8-2010 9:16 PM |
It has been 30 years which puts a bunch of life in perspective
It still hurts
He would have been 70 years old now
RIP John Lennon |
|
Silken Argarthus December 8, 1980 John Lennon killed |
12-8-2011 09:55 AM |
December 8, 1980 John Lennon killed
already 31 years........................................
what could have been |
|
Effiveelf Imagine - John Lennon |
12-8-2011 12:07 PM |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b7qaSxuZUg&feature=share
Imagine - John Lennon |
|
jaloquinn John Lennon |
12-8-2011 7:41 PM |
It was December 8th, 1980. John and Yoko were just returning to their home in The Dakota. It's a posh apartment building that looms at 1 West 72nd Street, in Manhattan.
The happy couple just finished recording the song "Walking On Thin Ice," for the follow up album to "Double Fantasy." They neared the entrance, and John turned when he heard someone call, "Mr. Lennon!" Mark David Chapman, 25, placed the album that he had gotten autographed earlier, on to a planter, then fired five shots from a .38, into John Lennon's back. John staggered into the building saying; "I'm shot!" Yoko called for help. Two police vehicles arrived in minutes, and one rushed John to Roosevelt Hospital. Mr. Lennon died in transit. Chapman made no attempt to flee. He was arrested standing next to the gun he dropped, reading a copy of, "Catcher in the Rye," the handbook for psychopaths. Very bizarrely, Chapman was photographed getting an autograph from Lennon just a few hours earlier.
While Chapman waited in the police cruiser, Yoko Ono walked over and looked at him, said nothing, and walked away. Chapman later recalled this memory as "traumatic".
The world went into shock. Within minutes, crowds gathered outside the building. They brought flowers and candles, and sang, "Imagine," "In My Life," and "Give Peace a Chance." At least two fans committed suicide, when they heard the news.
Thanks to Findadeath.com friend Bob Siler, here is the last photograph EVER of John Lennon, in a body bag in the NYC Morgue. An attendant snapped the photo a few hours after Lennon had arrived. The next day he was cremated. The guy who took it got $5,000 from the National Enquirer. (Thanks to Todd A. Dale as well, for the text.)
A few days later, all over the world, fans held silent vigils in John's memory. In New York's Central Park, across from the Dakota, nearly 400,000 fans turned up to pay their respects.
John's body was cremated on December 10th, and his ashes were given to his wife. He was 40 years old.
December 2004: Here is his death certificate, exclusively for Findadeath!
October 2000 : update courtesy of Findadeath.com friend James Copeland:
Having perused your pages with morbid fascination, I thought this unpleasant addendum to the John Lennon story might appeal to you.
According to controversial biographer Albert Goldman, "Lennon had a horror of cremation, a practice that he inveighed against and once proposed to protest in a song. Despite his aversion, his widow arranged to have his body burned." And from the Channel 4 documentary "The Real John Lennon", it is clear that none of his family in England were consulted about the perfunctory disposal of his body.
John's 5 year old son Sean wasn't told the awful news until the morning of 10 December. Understandably distraught, he asked to see his father one last time, so Lennon's assistant Fred Seaman rang security man Douglas MacDougal at Ferncliff Mortuary and asked him to hold off on the cremation. It was too late.
But it gets worse.
According to Seaman's account in his book "The last days of John Lennon", MacDougal told him that John's face had been serene and calm until just before the body entered the oven, when suddenly it contorted into a "pained, macabre grin" apparently due to rigor mortis. MacDougal had also warned Yoko a couple of months before the murder that the Lennons were running crazy risks by making their daily routine public and not having proper bodyguards.
Maybe true, maybe not, but I believe there was something profoundly sinister about John's reclusive final years with the Astrology obsessed Yoko Ono. George Harrison once said of visits to the Dakota, "I always felt there was something more that he wanted to say but didn't feel able to. There was a look in his eyes." Look at some pictures of Lennon in the studio not long before his death at www.vintagebb.com/lennon.html He doesn't look like a well man to me.
That's about it. All of the above information (apart from the final paragraph, which is sheer conjecture) is freely available from the sources I mentioned.
Best wishes, James.
Thank you, James. What an interesting addition. I appreciate it.
A memorial to Lennon, a 2.5 acre area called Strawberry Fields, was created in Central Park. Here's another picture of the sign, thanks again to His and Hearse.
Trivia: In July of 57, John's mother was struck and killed, crossing a Liverpool road, trying to catch a bus. Here is the road where it happened.
More Trivia: Once, Lennon went on a bender, at the Troubador Nightclub in LA. In a drunken whimsy, he taped a Kotex to his forehead. When the waitress refused to give him what he thought was proper respect, he snapped, "Don't you know who I am?" "Yeah, you're some asshole with a Kotex on his head," was her response.
In August of 1998, the record sleeve signed by Lennon for Chapman went on the auction block, and was expected to fetch over a million dollars. It was discovered in the planter outside the Dakota, between 30 minutes and an hour after Lennon was shot. This person that found it, kept it under his bed, until this auction. Don't know if he made the million or not.
In December of the same year, John's "Fuck Poem," in which he wrote the word 104 times in 1969, sold for $5000.00.
