Where were you when you heard John Lennon was dead?

A friend of mine reminded me that today is the anniversary of John Lennon's death. So I wrote the following piece for his web site. Thought you might like reading it.

I heard about it the morning after it happened.

I was shaving. I had tuned the radio to WJR. J.P. McCarthy was interviewing Dr. Emmanuel Tanay, a forensic psychologist, and a frequent guest.

I picked up the conversation in the middle.

McCarthy: "But why would he kill John?"

I froze. In that split second, I knew what had happened.

I dropped the razor in the sink and wiped my face. I went to the milk chute where the paperboy put the morning paper. I jerked open the door and pulled out my copy of the Detroit Free Press. I unfolded the paper. The headline said, simply:

"Ex-Beatle John Lennon Murdered."

Below the headline was a 5-year old picture of John on the day he received his immigration card, capping a years-long battle with the US government. He was skinny, wearing a suit and tie smiling proudly, holding up his treasured immigration papers.

He was dead.

I threw the paper on the kitchen table and sat down, stunned.

Later that morning at work, no one mentioned it. But I could see that it bothered not a few people greatly.

It reminded me of the morning Bobby Kennedy died. I was sitting on the city bus going to school. The entire bus was eerily subdued. Across the aisle from me sat a woman, head down. She was silently crying, the tears falling past the lenses of her sunglasses.

One wag took the cynical approach: "Hundreds if not thousands will die next year in Afghanistan and Poland. We're weeping over John Lennon? Please spare me."

He might have mentioned the Iran-Iraq war, too, for that matter. It was a weird time in history.

Oh, yeah, one other comment sticks in my mind from that day.

"John Lennon is dead and Ronald Reagan is President."

Sorry, but someone DID say it. President-elect Reagan, much to his credit, did have some kind words to say about John that day as did Jimmy Carter and just about every other world leader on the planet.

Did I say it was a weird time in history? Right.

What else do I remember? I remember thinking that if John Lennon were a fictional character in a movie or a novel, he would be considered too unreal to be believable. The manner of his birth, the arc of his life and the circumstances of his death were too fantastic for make-believe.

Looking back, it seems clear that few personalities were simultaneously dominant in the realm of entertainment, news media and, improbably, politics. It is a more common phenomenon today, but John Lennon was one of the first.

You could say that Lennon was an avatar of the information age--an age when the lines between politics, media and entertainment have blurred to an exceptional degree.

I also remember thinking that life was cruel. Say what you want about John Lennon, but nothing he did in his life justified the manner of his death.

Perhaps fittingly, it was one of the biggest stories of that year (which included a Presidential election) or any other in recent memory. The media went...bonkers! for months.

The story finally faded when, a few months later, President Reagan was shot.

And then the Pope was shot a few months after THAT.

It was a weird time in history.

Did I say that already? Right.