Yesterday I designed a poster: the Astrid photograph of John sitting on the big old truck with his Rickenbacker with these words added at the bottom:
JOHN LENNON
October 9, 1940-December 8, 1980
I got them printed this morning and went around town sticking them up.
I'm about to hitch-hike to Tupelo today to the Lee County Library to a John Lennon celebration.
The Tupelo Daily Journal yesterday had this front page story about the event:
nems360.com/view/full_story/10553166/article-Lennon-tribute-this-Wednesday?National Public Radio has been observing the anniversary today and a story about music students studying John Lennon's music was on the Here and Now program on Mississippi public radio:
www.hereandnow.org/Tonight on the The Story, a woman who met John just before he died is interviewed:
www.thestory.org/And John Lennon: politics, pop and power is discussed tonight on On Point:
www.onpointradio.org/In My Life
Oxford Town #69 December 8, 1994
Gunshots sometimes tear hrough more than a body.
Those that lived through it remember where they were, what they were doing when they heard President Kennedy had been shot dead.
Many today remember what was happening when they got the news Kurt Cobain had shot himself dead.
I remember where I was when I heard a nut had easily obtained a gun and shot John Lennon dead.
John Lennon had been a influence on my life. At Milam Junior High I had idolized him, the way an eighth-grader will a rock and roll star, to the point of signing my name "Chico Lennon." In December of 1980 I was spending my nights on a loading dock packing trailer trucks with bales of potatoes. I had long before learned that if I went into the men's room to hide in the stall and read, I could put my head against the concrete block wall and hear the radio in the other room. That was the office where the white-collar types worked during the day and left the radio on all night. On the night of December 8, I went in and sat there, feet elevated so I couldn't be spotted, reading CATCHER IN THE RYE. From the office and through the wall I heard Starting Over come over the air-waves.
This made me feel good; it was the first single off John's new album, Double Fantasy, his first album in five years. It seemed even longer since he had made 1974's Walls and Bridges, which is still the single deserted-island album I'd pick, and it was great to hear him making music again.
A little more of CATCHER IN THE RYE, I checked my watch and decided I had better reappear on the dock.
Later that night, my buddy Ziggy and I were watching Monday Night Football when my brother Ronnie came to fetch me. John had been shot dead outside his home in New York City. Mark David Chapman, a deranged fan, got a gun and murdered John Lennon.
Later, reading about it in Time magazine, I discovered that after Chapman shot the ex-Beatle, he dropped the gun, sat down on the curb and, while waiting on the police, began reading CATCHER IN THE RYE. It was the exact time I was down in Tupelo reading the same book and hearing John on the airwaves.
Well, I thought that was pretty weird, and even if I had just been sitting at the counter in Waffle House or watching saturday Night Live when I heard the news, I would have still remembered what I was doing when I heard about the tragedy.
John Lennon's death was a turning point in my life, a time when I realized that while he should be mourned, it was not the end of the world, as it would have been had I still been in junior high. There were people so shaken they committed suicide, while others were so un-shaken they told jokes like those that always appear in our society after such an event.
I saw it as a reason to celebrate his life and play Beatles albums. I took conciliatory phone calls and left Double Fantasy in my the Pioneer Supertuner in my truck for a month.
The snide remarks, like the world was better off without him, didn't bother me. What did was a Lewis Grizzard column that appeared in January of 1981.
He ridiculed John and anyone who cared about the Englishman and wrote things that were not true. things I could prove were not. In Memphis during the Fall of 1984, I got my chance when I met Grizzard for the first time. I pointed out inaccuracies in his column and asked him to explain himself.
Grizzard just asked me if I was one of those “gun control nuts."
Well I told him, if “gun control nut” means I believe in gun control, which works in other countries, and have read the constitution and know there is no such thing as an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, then sure, I’m a gun conrol nut.
If more people were, maybe Kennedy, Lennon and even Cobain wouldn’t have something in common.