A very nice friend of Findadeath.com sent me a post card of the Dakota, from 1909. I honestly forgot their name, so please, whoever you are, please forgive me, and THANK YOU.
Gilda Radner and Lauren Bacall both lived in the Dakota at the time. The film, "Rosemary's Baby," was made there as well.
Trivia: Findadeath.com friend Kevin Kusinitz sent in this great piece of trivia:
"Sugar Blues," the book by Gloria Swanson's husband, was a favorite book of John Lennon's. Apparently, he'd hand out copies of the book the way Henry Ford did "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Lennon, like Gloria, was sure that sugar was the curse of the world. Of course, Lennon chain-smoked moccasin-like French cigarettes and downed about 20 cups of espresso a day. Real health nut, that Lennon. Thanks, Kevin.
Findadeath.com friend Kevin Hassell sends this bit of info: I work in a gas station, and I listen to classic rock a lot when I'm working inside the store. Anyway, one day Imagine was playing as one of my regulars came in. Upon hearing the song, he told me a very interesting story about Mr. Lennon. It seems that the customer had a cousin who worked as a masseuse for John and Yoko when they lived in New York in the Seventies. One of her jobs was to massage John's nose five or six times a day. The reason for this was that John's nose was so badly damaged by excessive cocaine use, that he constantly needed it to be massaged! I don't think this is a made up story, as I can't see what my customer would get out of making a story like that up. I thought you would be very interested to hear this new info about one of the greatest musicians that ever lived! - Very interesting, Kevin. Thank you very much.
This just in, January 2003, from Findadeath friend Ken from Brooklyn:
The last picture of Lennon in the morgue was actually published on the front page of The New York Post. A bumper sticker later surfaced with the phrase "Aren't you ashamed of the New York Post?" with the same picture.
One more little story: Andy Kaufman went on David Letterman's show soon after Albert Goldman published his Lennon book and ranted about Goldman. He said "Mr. Goldman, I'm alive. Face and confront people who can defend themselves". Letterman had to practically push Andy off the stage. Hope Goldman doesn't decide to write about Andy!
Ken from Brooklyn
Hi....here's just a little story about the murder of John Lennon, I'd like to share:
In 1984 or so, I used to live in Lindenhurst, Long Island, and I was catching a train to go west (toward the city). I saw this guy on the platform, and he looked familiar to me and I decided to speak to him (I usually wouldn't do such a thing, but something told me to). This guy had on a work uniform, kind of like a sanitation worker with a jacket over it, so you couldn't see who he was working for. I remember he had wavy hair and really thick sideburns, almost hippie looking.
I told him he looked familiar to me, and he said, "You must have seen me on TV". He told me he worked for the coroners office. And then it clicked, I did see him a few years earlier, moving John Lennon's body.
He told me he was on TV recently with the Jennifer Levin murder case, and just saying that she was outright strangled from what he saw, it wasn't a rough sex thing that Robert Chambers (her murderer) had said it was.
I said to him that I had seen him on TV with Lennon's body, and he replied yes, that he had moved it, and that a lot of people had gotten in to take pictures of Lennon. Some people were actually able to get in video cameras (they were rare in 1980). (I would imagine this was an after hours deal). He had even mentioned how people had moved Lennon's mouth and made gestures of him going "Yeah, yeah, yeah".
I was shocked to hear this, but according to this fellow, he was there.
A number of years later, I made a friend with someone who worked close to the police department, and he told me that they have a book of dead famous people that he'd seen. These are official police photos, but kept as a scrap book. I personally don't know this first hand, but there's another source for you.
Thank YOU, John! That is an amazing story, and thank you for sharing it with us.
Findadeath.com friend Mike sends us this: I was surfing through John Lennon's "mortography" when I came upon Mark Chapman's address at 55 S. Kukui in Honolulu. Hey, I said to myself, that's sounds like right around the corner. So, I packed my handy digicam and set out for Downtown. A piece of cake to find - the complex fills a whole city block right across the street from the main parking lot used for the Traffic court. Only problem, it has 2 buildings - Diamond Head and Ewa. Here in Honolulu they don't use names like N, E, S, W, but Diamond Head (DH) for stuff on the east side, towards the famous hill, and Ewa for the west side, which used to be a nice beach, but now a gang
infested suburb. Anyways, the DH building is the one in the foreground on the right, and I made the pic from DH side. I would bet he lived inside one of these windows, because it is the favored side with a view and cooled by the trade winds. He drew sketches of Diamond Head, so I can imagine him sitting on a coach in there, gazing out this way, hatching his demonic plans.
I did visit someone inside the back Ewa building once, for some reason which I have long forgotten. The place was on the DH side about mid-floors level. Odds are not good it was Mark's room. But, if we can find his apt. number somewhere...
John Lennon's ghost found, by Findadeath.com friend Melissa who sends us this link.
Findadeath.com friend Victor Park sends in this bit of audio ( you need a real player to listen, and please download (Right click and SAVE AS) it instead of sucking my bandwidth. I would really appreciate it) of Howard Cosell announcing John Lennon's death. This is how a lot of people got the first news of the event. Thanks Victor.
