More on John
John Lennon is quite possibly the biggest influence on me, even bigger than Doctor Who.
It's so hard to accept that he's been gone nearly a quarter of a century. I still recall with great fondness the excitement in the autumn of 1980, when Double Fantasy came out. There were all sorts of interviews with John and Yoko in the press, all of which were brilliant, and firnly turned me from the McCartney side of the force for once and for all. I was particularly excited to hear "(Just Like) Starting Over" for the first time on my 17th birthday that October.
I was staying up late the night of December 8, 1980, working on my essay questions for my application to Northwestern University. I had the TV on, as usual, tuned to the Monday Night Football game since there wasn't anything else of interest on. I can still recall hearing Howard Cosell announce that John had been shot... and then that he had died.
Everything for that week became one big blur for me from that point on. I managed to call ragdoll(who was in HER freshman year at NU) to tell her the news. (She didn't believe me at first, interpreting my hysterical sobs as giggling.) I nearly beat up a fellow orchestra member in the stairwell at school on the 9th, because she was a born-again Christian and said that John deserved to die because he was a drug-user and sinner. I stayed home the following day because it was a half day of school and I really couldn't deal with mundane stuff in the light of what had happened. I managed somehow to get through the rest of the school week. On that first Sunday, I braved the public transport system and found my way to Cricket Hill in Lincoln Park, where thousands of Lennon/Beatles fans had gathered to join in on Yoko's Minute of Silence for John.
Having now recently celebrated a birthday that John never did (41), I still find myself longing for his presence in this dimension. Everything he was saying in 1980 about being 40 I have found spot-on, and I really wish he would have been around to comment on being 45 or 50 or older....
It's so hard to accept that he's been gone nearly a quarter of a century. I still recall with great fondness the excitement in the autumn of 1980, when Double Fantasy came out. There were all sorts of interviews with John and Yoko in the press, all of which were brilliant, and firnly turned me from the McCartney side of the force for once and for all. I was particularly excited to hear "(Just Like) Starting Over" for the first time on my 17th birthday that October.
I was staying up late the night of December 8, 1980, working on my essay questions for my application to Northwestern University. I had the TV on, as usual, tuned to the Monday Night Football game since there wasn't anything else of interest on. I can still recall hearing Howard Cosell announce that John had been shot... and then that he had died.
Everything for that week became one big blur for me from that point on. I managed to call ragdoll(who was in HER freshman year at NU) to tell her the news. (She didn't believe me at first, interpreting my hysterical sobs as giggling.) I nearly beat up a fellow orchestra member in the stairwell at school on the 9th, because she was a born-again Christian and said that John deserved to die because he was a drug-user and sinner. I stayed home the following day because it was a half day of school and I really couldn't deal with mundane stuff in the light of what had happened. I managed somehow to get through the rest of the school week. On that first Sunday, I braved the public transport system and found my way to Cricket Hill in Lincoln Park, where thousands of Lennon/Beatles fans had gathered to join in on Yoko's Minute of Silence for John.
Having now recently celebrated a birthday that John never did (41), I still find myself longing for his presence in this dimension. Everything he was saying in 1980 about being 40 I have found spot-on, and I really wish he would have been around to comment on being 45 or 50 or older....