When I was 13, I found out that John Lennon had been shot. It was the official beginning of my teen angst, and a big chunk of it has never gone away. I just realized with alarm that I’m only two years younger now than he was when he got killed.
You left me, I never left you. I needed you, you never needed me, so I just got to tell you … Goodbye.
Good post, Dave. It just occurred to me that I was about as old when the Beatles invaded the nation as you were when John was taken from us.
I also remember when I was in high school that there was an article in the student newspaper headlined “Is the New Beatles Album Significant?” This appeared when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band came out. The consensus was that yes, it was significant, and it somehow gave my generation some sense of insight, if not outright empowerment.
Big media was all we had or knew about then, and it was good.
-k-
I saw the Beatles play live; well it was a live broadcast. They had Walter Cronkite anchor it in a way exactly like the Apollo rocket launches. We saw them arrive in their helicopter, walk down the hall even changing. My older brother who has since died told me never to forget this because it was history being made. I was about 9 years old at the time and I never forgot it.
Lennon was very self absorbed and often quite a bastard. At the Playboy mansion there is a Matisse that is marred with a brown spot where a drunken John Lennon put out his cigarette.