UPDATED NOVEMBER 1999 - Updates in RED - mucho thanks to Todd Alexander Dale, friend of Findadeath extraordinaire.
This just in, February 2005, from Findadeath friend Alex:
Listen, I wanted to point out that I just saw a program on the A&E Network on the assassination of John Lennon, and there was an extensive interview with all involved, the police, the doctors, etc.
In the site, it is mentioned that John died "in transit", but that is not the case. He died at the hospital. They interviewed the doctor that performed emergency surgery on John, he mentioned that he opened his chest and held his heart, and that it needed massaging, as his blood pressure was not good when he arrived.
It was also mentioned that the whole staff was amazed at the situation, and that no one could believe that it was John Lennon, but he was accompanied by Yoko, plus he had identification on him in his wallet.
Thanks for the information, Alex!
Parting thought: In the words of Judy Tenuta, "I'm sorry, but if that guy would have aimed a little to the left, he would have been a hero."
Thank you Steve Goldstein and Mark Langlois for Dakota pictures.
www.findadeath.com
|
discuss 32 years today |
12-8-2012 05:43 AM |
The Assassination Of John Lennon
http://www.john-lennon.com/theassassinationofjl.htm
The scene outside New York's spooky old Dakota apartment building on the evening of December 8, 1980, was as surreal as it was horrifying. John Lennon, probably the world's most famous rock star, lay semiconscious, hemorrhaging from four flat-tipped bullets blasted into his back. His wife Yoko Ono held his head in her arms and screamed (just like on her early albums).
A few yards away a pudgy young man stood eerily still, peering down into a paperback book. Moments earlier he had dropped into a military firing stance - legs spread for maximum balance, two hands gripping his .38 revolver to steady his aim - and blown away the very best Beatle. Now he leafed lazily through the pages of the one novel even the most chronically stoned and voided-out ninth grader will actually read, J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye.
The Dakota doorman shouted at the shooter, Mark David Chapman, "Do you know what you've done?"
"I just shot John Lennon," Chapman replied, accurately enough.
It was a tragedy of Kerkegaardian pointlessness. There was only one apparent way to squeeze any sense from it; write it off as random violence by a "wacko."
"He walked past me and then I heard in my head, 'Do it, do it, do it,' over and over again, saying 'Do it, do it, do it,' like that," Chapman, preternaturally serene, recalled in a BBC documentary several years after going to prison. "I don't remember aiming. I must have done, but I don't remember drawing a bead or whatever you call it. And I just pulled the trigger steady five times."
Chapman described his feeling at the time of the shooting as "no emotion, no anger dead silence in the brain."
His unnatural tone sounded all-too-familiar. British lawyer/journalist Fenton Bresler took it as a tip-off. Chapman was a brainwashed hit man carrying out someone else's contract.
"Mark David Chapman," writes Bresler, "is in many ways as much the victim of those who wanted to kill John Lennon as Lennon himself."
Prosecutors, as a loss for motive, opted for the cliché: Chapman did it for the attention- the troublesome American preoccupation with grabbing that elusive fifteen minutes of propels many a daily-newspaper-journalist-cum-pop-sociologist into raptures of sanctimony. But Arthur O'Connor, the detective who spent more time with Chapman immediately following the murder than anyone else, saw it another way.
"It is definitely illogical to say that Mark Committed the murder to make himself famous. He did not want to talk to the press from the very start. It's possible Mark could have been used by somebody. I saw him the night of the murder. I studied him intensely. He looked as if he could have been programmed."
O'Connor was speaking to Bresler, and publicly for the first time. Bresler's book Who Killed John Lennon? Offers the most cogent argument that Lennon's murder was not the work of yet another "lone nut."
Conspiracy theories abounded after the Lennon assassination, many rather cruelly fingering Yoko as the mastermind. Another focused on Paul who, by this line of reasoning, blamed Yoko for engineering his arrest in Japan on reefer charges. The Lennon conspiracy turns up on radio talk shows with some frequency, where hosts fend off callers with the "Why bother to kill that guy?" defense.
Only Bresler's thesis, that Chapman was a mind-controlled assassin manipulated by some right-wing element possibly connected to the newly elected (and not even inaugurated) Reagan apparatus of reaction, transcends the confines of pure speculation, extending into the realm of actual investigation.
Even so, Bresler's book a little too often substitutes rhetorical questions ("What does that steady repetition of a voice saying 'Do it, do it, do it,' over and over again in Mark's head sound like to you?") for evidentiary argument. We can forgive him for that failing. Bresler tracked the case for eight years, conducted unprecedented interviews, and extracted a ream of previously unreleased government documents. But unlike researchers into the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, he did not have volumes of evidence gathered by any official investigation, even a flawed one, to fall back on. The New York police had their man, the case was closed the very night of the murder - and, anyway, what political reason could possibly exist for gunning down the composer of "I Am the Walrus"?
In building his case, Bresler established some key points that put the lie to any "Who would want to kill an aging rock star?" brush-off.
Richard Nixon, his administration and other right-wing politicians (including ultraconservative ancient Senator Strom Thurmond, who personally memoed Attorney Gerneral John Mitcell on the matter) were fixated on what they saw as the Lennon problem. To them, the politically outspoken singer-songwriter was an insidious subversive of the worst kind, the famous and beloved kind.
