The singer who touched the world

Dec. 8, 2005

Dear nieces and nephew,

In the minds of people old enough to be paying attention a quarter-century ago, the names John Lennon and Howard Cosell are irrevocably linked. Lennon was a Beatle. Cosell was a sportscaster who exaggerated most things but not the significance of Lennon's death when he announced it 25 years ago today during a "Monday Night Football" game.

"One of the great figures of the entire world, one of the great artists, was shot to death horribly at the Dakota Apartments, 72nd Street and Central Park West in New York City," Cosell interrupted the play-by-play to say. "John Lennon is dead. He was the most important member of the Beatles, and the Beatles, led by John Lennon, created music that touched the whole of civilization. Not just people in Liverpool, where the group was born, but the people of the world."

Lennon was shot in the back by a mentally ill fan. In "The Ballad of John & Yoko," he had predicted, "They're gonna crucify me."

Your generation has grown up hardly knowing him.

He was an icon because he was the most human of rock stars. He overcame a drug addiction, infidelities, a period of outsized debauchery, and a public feuds with the FBI and with his songwriting partner, Paul McCartney. He experimented with and became disillusioned with hallucinogens, Eastern religion and radical politics. All of it was there in his songs with no apologies.

For a number of years he quit making music and stayed home to bake bread for his family. Just before he was killed he started making good music again.

Lennon and the Beatles changed popular music. Before them, singers with names like Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker and Frankie Avalon snapped their fingers and sang innocuous love songs. The Beatles sang about love, too, but their music made hearts leap. "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was a simple but powerful declaration of love. The Beatles repeated the message "All You Need is Love" over and over in many different ways in the hope the rest of us eventually will get it.

The night we were told Lennon had been killed felt like the death of that belief. We already knew what losing a hero felt like. We saw Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy assassinated. Now this.

Those were grievous days. People held candles outside the Dakota and sang his songs.

Lennon's song "Imagine" is an invitation to help create a better world. "Imagine there's no countries/It isn't hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/No religion too/Imagine all the people/living life in peace ..."

He urged people to "give peace a chance" during the Vietnam War. Here we are at war again. A comic strip character named Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Lennon knew that often to be true in his own life and in the greater life of the world.

He asked us to imagine peace when there was none and, when confronted with hatred and violence, to imagine a world where love is all there is.

His life is much more important than the tragedy of his death. Elvis died a sad case. Lennon accepted his own faults and failures just as he accepted others' and emerged a man in love with his wife, in love with his children and in love with this world all of us in every moment help to create. Imagine that.

Love, Sam

~ Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.