The Beatles Boxed Set (27 page)
Read The Beatles Boxed Set Online
Authors: Joe Bensam
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Composers & Musicians, #Nonfiction, #Retail, #The Beatles
That
night, Chapman silently handed over his copy of
Double Fantasy
which
John signed, then somebody flashed a picture. John noticed that the person
holding the album had unruly hair and wire-rimmed glasses and had on a dark raincoat
and scarf. After signing the album, John asked him, “Is this all you want?”
Chapman just smiled and nodded. He had been waiting outside the Dakota since
mid-morning and even met John’s five-year-old son, Sean, briefly.
John is shown here signing an autograph
for Mark David Chapman, who would kill him with four shots that evening
At
the Record Plant studio, John couldn’t hide his excitement. Record executive
David Geffen recalled how John smiled and danced around, saying, “Wait’ll you
hear Yoko’s record. It’s a smash! This is better than anything we did on
Double
Fantasy.”
The
Lennons mixed Yoko’s record that night, then decided to return home instead of
going somewhere for dinner. John wanted to say goodnight to his son before Sean
went to sleep. Their limo pulled up to the Dakota at about 10:50pm, and the
couple hopped out at the curb.
Yoko
walked ahead of John into the reception area. As John passed by, he looked at
Chapman, standing in the shadows by the archway, and continued walking. John
heard the man call him “Mr. Lennon” before a searing pain shot through him from
his back. Chapman had dropped into a “combat stance” and fired five shots at
John. The first bullet missed and hit a window of the Dakota building. Two
shots hit John on the left side of his back and another two in his left
shoulder. Two of the gunshot wounds were fatal. One hit John’s left lung and
the other hit the left subclavian artery.
Although
he was wounded, John made it to the security area, saying, “I’m shot, I’m
shot.” The Dakota doorman and a cab driver who dropped off a passenger
witnessed the shooting. Then somebody called 911. The doorman, Jay Hastings, tried
to make a tourniquet, but when he realized the severity of John’s injuries, he
covered John’s chest with his uniform jacket.
Outside,
another employee of the Dakota shook the gun out of Chapman’s hand. Chapman
calmly removed his coat and hat and waited for the arrival of the police. The
first policemen to arrive on the scene were Steve Spiro and Peter Cullen, who
were at 72
nd
Street and Broadway when they heard a report of shots
fired at the Dakota. They arrived two minutes later and found Chapman sitting
calmly on the sidewalk. Based on their report, Chapman was holding a book of
J.D. Salinger’s
The Catcher in the Rye
. He would later claim that his
life was similar to that of Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the book.
A
few minutes later, officers Bill Gamble and James Moran arrived. Rather than
wait for an ambulance, they loaded John into the back of their squad car and
drove toward Roosevelt Hospital. Based on their account, Moran asked him, “Are
you John Lennon?” to which John replied, “Yes.”
At
the hospital, Dr. Stephan Lynn saw that John was beyond hope, but a team set
about trying to revive him. John had no pulse and was not breathing. He had
lost too much blood. Dr. Lynn and other doctors opened John’s chest and
attempted manual heart massage to restore circulation. Unfortunately, the
damage to the blood vessels surrounding the heart was too great. Dr. Lynn
pronounced John Lennon dead at 11:15pm. The autopsy would reveal that John died
of “shock and loss of blood” and that “no one could have lived more than a few
minutes with such injuries.”
When
told that her husband was dead, Yoko cried and said, “Tell me it’s not true!” Dr.
Lynn recalled that Yoko began hitting her head against the floor, and only
calmed down after a nurse gave John’s wedding ring to her. David Geffen, who
rushed to the hospital after hearing the news, led her away in a state of
shock.
Mayhem
descended on the Upper West Side, with most people feeling disbelief. News of
John’s death was announced on air by ABC-TV’s Howard Cosell who, along with
Frank Gifford, was broadcasting the game between the Miami Dolphins and the New
England Patriots. With thirty seconds remaining in the game, Cosell reported,
“This, 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 the Beatles, shot twice in the
back, rushed to the Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival.”