J. Edgar Hoover shared their concerns. One page of Lennon's FBI file bears the handwritten, block-lettered, under lined words, ALL EXTREMISTS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED DANGEROUS. The government went all-out to deny Lennon his longed-for permanent U.S. residency, and more than that, to deport him altogether (that was the subject of Thurmond's memo).
Lennon's FBI file - at nearly three hundred pages as chubby as Hoover himself - reveals that he was under "constant surveillance." Nor did the G-men keep a particularly low profile around the ex-Beatle, apparently attempting to harass him into silence or at least drive him nuts, similar to the tactic they had used on Martin Luther King, Jr., a few short but eventful years earlier.
In late 1972, when the "surveillance" was at its peak, Lennon told humorist Paul Krassner, "Listen, if anything happens to Yoko and me, it was not an accident."
The FBI and the CIA tracked Lennon at least from his "Free John Sinclair" concert in 1969 until 1976 - even though by then Lennon had won his immigration battle and dropped out of not only political activism but public life altogether into what turned out to be a five-year period of seclusion. His apartment was watched, he was followed, his phone was tapped.
Placing a person under "constant surveillance" and ordering that person executed are admittedly two different things. Nevertheless, Bresler's point is that the government did not consider John Lennon a harmless rock 'n' roller whose awkward entrance into the world of political activism often carried a high cringe factor (as in his Montreal "bed-in").
He was viewed as a dangerous radical who needed to be stopped.
And in a way that official paranoia might have been justified, because as embarrassing as Lennon and Ono's political publicity stunts occasionally became, John Lennon was always capable of seizing the spotlight and speaking directly to millions of young people who venerated him.
With unfettered access to the media, his power was immense, at least potentially so, and recognized by more experienced radicals like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, who linked themselves to Lennon, clinging to close that they made the rock star uncomfortable.
Lennon was killed just four years after the intense FBI/CIA surveillance ceased. In those intermittent years, Jimmy Carter was president - a Democrat who kept the two gestapo-ish agencies more or less in check.
But in December 1980, when John Lennon's first album in half a decade was high on the charts, Carter was a lame duck chief executive, having lost his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan. Reagan's campaign was managed by career secret agent William Casey, who under President Reagan became the CIA's most freewheeling chief since Allen Dulles. The new far-right administration would reassemble the intelligence services and grant them a cheerful carte blanche.
The forces that tried desperately to neutralize Lennon for at least seven years lost power in 1976. Lennon's government dossier ends in that year. In 1980, as those forces were preparing to retake control of the government, "dangerous extremist" John Lennon emerged from retirement. Within a few months he was murdered.
The paper trail that might support the conspiracy theory is a little thin, however. It doesn't extend much beyond the airline ticket found in Chapman's hotel room; a Hawaii-New York connection departing December 5. But Chapman had actually purchased a Hawaii-Chicago ticket to depart December 2, with no connecting flight. The ticket found after his arrest had apparently been altered. None of his friends knew that he traveled on to New York. They thought he went to Chicago for a three-day stay.
Bresler concludes that the Lennon assassination, which, as Chapman himself noted in a rare interview, "ended an era," bears similarities to another assassination that took place twelve years earlier: the murder of Robert F. Kennedy.
RFK's apparent lone killer, Sirhan Sirhan, and Chapman (coincidentally?) shared a defense psychiatrist. But while Dr. Bernard Diamond couldn't skirt the obvious fact that Sirhan was under hypnosis (Diamond wrote it off as self-hypnosis), he labeled Chapman a "paranoid schizophrenic."
The court disagreed. Chapman even now has never had more than routine psychiatric care since entering his guilty plea. He was not sent to a mental hospital, but to Attica State Prison. He was judged legally "rational."
Bresler clears up a few widely disseminated misconceptions about Mark David Chapman:
While any mention of his name is now accompanied by the phrase "deranged fan," Chapman was anything but. He was no more or less ardent a Beatles/Lennon fan than anyone of his generation. His real rock hero was Todd Rundgren, a cynical studio craftsman who could not be further from Lennon in artistic sensibility. Notwithstanding Chapman's announcement months after the murder that he "killed Lennon to gain prominence to promote the reading of The Catcher in the Rye," Chapman never exhibited strong feelings about the novel until shortly before the shooting. (Catcher, Bresler muses, may have been used as a device to trigger Chapman's "programming.")
After the murder, major media ran bizarre stories of Chapman's supposed growing identification with John Lennon - at one point he even "re-baptized" himself as Lennon, according to Newsweek. These stories were all quite fascinating, but there was no evidence to back any of them up. (It is true that when Chapman quit his last job he signed out as "John Lennon," then crossed the name out, but Bresler interprets this, reasonably, as Chapman saying, "John Lennon, I am going to kill you," rather than "John Lennon, I am you."
Chapman was not a "longer." He was for most of his life a normally social individual and a camp counselor who had a special rapport with kids.
Bresler also notes that when Chapman signed up for a YMCA overseas program, he selected an odd destination: Beirut - a perfect place, says Bresler, for Chapman, a once gentle soul, to be "blooded," that is, desensitized to violence.
