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Thirty-four years ago today. Wow.
I was coming up to the end of the first term of my final year at college. I was 21. I can’t remember what I was doing thirty-four years ago today –probably a few seminars and/or lectures, certainly some mooching around in the students union bar, but I remember what I was doing thirty-four years ago tomorrow.
It was the early hours of 9 December UK time when Lennon was shot and it was that morning that we woke to the news. My alarm went off at about 6.45am and I put the radio ready for the 7am news. I was pleasantly surprised to hear a Beatles song playing. Then they played another. And another. I assumed that they were having a themed hour or something as radio stations are prone to do from time to time, and then they played ‘Starting Over’, John Lennon’s comeback single, which by that time was on its way back out of the charts. I was a little surprised that they would finish off a Beatles run with a solo Lennon track, but there you go.
Then the news came on and we were told that just before midnight, New York Time 8 December 1980 (about, 4am 9 December UK time?), John Lennon had been shot and killed outside his home in New York City. That was the moment that I first understood what hero worship was. I was flattened almost as much as if I’d heard 6that a family member had died. Perhaps not a close family member, but certainly not a distant one. I listened to the news and then the following half hour of Beatles and John Lennon songs on the radio before going down to the refectory for breakfast.
Even then, I don’t think I realised how the news of the death of someone I didn’t personally know had affected me until someone commiserated with me. I must have been glum, but that rather surprised me and I remember saying something stupid like ‘It’s not as though we were related, or anything’.
Anyway, I didn’t attend any lectures that day. I spent the day in the union bar, drinking coffee and listening to yet more Beatles or Beatles related music and helping the couple who ran the bar, John and Helen, decorate it for Christmas. A lot of reminiscing took place and then at lunchtime we had a couple of commemorative pints. There was a local band on that night, Johnny Thunder and his Hurricanes as you might expect with a name like that they played rock’n’roll 1950s style. I have no idea what they were like.
I have never been affected the same way by a celebrity death either before or since, but I kind of get it in a way that I didn’t before December 1980.
I was coming up to the end of the first term of my final year at college. I was 21. I can’t remember what I was doing thirty-four years ago today –probably a few seminars and/or lectures, certainly some mooching around in the students union bar, but I remember what I was doing thirty-four years ago tomorrow.
It was the early hours of 9 December UK time when Lennon was shot and it was that morning that we woke to the news. My alarm went off at about 6.45am and I put the radio ready for the 7am news. I was pleasantly surprised to hear a Beatles song playing. Then they played another. And another. I assumed that they were having a themed hour or something as radio stations are prone to do from time to time, and then they played ‘Starting Over’, John Lennon’s comeback single, which by that time was on its way back out of the charts. I was a little surprised that they would finish off a Beatles run with a solo Lennon track, but there you go.
Then the news came on and we were told that just before midnight, New York Time 8 December 1980 (about, 4am 9 December UK time?), John Lennon had been shot and killed outside his home in New York City. That was the moment that I first understood what hero worship was. I was flattened almost as much as if I’d heard 6that a family member had died. Perhaps not a close family member, but certainly not a distant one. I listened to the news and then the following half hour of Beatles and John Lennon songs on the radio before going down to the refectory for breakfast.
Even then, I don’t think I realised how the news of the death of someone I didn’t personally know had affected me until someone commiserated with me. I must have been glum, but that rather surprised me and I remember saying something stupid like ‘It’s not as though we were related, or anything’.
Anyway, I didn’t attend any lectures that day. I spent the day in the union bar, drinking coffee and listening to yet more Beatles or Beatles related music and helping the couple who ran the bar, John and Helen, decorate it for Christmas. A lot of reminiscing took place and then at lunchtime we had a couple of commemorative pints. There was a local band on that night, Johnny Thunder and his Hurricanes as you might expect with a name like that they played rock’n’roll 1950s style. I have no idea what they were like.
I have never been affected the same way by a celebrity death either before or since, but I kind of get it in a way that I didn’t before December 1980.
