A hat tip to Ace of Spades HQ [1] who reminds us that it was 24 years ago tonight that John Lennon was killed.
OK, so his politics were downright abysmal. (A fact that Ace also notes) but it was about the music, for me.
I remember I was on my way home from my night shift at the Brockport radio station that night… a rather nasty night it was, too… snowing and blowing to beat everything. I stopped into a Wegmans [2] grocery store, who had just started staying open 24*7. I was busy sipping coffee a buddy on the night crew had gotten for me from somewhere and was checking out the magazine rack, when the rock station that the night crew had put on the house speakers suddenly went silent… and after much wheezing and clicking, the station joined what was obviously a hastily arranged network feed from their sister station in New York City.
I suppose I felt rather detached as I listed to the feed… But I do recall thinking as I walked out into the fresh snow, that the Christmas decorations were rather incongruous with my mood.
I suspected I wasn’t alone.
I spent a lot of the remaining drive home making mental list of any records I had on hand of the Beatles, or of Lennon alone, for my radio show the next day, wondering if I’d ever feel quite the same way about the music again.