A final note to the mystery of Mark David Chapman: As he was ready to go to trial and his diligent public defender was winding up six months spent assembling Chapman's defense, the accused killer suddenly decided to change his plea to guilty. His lawyer was perplexed and more than a little perturbed. But Chapman was determined. He said he was acting on instructions from a "small male voice" that spoke to him in his cell.
Chapman interpreted it as the voice of God.
John Lennon Message Board
Post | Read
For me, John is still alive. I believe he's still with us,
looking over Yoko, Sean and Julian. If you are reading this John, remember that I will never loose faith in you,
and say hi to George for us. Even though I'm only 13,
you're forever going to be my hero,
because of giving your life for Love and Peace.
I'm a great fan of The Beatles, and I beleive that they were
the best rock & roll group in music history. Not many people
my age understand me well. They don't understand why I like
The Beatles and why John Lennon is forever going to be my hero.
They don't understand why a 13 year old girl would be into
The Beatles, John Lennon and George Harrison. All I've got to say about this Message Board, is that it helped me in a sort of way,
tell the whole world how I fell about a man, who for no reasons, died.
Remember, War Is Over If You Want It.
Jo, a 13 year old girl from Canada
beatle_jo13@hotmail.com
Read Petition Letters From Fans In Support Of
An International Holiday To Honor John Lennon
To me, John is a spirit who lives with me each day,
and he holds my hand and teaches me how to live in peace and
be a better person. He guides me to love nature, the environment, myself and my fellow human being. Through his brilliant mind,
I've learned what kind of person I want to be,
and to me he is the true meaning of an artist. He will never
fade as being my all-time favorite song writer and musician.
|
|
Salestraul Cane Death of John Lennon |
12-8-2013 08:16 AM |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_John_Lennon
Death of John Lennon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Coordinates: 40°46′35″N 73°58′34″W / 40.776436°N 73.976006°W / 40.776436; -73.976006
Death of John Lennon
The Dakota, location of the killing
Location The Dakota, Manhattan, New York City
Date 10:50 p.m., 8 December 1980 (1980-12-08T10:50 p.m.)
Target John Lennon
Weapon(s) Charter Arms Undercover .38 Special revolver[1]
Deaths 1
Perpetrator Mark David Chapman
John Lennon was a British musician who gained worldwide fame as one of the founders of The Beatles, for his subsequent solo career, and for his political activism and pacifism. He was shot by Mark David Chapman at the entrance of the building where he lived, The Dakota, in New York City on 8 December 1980. Lennon had just returned from Record Plant Studio with his wife, Yoko Ono.
Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, where it was stated that nobody could have lived for more than a few minutes after sustaining such injuries. Shortly after local news stations reported Lennon's death, crowds gathered at Roosevelt Hospital and in front of the Dakota. Lennon was cremated on 10 December 1980 at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York; the ashes were given to Ono, who chose not to hold a funeral for him. The first report of Lennon's death to a U.S. national audience was announced by Howard Cosell, on ABC's Monday Night Football.
Contents
[hide]
1 Events preceding his death
1.1 8 December 1980
1.2 Mark David Chapman
2 Murder
2.1 Monday Night Football
3 Other announcements
4 Aftermath
5 Memorials and tributes
6 On film
7 Notes
8 References
9 External links
Events preceding his death[edit]
8 December 1980[edit]
Leibovitz's portrait of Lennon and Ono, taken on 8 December 1980
Photographer Annie Leibovitz went to the Lennons' apartment to do a photo shoot for Rolling Stone magazine.[2] Leibovitz promised Lennon that a photo with Ono would make the front cover of the magazine, even though she initially tried to get a picture with Lennon by himself.[3] Leibovitz: "Nobody wanted [Ono] on the cover".[4] Lennon insisted that both he and his wife be on the cover, and after taking the pictures, Leibovitz left their apartment at 3:30pm.[2] After the photo shoot, Lennon gave what would be his last interview, to San Francisco DJ Dave Sholin, for a music show to be broadcast on the RKO Radio Network.[5] At 5.40 pm, Lennon and Ono, delayed by a late limousine, left their apartment to mix the song "Walking on Thin Ice" (an Ono song featuring Lennon on lead guitar), at the Record Plant Studio.[6]
Mark David Chapman[edit]
Main article: Mark David Chapman
As Lennon and Ono walked to a limousine, shared with the RKO Radio crew, they were approached by several people seeking autographs. Among them was Mark David Chapman.[7] It was common for fans to wait outside the Dakota to meet Lennon and ask for his autograph.[8] Chapman, a 25-year-old security guard from Honolulu, Hawaii, had previously travelled to New York to murder Lennon in October (before the release of Double Fantasy), but had changed his mind and returned home.[9] On the evening in question, Chapman silently handed Lennon a copy of Double Fantasy, and Lennon obliged with an autograph.[7] After signing the album, Lennon asked, "Is this all you want?" Chapman smiled and nodded in agreement. Photographer and Lennon fan Paul Goresh took a photo of the encounter.[10] Chapman had been waiting for Lennon outside the Dakota since mid-morning, and had even approached the Lennons' five-year-old son, Sean, who was with the family nanny, Helen Seaman, when they returned home in the afternoon. According to Chapman, he briefly touched the boy's hand.[11]
