Where were you when John Lennon Shot?

[nmbluesky]

Remember John Lennon this date, Dec 8, 1980. I was three years old. but my parents loved to heard his song, "Imagine".. They were so shocked and upset...What's about you?

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

[JuniperLea]

1. I was nursing my oldest son... he was 11 months old...

And I fell apart... how could I raise my child in a world without John Lennon?

[stopbush]

2. I was living in NYC at the time, about 25 blocks away from the Dakota.

I went to the quickly assembled memorial service in Central Park which was held on Sunday, Dec 14. There were about 100,000 of us there.

[MuseRider]

3. In my tacky rented house.

Just got off work. It was the day before my birthday and I was thinking about a party I was going to. It was cold in my tiny living room that was painted an icky tan with a day-glo orange shag carpet (super ick) with my green sofa and my pink overstuffed chair (I was way too poor and not terribly inclined to be able to decorate around the nauseating carpet) when I flipped on my TV, used my wrench to change the channel (used piece of crap with a broken dial but the picture was good although it was black and white with no cable) to the news and there it was. I sat down and I don't think I moved for a while. Then the tears and I called my boyfriend and we went out in sadness.

I know....not much applies to the question but that is how vivid it is.

[PCIntern]

4. Muserider...

Loved your post...

In those days, it was just fine to have all that stuff you described in your apartment....if you were a genuine person, no one cared - all we cared about was that someone was fun, friendly, and interesting. Nowadays, we are all judged by the quality of the electronics, the high-style decoration, and other nonsense which pervades the society. shame...

[MuseRider]

11. Very true

but it was so nauseating that I will never forget. It was a great but tiny little house that I had all to myself. It cost no more than an apartment elsewhere. In the kitchen you could not open the fridge without hitting the stove across the way. It was a riot. I had to get a stepping stool to see myself in my bathroom mirror. LOVED it except for the color scheme :-) I can bring up only a few memories of it really, I was so busy then trying to make it on my own working for the city with tiny pay. I was very proud of my independence. There are only a few things that actually call it to mind and this is one of them. I also just remembered that I had a Pong game attached to that old TV. I think Atari and Intellevision had systems then but I had Pong. LOL, a gift from my brother who is now almost 8 years gone.

So many memories get brought up by things that hit us hard like the death of someone we admire and care about. So many and they never really dim. I guess I am glad about that. They are touchstones in our lives.

[delightfulstar]

5. I was living in Florida on 12/8/80...

I was a kid, too. His was one of the first deaths that really shook me. I cried, and I cried hard, and nearly couldn't stop crying that night. I knew exactly what had happened to him, but had no idea why in the world it happened - who would want to kill someone who wrote about peace? I remember watching the vigils on TV that night, seeing the people gather and mourn, hearing them share his music with one another, and there were so many different people in that group - he would have been proud. Little did he know just how powerful his legacy would be, and how true his words still ring. I have an almost 13 year-old son who was barely a twinkle in my eye in 1980, and he loves John Lennon, and loves The Beatles, and so do many of his friends. John's voice was never really silenced - he lives on through his music, and through all of us who love it.

[RagAss]

6. Stoned in the TV lounge of my college dorm...watching Monday Night Football....

When Howard announced it.....it was like the whole room froze in time.

[Blue_In_AK]

7. I was living over in East Anchorage.

I think when I first heard I was in my three-year-old daughter's bedroom folding clothes. I cried for days -- I had thought we were done with the executions.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

8. Driving home from work on 294 when I heard.

Had a pipe lit (tobacco-- imagine me as the Tim Robbins PBS news anchor in Anchorman) and it fell out of my mouth into my lap. I'm fresh out of college in my first real job and this just felt like I'd been jarred out my youth.

[Luciferous]

9. My mom was 3 months pregnant with me :)

[11 Bravo]

10. Watching Monday Night Football, Miami versus New England. Howard Cosell interrupted the game ...

saying that his announcement was more important than a football game, and told us that John had been shot and had been pronounced DOA at the hospital. I'll never forget it.

[Bonobo]

12. I was 14 and into Lennon heavily for about 6 months.

We had just moved to Chicago area and I had been listening over and over to my brother's Lennon albums for months.

I was on the stairs when my parents told me. I stopped, shocked.

I cried that night and recorded the radio stations playing Lennon's library of music.

I will never forget where I was at that time.

