John Lennon

I was a typical high school rural Southerner when I first heard of this British teeny band called the Beatles. Give me a break. Still the electricity in the air was exciting, even as I stayed skeptical. Finally summer of '64 I decided to quit humbugging and give them a look as they were ready to make their second American tour. I even missed church to see them on the Ed Sullivan show. I even liked some of the songs I grudingly heard so far going into their return here.

There was all this hoopla over Ringo and Paul. Ringo was the only one I really recognized, though by now I knew all their names in spite of myself. I could not contain the excitement though as I waited for them and got off to the screaming teeny girls in the audience who were more impatient than me.

Finally, they came on and you usually couldn't hear what they were singing, just enough of the guitar intros and parts of the words to figure out what song it was. And it was so much fun. I began to get on to myself, all that I had been missing.

And there was one that caught my eye. Hypnotically almost. It wasn't just that I thought him the best looking, but he had a knock you down charisma, even without talking. And he didn't wiggle his hips as Elvis had done, he just stood up there toe to toe with the audience and bowled you over.

I hated it. I was just as superficial as all the rest, I thought. But I thought Paul was indeed a throb. I was a guy, I didn't care about the silly things that made him cool, I thought it was way beyond that. I could not take my eyes off him, but studied everything that he did, his mannerisms, the way he moved his mouth when he sang, the way he held his guitar, it wasn't cool as much as spiritual. Rock and roll, spiritual, I couldn't believe I was thinking like that. He did have unbelievable charisma, but it wasn't like the girls thought, there was something deeper. But still it shamed me, here I was getting off to the one everybody else liked.

When they were finished Ed Sullivan introduced them one by one, with a different set of fans screaming the loudest for their hero. Somehow, though, Ed Sullivan got things mixed up. He called Paul, John. But that's what he said, John Lennon. Then he called another, a boyish looking one, Paul. By God, it was true, John Lennon was the one that captured my attention. I was smarter than the girls after all.

I had read that John had been the founder of the Beatles and was their leader, and wrote all the music along with Paul. Now it made since. Let the girls scream their silly heads off, me and God knew who was the one with depth.

So, forty-one years later I'm watching the twenty-fifth anniversary of the assasination of John Lennon and getting all choked up again over it. Assasination. A word used in Shakespeare, over kings, Presidents. I had already lived through the assasination of JFK, then Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. What a crazy world I lived in. Vietnam, Watergate, Kent State. Just as things began to settle down, some normalcy to try and digest this turbulent life I had been living in, then John Lennon gets gunned down by one of his biggest fans. And assasination was one of the words they used.

I remembered exactly what I was doing when I heard the news, just like when JFK was shot. Like I heard people talk about when they heard the news about FDR. This guy was a rock and roller, and it was like he was bigger than anything around, like Presidents, like history embodied. And I knew why.

I was so stunned, so hurt, I could not cry. It was late at night, a Monday, I should have been studying, I took my grades so seriously working towards my Masters. But I had been over at my Mentor's house, not studying with her, but talking about God, arrived back to my little shack, turned on the TV to see who won Monday Night Football and heard Frank Gifford talk about more details coming up on the tragic death of John Lennon. It must be a different John Lennon somehow.

The next morning as I was riding my bicycle to class, finally the tears began. And as the details came in, more of the life he had been leading the last five years where he hardly ever stuck his head up socially were brought up.

He had battled his tremendous ego the whole time. Usually unsuccessfully, but he felt the imbalance and saw what it did to his icon, Elvis Presley. He lived now a beautiful and devoted domestic life with his wife and little boy. He walked openly in Central Park, down sidewalks, waving back to adoring fans watching the social god of the times trying to find the beauty of being real.

And you remembered. How he had changed your life and that of people that didn't care who the hell he was.

He helped shape my life and change it. Almost all for the better. Both in his depth, and even in disgust where I thought him a phony in parts, and he was some and said so. I loved that. He tried coming to grips with his faults too. He was so easy to forgive for it, and helped me forgive myself too for lackings.

I'm so glad we still remember. I will never forget.