Lennon signing a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman (right) several hours before the murder
The Lennons spent several hours at the Record Plant studio before returning to the Dakota, at approximately 10:50 pm.[12] Lennon had decided against dining out so he could be home in time to say goodnight to his son, before going on to the Stage Deli restaurant with Ono.[12] Lennon liked to oblige any fans who had been waiting for long periods of time to meet him with autographs or pictures, once saying during an interview with BBC Radio's Andy Peebles on 6 December 1980:[13] "People come and ask for autographs, or say 'Hi', but they don't bug you."[2] The Lennons exited their limousine on 72nd Street instead of driving into the more secure courtyard of the Dakota.[14]
Chapman later said he was incensed by Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" remark, calling it blasphemy,[15][16] and the songs "God", and "Imagine",[16] because of the incongruity between the lyric "Imagine no possessions" and Lennon's personal wealth.[17] Chapman even sang the song with the altered lyric: "Imagine John Lennon dead."[18]
Murder[edit]
The Dakota's doorman, ex-CIA Agent Jose Sanjenis Perdomo, and a nearby cab driver saw Chapman standing in the shadows by the archway.[19] As Lennon passed by, he glanced briefly at Chapman, appearing to recognize him from earlier.[20] Seconds later, Chapman took aim directly at the center of Lennon's back and fired five hollow-point bullets at him from a Charter Arms .38 Special revolver in rapid succession.[1] Based on statements made that night by NYPD Chief of Detectives, James Sullivan, numerous radio, television, and newspaper reports claimed at the time that, before firing, Chapman called out "Mr. Lennon" and dropped into a "combat stance".[21] Later court hearings and witness interviews did not include either "Mr. Lennon" or the "combat stance" description. Chapman has said he does not remember calling out Lennon's name before he fired,[22][23][24] but he confirmed taking a "combat stance" in a 1992 interview with Barbara Walters.[25] The first bullet missed, passing over Lennon's head and hitting a window of the Dakota building. Two of the next bullets struck Lennon in the left side of his back, and two more penetrated his left shoulder. Lennon, bleeding profusely from external wounds and also from his mouth, staggered up five steps to the security/reception area, saying, "I'm shot, I'm shot".[26] He then fell to the floor, scattering cassettes that he had been carrying. The concierge, Jay Hastings, first started to make a tourniquet, but upon ripping open Lennon's blood-stained shirt and realizing the severity of his multiple injuries, he covered Lennon's chest with his uniform jacket, removed his blood-covered glasses, and summoned the police.[12]
Police artist's drawing of the murder
Outside, doorman Perdomo shook the gun out of Chapman's hand then kicked it across the sidewalk.[19] Chapman then removed his coat and hat in preparation for the arrival of police—to show he was not carrying any concealed weapons—and sat down on the sidewalk. Perdomo shouted at Chapman, "Do you know what you've just done?" to which Chapman calmly replied, "Yes, I just shot John Lennon." The first policemen to arrive were Steve Spiro and Peter Cullen, who were at 72nd Street and Broadway when they heard a report of shots fired at the Dakota. The officers arrived around two minutes later and found Chapman sitting "very calmly" on the sidewalk. They reported that Chapman had dropped the revolver to the ground and was holding a paperback book, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.[27]
Side view of Dakota entryway showing steps Lennon climbed before collapsing in the lobby
The second team, officers Bill Gamble and James Moran, arrived a few minutes later. Realizing the extent of Lennon's injuries, they decided not to wait for an ambulance and immediately carried him into their squad car and rushed him to Roosevelt Hospital. Officer Moran said they placed Lennon on the back seat.[28] Reportedly, Moran asked, "Are you John Lennon?" to which Lennon nodded and replied "Yes."[29] There are conflicting accounts of this, however. According to another account, Lennon nodded slightly and tried to speak, but could only manage to make a gurgling sound, and lost consciousness shortly thereafter.[30]
Dr. Stephan Lynn received Lennon in the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital. When Lennon arrived, he had no pulse and was not breathing. Dr. Lynn and two other doctors worked for nearly 20 minutes, opening Lennon's chest and attempting manual heart massage to restore circulation, but the damage to the blood vessels around the heart was too great.[31] Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival in the emergency room at the Roosevelt Hospital at 11:15 pm by Dr. Lynn,[32] but the time of 11:07 pm has also been reported.[33] The cause of death was reported as hypovolemic shock, caused by the loss of more than 80% of blood volume.
