By BILL BRIOUX -- Toronto Sun
It was just another day in the life, followed by a crisp December night. Turned on the car radio. Imagine was playing. Good, I thought.
Then, Across The Universe. Give Peace A Chance. In My Life. (Just Like) Starting Over.
As I drove home, a chill descended. Why were they playing all these songs in a row without any of the usual DJ blather? Waves of joy gave way to pools of sorrow. John Lennon was dead.
Twenty-five years later, it still seems unimaginable. At 40, after five years as a doting, bread-baking, stay-at-home dad, Lennon was back in the big time and Beatle fans were abuzz. The thrill of Double Fantasy was brand new and the promise of more great music was before us.
Instead, at about 10:50 p.m. on the night of Dec. 8, 1980, "He Who Must Not Be Named" pumped four bullets into Lennon (a fifth shot missed). The singer was returning to his Manhattan apartment after one last recording session. The words he'd been singing over and over that day: "Nobody told me there'd be days like these. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar, mama."
Within an hour -- thanks mainly to Howard Cosell's shocking announcement on Monday Night Football -- the whole world knew.
For me, for millions, it was a death in the family. A night or two later, I headed down to Nathan Phillips Square where thousands gathered in a candlelit vigil to the slain singer. Total strangers from all over the GTA faced a giant portrait of Lennon, blankly staring out from behind those granny glasses. We cried, held hands, rocked back and forth and sang a hundred choruses of Give Peace A Chance. The same heartfelt, spontaneous outpouring was taking place in New York's Central Park and in many other cities and towns that night.
What did it mean? It meant, for boomers, that our lives had changed in oh so many ways. It meant that the '60s were finally, irretrievably, over.
Through the sheer joy of their music and their cheeky personalities, Lennon and the rest of the Beatles had lifted a generation shattered by the death of John F. Kennedy. They spread a message of peace and love that, as Lennon so infamously put it, meant more to kids than Jesus or religion at the time.
Then the Beatles broke up and, despite flashes of brilliance, Lennon struggled through the '70s, surrendering to primal scream therapy, alcoholic binges, cheap shots at McCartney, deportation hearings and a dozen other demons. He was crippled inside and out, his career and personal life a rudderless mess. The dream is over, he told us. Don't believe in magic, Jesus, Elvis, Buddha, even Beatles. Just believe in yourselves.
Still, Lennon never really lost faith. You could say he was a dreamer. Ever the idealist, he dared to suggest that peace was an option. That there was no need for greed and hunger. That the world could be as one.
He raised his voice, and that is what is missed most today. That voice, that nasally, urgent, rock 'n' roll voice, how it sounded and what he said. Lennon's voice, unique and original, always cut through.
Who has it today? Bono? Bob Geldof? Maybe if you put the two together and added a sharp blast of humour. Lennon wasn't afraid to play the fool, especially for a serious cause.
War is over if you want it, he told us. It was ludicrous and vain and impossible and we dismissed it until he died and then we clung to the simplicity of that notion like a favourite pair of faded jeans. It made no sense and it made perfect sense, just like I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
Over the past 25 years, he was missed most during moments of truth. Think how the world turned in the aftermath of 9/11. Neil Young gamely filled in with Imagine on that America: A Tribute To Heroes concert. And while it was moving and respectful, it just made you feel Lennon's absence more. Imagine that edgy Weapons Of Mass Destruction single we never got to hear. Lennon had a way of holding up truth and rubbing your face in it.
He went too soon but right on time. By dying in 1980 he avoided MTV, Live Aid, CDs, music downloading, American Idol and countless other humiliations. Billionaire Beatle McCartney was jeered for selling out to an investment company in a recent TV campaign but who is to say Lennon (No. 3 in a recent Forbes poll of dead celebrity moneymakers) would not have been tempted to help Microsoft launch Windows with Help! or iPod with Power To The People?
Still, he never sold out when he was with us. He and Yoko could have been the counter-culture Sonny & Cher. Instead they went on The Mike Douglas Show and broke teacups. They went on the least cool show in the history of television and never lost their cool or their coolness.
My 15-year-old daughter paints pictures of Lennon. She gives (and sells!) them to friends or hangs them in her room.
Lennon would be 65 today. I never painted pictures of Perry Como when I was her age. How does Lennon connect with teens born 10 years after he died?
Like Elvis and Marilyn, dying young turned Lennon into an ageless icon. Unlike them, he died on an upswing, happy at home and at work. As Stevie Van Zandt put it the day after Lennon died, "He beat the rock-and-roll life."
So kids see him as forever cool, or, as my 12-year-old son suggested, as the Gandhi of music. Imagine how Lennon would have reacted to that. Imagine.
, the Sirius' four-hour "Lennon Live" tribute will feature live performances from Dave Matthews, Paul Weller, Jamie Cullum, Dr. John, Daryl Hall, Stereo MCs and Lulu originating from London's Abbey Road Studios and the Sirius studios in New York.
