where were you when John Lennon died?

not that i was really arsed at the time. seeing as i was basically into Specials, Blondie, Jam, Madness and erm...Bad Manners.

...But i was listening to Radio City in my house before school. The days before Breakfast TV. So the walk to school (Fazakerley County Primary) was a strange one. i knew it was big big news, even though i was 10.

Funny...just been in the alehouse at lunch time. Boozer has Capital Gold on. playing Lennon/Beatles songs all day. The played "She Loves You" and "i wanna hold your hand" - in GERMAN. classic!!!!

I'm pretty sure I was in the kindergarten on that day :)

i was sleeping, i was about 8, and i heard about it when i woke up for school because my mom was a huge beatles fan. i remember they had a lennon/beatles marathon weekend thatmy brother taped on his ghetto blaster that following weekend

I was 10 and living in Leigh... not sure if that's more or less depressing than Lennon dying...

craig's digitalwaters wrote: I was 10 and living in Leigh... not sure if that's more or less depressing than Lennon dying...

Are you from Leigh? I work with a lad from Leigh (not very interesting i know, but...)

Seeing as I was only a year old at the time (same birthday as John, 1979), I can't say I remember much about it. I also can't remember much about what I ate yesterday, but that's my own personal problem :p

But I did get to be a huge, annoying fan of the Beatles when I hit puberty. Kinda helped that I had the same birthday as Johnny.

I was only five when he was killed. Strangely I do seem to remember the reports on television, or my Dad talking about it or something. It's odd that I could remember being so young.

STRANGEWAYS - i had stolen a moment:D

Buying a baguette in a bakery... the radio was on...

heard Imagine on the radio today.What a load of depressing, drippy hippy bollocks.Gonna have to dig out some NO live stuff to cheer things up a abit.Think i'll start with the Royal Fest Hall gig.......

Ahhhh... that's better!!:D

Taboo # 7 wrote: Seeing as I was only a year old at the time (same birthday as John, 1979), I can't say I remember much about it. I also can't remember much about what I ate yesterday, but that's my own personal problem :p

But I did get to be a huge, annoying fan of the Beatles when I hit puberty. Kinda helped that I had the same birthday as Johnny.

Libra. You are supposed to be well balanced? You must have been on he cusp then I suspect:)

I do not recall the moment just that someone shot his ass. I always thought it was a ploy by Yoko to pimp the sales of Double Fantasy. Like Jeff said I am not a big Beatles fan and John's solo stuff is crap. In retrospect although John did write a hand full of good tunes his post-Beatles career was a fucking waste of talent. Maybe that is why his untimely demise does not bother me.

Johnny wrote: heard Imagine on the radio today.What a load of depressing, drippy hippy bollocks.Gonna have to dig out some NO live stuff to cheer things up a abit.Think i'll start with the Royal Fest Hall gig.......

Ahhhh... that's better!!:D

It's not ALL like that at all. He wrote some very good lyrics in his time. A great load of which was fairly depressing I suppose, but wouldn't say hippy. Working Class Hero is good for a laugh. Nobody Told Me - another good 'un; Mother is heartbreaking; Beautiful Boy is well, ... beautiful.. and my personal fave Watching the Wheels is great. Another life cut very short and I think he is a great loss to music especially. Lyrics most of the time are complete crap; or the lyrics are OK but the music is crap. I think he had the market of his time.

Anyway, I was 14 and on my way to school for mock exams when I heard; didn't mean an awful lot at the time; my Parents preferred the Rolling Stones to the Beatles, so they didn't show too much grief I suppose, in those terms, but it was only in my early twenties that I heard much JL stuff, so it meant more to me then; and despite the public 'hatred' of Yoko Ono, I truly believe they were in love - whatever that means! and blamed her for his death in a rather obscure and somewhat cruel way. (I refer to the Great British Public BTW)!

Long answer - sorry - I was doing a touch typing speed test!

:D

I was 12 and probably I didnt even know him, I think

I must of been 6or 7..but I do remember my mam crying when it came on telly in our front room..My Mam and dad were both Beatles nuts!My brother is called John Paul..tho in a twist, my dads large catholic family thought he was named in homage to the Pope..cunning little so ands so's let them believe it tooI thought they might have smelt a rat,with us being the only branch of the family, that did't go to church on Sundays...There is no doubt Lennon filtered into a lot of people's lives in one way or another,certainly in our house anyhow..

I had just come out of the grocery store after shopping (wasn't a Tesco, though ;) ), and got in the car, turned on the radio and there was a Beatles song playing, followed by a Lennon song. I was thinking that was nice, didn't hear them very often. Then the DJ came on and said "That was John Lennon, who I'm sorry to say, has just been shot." That was it-- no word on his condition. I drove home and turned on the news, and there it was.

I was gutted.

Dunno.Didn't even know who he was at the time. Imagine, fuck right off possibly the worst song ever written.

corporation t shirt

that's you now johnny boy!

I was 11 years old and vaguely remember my older brother Neg (Shug's dad) being gutted with the news. Coincidentally my niece was born the same day and celebrates her 25th today.

I was gutted.

i was getting ready for work when my dad shouted "fuckin ell lennons been shot". as the news filtered through i couldnt help thinking,surley to god he must have been aiming at YOKO.