The surgeon also noted—as did other witnesses—that at the moment Lennon was pronounced dead a Beatles song ("All My Loving") came over the hospital's sound system.[34]
As Lennon had been shot four times with hollow-point bullets (which expand upon entering the target and severely disrupt more tissue as they travel through the target),[35] Lennon's affected organs were virtually destroyed upon impact. Lynn stated: "If [Lennon] had been shot in the middle of the operating room with a team of surgeons ready to work on him, he wouldn't have survived his injuries".[36] When told by Dr. Lynn of her husband's death, Ono started sobbing and said, "Oh no, no, no, no ... tell me it's not true." Dr. Lynn remembers that Ono lay down and began hitting her head against the floor, but calmed down when a nurse gave Lennon's wedding ring to her.[37] She was led away from Roosevelt Hospital by Geffen Records' president, David Geffen, in a state of shock.[38][dead link]
Monday Night Football[edit]
Ono asked the hospital not to report that Lennon was dead until she had informed their son, who was at home. Ono said he was probably watching television and did not want him to learn of his father's death from a TV announcement.[38]
Before long, due to a producer for ABC's flagship NYC station, WABC-TV and its news program, Eyewitness News, Alan J. Weiss being rushed in to the same hospital (because of a motorcycle accident) and seeing Lennon on a stretcher, word reached Roone Arledge, who was the president of ABC News. At the time, Arledge was also president of ABC's sports division and was the executive producer of Monday Night Football. That night's game between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots was still being played when Arledge received the news, and Arledge suggested to the broadcast team, Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford, that they immediately announce Lennon's death on air. When the news was relayed, the Patriots were driving to potentially score the game-winning points as the score was tied; the following transcript of what was said begins with thirty seconds remaining in the game as Cosell sets the stage for his announcement:[39]
Cosell: ... but (the game)'s suddenly been placed in total perspective for us; I'll finish this, they're in the hurry-up offense.
Gifford: Third down, four. (Chuck) Foreman ... it'll be fourth down. (Matt) Cavanaugh will let it run down for one final attempt, he'll let the seconds tick off to give Miami no opportunity whatsoever. (whistle blows) Timeout is called with three seconds remaining, John Smith is on the line. And I don't care what's on the line, Howard, you have got to say what we know in the booth.
Cosell: Yes, we have to say it. Remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City. The most famous perhaps, of all of The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that news flash, which, in duty bound, we have to take. Frank?
Gifford: (after a pause) Indeed, it is.[40]
Other announcements[edit]
New York rock station WNEW-FM 102.7 immediately suspended all programming and opened its lines to calls from listeners. Stations throughout the country switched to special programming.
The following day, Ono issued a statement: "There is no funeral for John. John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the same for him. Love, Yoko and Sean."[41]
Aftermath[edit]
"Neither of us [Yoko or I] want to make the mistake that Gandhi and Martin Luther King did, which is get killed one way or the other. Because people only like dead saints, and I refuse to be a saint or a martyr."
- John Lennon, when asked why he returned his MBE, 1969[42]Lennon's murder triggered an outpouring of grief around the world on an unprecedented scale.[43] Lennon's remains were cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, Westchester County, N.Y.; no funeral was held.[44] Ono sent word to the chanting crowd outside the Dakota that their singing had kept her awake; she asked that they re-convene in Central Park the following Sunday for ten minutes of silent prayer.[45] On 14 December 1980, millions of people around the world responded to Ono's request to pause for ten minutes of silence to remember Lennon.[46] Thirty thousand gathered in Liverpool, and the largest group—over 225,000—converged on New York's Central Park, close to the scene of the shooting.[46] For those ten minutes every radio station in New York City went off the air.[47] At least three Beatles fans committed suicide after the murder,[48] leading Ono to make a public appeal asking mourners not to give in to despair.[49] Ono released a solo album, Season of Glass, in 1981. The cover of the album is a photograph of Lennon's blood-spattered glasses. A 1997 re-release of the album included "Walking on Thin Ice", the song the Lennons had mixed at the Record Plant less than an hour before he was murdered.[38] Chapman eventually pleaded guilty to Lennon's murder in 1981,[50] against the advice of his lawyers,[51] who wanted to file an insanity plea.[52][53] Chapman received a life sentence, but under the terms of his guilty plea, he became eligible for parole after serving 20 years.[54] Chapman has been denied parole at hearings every two years since 2000 and remains imprisoned at the Wende Correctional Facility, which is east of Buffalo and as far away as possible from the scene of the crime.[55][56][57]
Memorials and tributes[edit]
Memorial behind the Iron Curtain: Lennon Wall in Prague, August 1981
Annie Leibovitz's photo of a naked Lennon embracing his wife, taken on the day of the murder, was the cover of Rolling Stone's 22 January 1981 issue, most of which was dedicated to articles, letters and photographs commemorating Lennon's life and death.[58] In 2005 the American Society of Magazine Editors ranked it as the top magazine cover of the last 40 years.[59]
George Harrison released a tribute song, "All Those Years Ago", which featured Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney in 1981. McCartney released his tribute, "Here Today" on his 1982 album, Tug of War. Elton John, who had recorded the number-one hit "Whatever Gets You thru the Night" with Lennon, teamed up with his lyricist, Bernie Taupin and recorded a tribute to Lennon, entitled "Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)." It appeared on his 1982 album, Jump Up!, and peaked at #13 on the US Singles Chart that year.[60] When he performed the song at a sold-out concert in Madison Square Garden in August 1982, he was joined on stage by Ono and Sean.[61] Queen, during their The Game Tour performed a cover of Lennon's solo song "Imagine" at concerts after Lennon's death. Queen also performed the song "Life Is Real", from the album Hot Space (1982), in his honour. It was written by the singer Freddie Mercury.