[KamaAina]

13. Sitting in front of the TV watching Monday Night Football. In Bridgeport, Conn.

To add insult to injury, the Pats blew yet another playoff spot that night.

[CBGLuthier]

14. In my garage apartment

recording some tracks on my portastudio for a friend's play. My mother called with the news and I told everyone else there.

Sad days. Best forgotten.

[EFerrari]

15. I was a young mother in a mountain town, had just put my boys to bed.

My husband was crashed out and I was trying to straighten up the house without waking him up because he didn't get enough rest, weekday or weekend.

No one else was up and it felt like part of the world had broken away.

[CreekDog]

16. I was 9 and the next day our teachers had us singing "War Is Over"

with the words written on the chalk board. (San Francisco school)

I didn't know who John Lennon was, although I did know and like the song (Just Like) Starting Over which was all over the radio at the same time. His comeback was so upbeat, so fun and so tragically ended.

With his album coming out just a couple months before his death and with all the studio time he'd spent creating it, it's no wonder that those new songs were all over the radio in 1981 and 1982.

So sad. He tried to change the world for the better and he would lend his celebrity to otherwise lost causes. Throughout his life, he was always learning what he could do and how he could do it differently, be it music or activism. He was brilliant and never a shadow of his former self the way so many aging rockstars can be.

:cry:

[LiberalLoner]

17. I was 18 or 19...living in Arlington, Va, working as a civil servant. n/t

[mulsh]

18. Home in Oakland waiting for the power to come back on

playing my 12 string guitar, just noodling mostly. A co-worker called and told me Lennon had died. I told her I wouldn't be at work the following day. The power never came back on that night. The next morning I got up. The power was back on I put this song on the stereo and played it really loud.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2rBhF62Zrs

R.I.P.

[Canuckistanian]

19. In College in Toronto

I came home that night to an empty house. I just watched all the news reports and grieved. I didn't call anyone or go out.

I was reminded of all the assassinations in the 60's and thinking, "They NEVER let the GOOD ONES live"

[MorningGlow]

20. I was asleep, but I woke up the next morning to my clock radio playing Beatles songs

I woke up slowly, wondering if it was some special Beatles tribute day, the way the radio stations did sometimes. I listened to "In My Life" and at the end the DJ said, "John Lennon, dead at 40..."

I was only 15, but I had been a HUGE Beatlemaniac for a couple of years, so of course it hit me HARD. I jumped out of bed and screamed for my mom. She met me in the hallway (she had been braced for when I woke) and talked sensibly to me through my shock--got me moving through my morning routine and on the bus, although I was on autopilot. I couldn't even cry, until about an hour later when I sought out my friends at school. Then we cried nonstop for days.

[LostInAnomie]

21. My Dad's nut sack.

[underpants]

22. Asleep but I had been watching MNF- went out to get the paper the next morning...

Headline

Lennon Dead

I was a huge Beatles fan but more of a Paul guy. I just stood there looking at the headline.

Walked back in (I was in 9th grade I think) and my mom said, "Good morning" Me, "someone killed John Lennon last night"

[rox63]

23. I will never forget where I was that night

I'll never forget where I was. I was 17, a senior in high school, and out Christmas shopping with my Dad, specifically looking for records. He and I did not like the same sort of music. He was all about jazz, and I was into rock and pop. He asked if I wanted the new Lennon album, which was being heavily promoted in all the stores we went to. I said probably not, as the critics had generally panned it. I said they talked about it like he was "the late-great John Lennon"

When we got home from shopping, we heard the news that Lennon had been shot dead. My words earlier in the evening came back and bit me hard. I was stunned.

Here's one of my favorite post-Beatles Lennon songs, Working Class Hero:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njG7p6CSbCU

[asdjrocky]

24. I'll never forget...

I was playing in a band at the time and me and my good friend and guitarist Steve were sitting there on his sofa working out some stuff with acrostic guitars while the Monday night game played out softly in the background on the small TV.

Howard Cosell told us the news and we just sat there for a while, hands dead on the fretboards, stunned into silence. Then Norwegian Wood, then She's Leaving Home, then Revolution, then Imagine. The songs just came out and we had no words beyond that, but the music did the talking.

I'll never, as long as I live, forget that night, and playing those songs.

[madinmaryland]

25. I honestly have no idea where I was. I was 19, in college, and though

sad as it was, it was not a defining moment for me. I was probably studying calculus or something similar.

:shrug: