A Brutal Day's Night: December 8th 1980

[Mouschter]

A Brutal Day's Night: December 8th 1980
It was 29 years ago today, I had a Shakespeare exam the next morning. I figured the only way to realistically prepare for the Bard was to NOT prepare for the Bard. There was a method to my madness for the Stewart Theater at NCSU in Raleigh was showing a free exam movie, " A Hard Day's Night" starring my four favorite lads...
When I arrived at 9 PM it turned out they were presenting "Help" instead. This was no problem, for of all their cinematic oeuvre, this was the one Beatles flick I had never seen (this was long before Blockbuster you see) As I enjoyed a communal experience in the theater with hundreds of other fans and students playing academic hooky, I left the theater in a Beatles glow.
It was a little before 11 PM on December 8th, 1980.
I headed home where I was living with my folks after a year or so of dorm and off campus life. Cruising around suburban Raleigh I did what I always did; I slipped a Beatles cassette into the cardeck and enjoyed the moment, oblivious to the fact that the shots had already rang out in front of the Dakota.
Ironically enough, as I drove home in my 1969 Ford Fairlane listening to the boys on tape, radio stations all over the country and world were queuing up Beatles and Lennon tracks of their own as I drove cluelessly on. I went home, cracked "Twelfth Night" for a while and drifted off to sleep....
And when I awoke, I read the news today oh boy...I came upstairs, my Mom handed me the News and Observer, where the headline shouted "Ex-Beatle, Shot, Slain". Ex-Beatle? How John would have hated that label! "Go back to high school!", he would growl to fans brave enough to ask him about any chance of a Beatles reunion. When I first beheld the paper my shocked psyche could not grasp which one of the four had perished. My mind did a bizarre mental triage and in that split second conversation with God I moaned,"Take Ringo if you have to Lord !!!" Yes folks, I threw poor Mr Starkey under the proverbial cosmic bus in order to save the other three...Then my eyes moved down the page to the photo of John autographing Mark David Chapman's Double Fantasy album and I then knew the truth with all its pain. I remember the Village Voice asking why is it always a Kennedy or a Lennon that gets the bullets, why not a Nixon or a McCartney? Strong stuff, to be sure, but thirty years down the road I still haven't determined the answer...
Obla Di Obla Da life most certainly went on for me. During the 80's I performed with a party band with my boyhood buddies doing our fair share of Fab covers. I sang John of course (I lacked his upper range but I could pull off his raspy voice thing on the obscure tunes I really liked such as The One After 909). By the nineties, wedding bells had broken up that ole gang of mine just like the real lads from Liverpool. My musical journey continued with an eight year stint with the Durham Bulls baseball club as team organist. I threw in instrumental Beatles ditties whenever possible, especially Martha My Dear and I Am The Walrus: both have a very strong carnival vibe on the organ. With the Bulls due to move from the old DAP ballpark of Bull Durham movie fame across town to the new ultra modern DBAP I played Hey Jude at the end of the last home game of that season. The crowd stood and sang the Nah Nah Nah Nahs with my keyboard. The News and Observer the next day led their farewell story with the line,
"And the organist played the Beatles...."
The new millennium dawned with all the trauma of 9/11 and the personal drama of being thrust out of work when the bar I had tended for 17 years at the Rathskeller in Raleigh went out of business. It was a cold December evening almost 21 years after John's assassination. That lonely holiday season, a Christmas angel in the form of my younger brother came to my rescue with an Amtrak ticket to New York City, where the itinerary would include the Marriott on Times Square, multiple Broadway shows, and yes, a pilgrimage to the Dakota and Strawberry Fields in Central Park. This was early January 2002, four months after the attack on America, and the walls of the subways and streets of the Big Apple were covered with photos, posters, flowers, and plaintive written cries for information. On our first morning in the midst of this milieu of our nation's suffering, my brother Mark and I headed through the park towards the Dakota, its tan and brown Gothic buttresses beckoning above the trees. Little did I realize the instant karma I was about to come face to face with...
As we strode up to the entrance to the exact spot where tragedy struck I was surprised to find no curious fans or tourists. As I tentatively peered into the inner sanctum of the Dakota where the dying Lennon had stumbled into, my brother and me struck up a conversation with the lone doorman. In his early twenties and baby-faced he was not what I imagined at all. I guess I was expecting Secret Service types scowling with walkie talkies, but he stood bundled against the morning chill perfectly willing to point out where Chapman stood that horrible night. Soon we were joined by a local middle aged man walking his dog and talked for a bit when suddenly a silver sports car with no passenger turned from the street into the Dakota. The dog walker, obviously a neighbor said to us knowingly,"Hey that's Yoko's Jag! That means she'll be coming out in less than a minute!"
And so she did...The Jag came out and incredibly....stopped right beside us. Although the windows were a slightly tinted gray I could see her clearly in the backseat wearing a white blouse. The doorman in some sort of bizarre private joke between the two, proceeded to go up to the hood of the vehicle and push up and down on the suspension. I could see her smiling and laughing, and then her eyes shifted in our direction. Probably six feet away I thought quickly enough to lift up my hand, separate the fingers and flash her the peace sign. I am sure during the glory days of Bed Ins and Bagism, she and John had given that particular gesture thousands of times. Now, in the exact spot where such agony and heartbreak had occurred, she didn't ignore me, in fact, she lifted up her hand and returned the favor. Then it was over. Yoko's Jag sped away, the dog walker wandered on, and my brother and I stood opened mouthed and made the short trip back into the park to see the Strawberry Fields memorial.
When George Harrison left us of course it was too soon, but unlike John it felt right. Like he had been preparing for his passage for forty years. Paul is the survivor who carry's the weight and the torch. And Ringo? He is simply enjoying the ride like he has always done. And in the end, I am sure my Beatles adventures are far from over. Traveling is now in my blood and I am planning my first trip to Europe with stops from Liverpool, London, and of course Hamburg. The joy they have given me most certainly outweighs all the grief that engulfed me on that December so long ago.

[kssunflower]

I remember that day well. I was such a Lennon fan, I went gaga for his son Julian in the mid 80's and still have his Valotte album. It's uncanny how much he sounds like his father.