Roxy Music added a cover version of the song Jealous Guy to their set while touring in Germany, which they recorded and released in March 1981. The song was their only UK #1 hit, topping the charts for two weeks. It features on many Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music collections, though not always in its full-length version.
Paul Simon's homage to Lennon, The Late Great Johnny Ace, initially sings of the rhythm and blues singer Johnny Ace, who is said to have shot himself in 1954, then goes on to reference John Lennon, as well as John F. Kennedy who was assassinated in 1963, the year Beatlemania started. Simon had actually premiered the song during Simon & Garfunkel's reunion Concert in Central Park in 1981; near the end of the song a fan ran onto the stage, possibly in response to Simon mentioning Lennon in the lyrics. The man was dragged offstage by Simon's personnel, saying to Simon, "I have to talk to you"; all of which can be seen in the DVD of the concert. The song also appears on Simon's 1983 Hearts and Bones album.
David Bowie, who befriended Lennon in the mid-1970s (Lennon co-wrote and performed on Bowie's US #1 hit "Fame" in 1975), performed a tribute to Lennon in the final show of his Serious Moonlight Tour at the Hong Kong Coliseum on 8 December 1983 - the third anniversary of Lennon's death. Bowie announced that the last time he saw Lennon was in Hong Kong, and after announcing "On this day, December the 8th 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed outside of his New York apartment," Bowie performed Lennon's "Imagine".[62] David Gilmour of Pink Floyd wrote and recorded the song "Murder" in response to Lennon's death; the song was released on Gilmour's solo album, About Face (1984).
The Imagine mosaic in Strawberry Fields
In 1985, New York City dedicated an area of Central Park directly across from The Dakota as Strawberry Fields, where Lennon had frequently walked. In a symbolic show of unity, countries from around the world donated trees and the city of Naples, Italy, donated the Imagine mosaic centerpiece.[63] A symbolic grave for Lennon was erected in Prague's Mala Strana square which hosted demonstrations during the fall of the communist regime in Czechslovakia.[64]
Lennon was honoured with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991.[65] In 1994, the breakaway autonomous republic of Georgia, Republic of Abkhazia, issued two postage stamps featuring the faces of Lennon and Groucho Marx, rather than portraits of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, spoofing Abkhazia's Communist past.[66] On 8 December 2000, Cuba's President Fidel Castro unveiled a bronze statue of Lennon in a park in Havana.[67] In 2000, the John Lennon Museum was opened at the Saitama Super Arena in the city of Saitama, Japan (but closed on 30 September 2010),[68] and Liverpool renamed its airport to Liverpool John Lennon Airport, adopting the motto, "Above us only sky", in 2002.[69] The minor planet 4147 Lennon, discovered 12 January 1983 by B. A. Skiff at the Anderson Mesa Station of the Lowell Observatory, was named in memory of Lennon.[70] On 9 December 2006, in the city of Puebla, Mexico, a plaque was revealed, honouring Lennon's contribution to music, culture and peace.[71] On 9 October 2007, Ono dedicated a new memorial called the Imagine Peace Tower, located on the island of Viđey, off the coast of Reykjavík, Iceland. Each year, between 9 October and 8 December, it projects a vertical beam of light high into the sky in Lennon's memory.[72]
Every 8 December a memorial ceremony is held in front of the Capitol Records building on Vine Street in Hollywood, California. People also light candles in front of Lennon's Hollywood Walk of Fame star, outside the Capitol Building.[73] From 28 to 30 September 2007, Durness held the John Lennon Northern Lights Festival which was attended by Julia Baird (Lennon's half-sister), who read from Lennon's writings and her own books, and Stanley Parkes, Lennon's Scottish cousin.[74] Parkes said, "Me and Julia [Baird] are going to be going to the old family croft to tell stories". Musicians, painters and poets from across the UK performed at the festival.[74][75]
In 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's New York City annexe hosted a special John Lennon exhibit, which included many mementos and personal effects from Lennon's life, as well as the clothes he was wearing when he was murdered, still in the brown paper bag from Roosevelt Hospital.[76] Ono still places a lit candle in the window of Lennon's room in the Dakota on 8 December.[77] In 2012, Bob Dylan released the Lennon tribute "Roll on John" on his Tempest album.[78]
On film[edit]
Two films depicting the murder of Lennon were released in proximity of each other more than 25 years after the event. The first of the two, The Killing of John Lennon, was released on 7 December 2007. Directed by Andrew Piddington, the movie starred Jonas Ball as Mark David Chapman.[79] The second film was Chapter 27, released on 28 March 2008. Directed by J. P. Schaefer, the film starred Jared Leto as Mark David Chapman. Lennon was portrayed by actor Mark Lindsay Chapman.[80]
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AFInus SepalE Imagine - The Beatles - John Lennon |
12-8-2013 08:19 AM |
Imagine - The Beatles - John Lennon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCX3ZNDZAwY
Imagine - The Beatles - John Lennon
Imagine there is no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You, you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You, you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as one
--------------------------------------------
Songwriters
Lennon, John
Published by
Lyrics © EMI Music Publishing
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