A lot of his solo stuff is dodgy and crap, but there are some nuggets of genius from those years (Jealous Guy, Just Like Starting Over, Instant Karma, and before it became just another Christmas song, Merry Xmas War Is Over). Keep in mind, he didn't have Sir Paul around to help tend in his egotistical bent (much as John wasn't around to curb Paul's enthusiasm for crappy sentimentality). So those ten years were bound to be not quite up to the same quality as Lennon's work with the Beatles

The same way a LOT of Americans did in a pre-internet and pre-cable world: from Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football, Miami Dolphins v. New England Patriots. A sad, sad, very sad day indeed. :( :( :(

i mentioned this in another thread: i was watching TV with my parents when the newscaster came on and announced that john lennon had just been shot (i lived in the mountain time zone, so it was 2 hours earlier than NYC). my father yelled 'oh, no!' and i asked him who john lennon was. he told me he was a famous singer. even though i didn't know who he was i knew something important had happened because of the news coverage. it's the first thing i ever remember seeing on television.

and even though i don't remember what we were watching, i can assure you it wasn't howard cosell as we were definitely more of a PBS/masterpiece theatre household (i.e. sports-free). ;)

i ended up going to uni with sean, although he dropped out after a year to join his mom's band. he was still living with her at the dakota at the time, and as far as i know yoko still lives in the same apartment she shared with john the night she was killed. i remember sean walking around campus carrying his books in his arms--no backpack. interesting fellow.

Speaking of the Dakota (Christy brought it up), I remember when we went to New York back in high school, one of the places we stopped was out in front of the Dakota. I posed on one side of the "no unauthorized people beyond this point" sign with Will Rostron, a buddy of mine from those days. So some of the folks I went to high school with probably have that picture of the two of us, which if they still do I wish they'd put it up on Google or something because I'm sure it makes a cool picture.

But I don't remember any of those people's names, so I guess you'll just have to imagine me standing there, a Lennon devotee, at the site where it all ended.

i think i was at home Bremen Germany, either asleep, or getting ready to go school

Well, I was 9, and I remember rushing down the stairs to grab the morning papers, and reading the headline.

Growing up in a family where my parents grew up at the time of the Beatles, I obviously knew who he was, and so was pretty shocked at the time.

I was more shocked and sad when John Peel died last year, though, although that's probably because I'd only met him a couple of months previously (at the last ever Orbital gig in Maida Vale).

AgentWood wrote: as far as i know yoko still lives in the same apartment she shared with john the night she was killed.

If only. Still, one can dream.

My wasn't born yet but my dad always talks about where he was on that day. I guess he was watching TV and the program got interrupted. He was a big John Lennon fan.

Heather

I was in High School when he died and it was the only thing people talked about. I couldn't have cared less.

Missy Jem wrote:

craig's digitalwaters wrote: I was 10 and living in Leigh... not sure if that's more or less depressing than Lennon dying...

Are you from Leigh? I work with a lad from Leigh (not very interesting i know, but...)

I lived in Goldbourne 0-6, Padgate 6-9, Leigh 10-11 and then went 'upmarket' as a teenager and ended up in Grappenhall, before emigrating Southwards, in search of work, at the age of 16...

I'm puzzled why I remember it, as I've never been much of a fan of Lennon, but for some reason I remember clearly that I was in my parents' living room feeling freezing cold cos the heating had been cut off due to a gas leak.

More annoying is the fact I can remember exactly where I was when I heard Princess Di had died, even though she meant nothing to me at all. I remember thinking 'well at least I won't have to read about her all the time now' - boy was I wrong.

Yet I can't remember anything at all about hearing about Joe Strummer dying even though he was someone who's work I actually liked. Weird.

404 error wrote: I'm puzzled why I remember it, as I've never been much of a fan of Lennon, but for some reason I remember clearly that I was in my parents' living room feeling freezing cold cos the heating had been cut off due to a gas leak.

More annoying is the fact I can remember exactly where I was when I heard Princess Di had died, even though she meant nothing to me at all. I remember thinking 'well at least I won't have to read about her all the time now' - boy was I wrong.

Yet I can't remember anything at all about hearing about Joe Strummer dying even though he was someone who's work I actually liked. Weird.

In reference to Princess Di, I had been playing a marathon session of Tetris on my roommate's computer in Columbia, and was trying to get to sleep when the broadcast came on about Diana's car in Paris. All I remember is feeling like the walls were moving like Tetris bricks while I was focused on the screen.

Probably the most traumatic celeb death for me was Phil Hartman, just because it was so unexpected. I remember flipping it over to Headline News that day and hearing him refered to in the past tense while clips from "Newsradio" were onscreen.

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

AgentWood wrote: as far as i know yoko still lives in the same apartment she shared with john the night she was killed.

If only. Still, one can dream.

oops. freudian slip, i suppose.

At high school, can't quite remember which class now, teacher came in all ashen-faced and announced John Lennon the ex-Beatle had been killed and that all lessons that arvo were cancelled. A lot of them were either the same age as or a few years younger so they would felt like an older or similar aged brother/mentor had been stolen from them. I'd started listening to Beatles stuff a couple of years before through the local commercial AM stations and didn't mind most of thier stuff(I was starting to like a bit of new wave/synth stuff about the same time as well- typical 13 year-old, having a toe in both old and new stuff at the same time).

A bit off-topic; AgentWood- Re.your new avatar- would that perchance be a logo for the Israeli Communist Party or am I sadly mistaken(I'm not that well-versed about Israeli domestic politics so please forgive my ignorance on this matter).

404 error wrote: I'm puzzled why I remember it, as I've never been much of a fan of Lennon, but for some reason I remember clearly that I was in my parents' living room feeling freezing cold cos the heating had been cut off due to a gas leak.

More annoying is the fact I can remember exactly where I was when I heard Princess Di had died, even though she meant nothing to me at all. I remember thinking 'well at least I won't have to read about her all the time now' - boy was I wrong.

Yet I can't remember anything at all about hearing about Joe Strummer dying even though he was someone who's work I actually liked. Weird.

I remember where I was when I heard Strummer died. I was sitting in an internet cafe in Serbia checking my email when I read the news. Fucking fucking hell. Gutted again.