When
news of John’s death spread, news cameras and policemen swarmed the Dakota.
Flowers and photographs began piling up. In the following weeks, as more people
were informed of the murder, John’s death triggered an outpouring of grief
around the world. Yoko decided against a funeral, but had John’s remains
cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester.
People gathered at Dakota soon after word
got out that John Lennon was fatally shot
On
December 9, the network newscasts showed footages of similar outpouring of
grief around the world, from Mendips in Woolton to Hamburg’s Reeperbahn. Radio
stations played
Imagine
nonstop, and late-night TV tributes interviewed
Beatles authors and anyone who had something to say about John.
On
December 14, Yoko requested for people to pause for ten minutes of silence to
remember John. Back in Liverpool, thirty thousand people gathered, and in New
York’s Central Park, near the scene of the shooting, more than 225,000 people
converged to listen to John’s songs or to just remember him in silence. For ten
minutes, every radio station in New York went off the air.
With
John’s death now came the inevitable question of why Chapman killed him. As it
turned out, Chapman had been suffering from mental health problems for years
and became obsessed with the political message of John’s songs. And when John
made the “bigger than Jesus” comment, Chapman was enraged, calling it
blasphemy. Later on, he claimed that he was further enraged by John’s song
God
and
Imagine.
He said that he was angry how John could sing “imagine no
possessions” when he was swimming on his wealth.
Chapman
pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life. He
had been denied parole six times.
John’s
death also increased sales of his music, both with the Beatles and as a solo
artist, in the months following the murder. His
Double Fantasy
album,
the last that he had released, was initially at number 11 in the US, but shot
to number one after his death and stayed there for eight weeks. In the UK,
where the album was at first at number 46, climbed to number two, where it
stayed for seven weeks before peaking at number one for two weeks.
In
1982, John, Yoko and Jack Douglas won the 1981 Album of the Year for
double
Fantasy
at the 24
th
Annual Grammy Awards.
After
John’s death, his single
(Just Like) Starting Over
, which peaked at
number 3 in the US before his death, climbed to number one. In the UK, the song
jumped from number 21 to number 1, though it was knocked off by the St
Winifred’s School Choir’s
There’s No One Quite Like Grandma
. By early
1981, there were three John Lennon songs in the UK top 5, an unprecedented feat
during that time.
Even
decades after John’s death, he continued to be mourned throughout the world and
was the subject of memorials and tributes. In 2010, for what would have been
his 70
th
birthday, the John Lennon Peace Monument was unveiled in
Chavasse Park, Liverpool, by Cynthia and Julian Lennon. He also received award
posthumously, including being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in
1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
John’s
death now seems to be far away and detached from the consciousness of people, but
not for those who have closely followed the Beatles throughout the height of
Beatlemania and John who had embarked on his own solo career until his death.
But even with him gone, his name remains a permanent fixture in the history of
music. Without him, there wouldn’t have been the Beatles, and no songs such as
Imagine
to pass on to the next generations.
The Extraordinary Life and Times of Ringo Starr
The
Beatles and Beyond
Joe Bensam
Platinum Publishing
of Contents
Chapter 2 – Richie Joins the Hurricanes
Chapter 3 – Ringo Meets the Beatles
Chapter 5 – The Rise to the Top
The Hysteria that was Beatlemania
Chapter 7 – Like Gods on Earth
The Fab Four and the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll
Chapter 8 – The Beatles on Their Own
Chapter 9 – The End for the Beatles
Chapter 10 – Ringo’s Solo Career
“Lucky”
could hardly be used to describe Ringo Starr’s early life. With divorced
parents, his childhood was marred by bouts of illnesses that left him unable to
continue his studies. And his life seemed to lack direction from the time he
was last discharged from the hospital.
When
the Skiffle craze hit Liverpool, Richie, as he was known then, was one of those
who became interested in it. He formed his own skiffle band with a friend and
became the drummer, then joined other bands and found out that this was what he
really wanted to do. Drumming was something where he was good at.