John Lennon – December 8, 1980

 
2010 is a big (and landmark) year for Beatles fans. In July, Ringo celebrated his 70th birthday and Paul McCartney joined him onstage. The Beatles catalog is finally available for download on itunes, There is a recently released movie called Nowhere Boy depicting the early years of John Lennon. PBS did a biopic for their Masterpiece Contemporaries called John Lennon – Naked.  PBS also had a documentary called LENNONYC that chronicled his life after the breakup of the Beatles and his life in New York throughout the 70’s.  October 9th would have been the 70th birthday of John Lennon and December 8th is the 30th anniversary of John’s tragic death!
This event in the history of pop culture, music and my own personal history is one of those events that I can recall and remember where I was when I heard the news of John Lennon’s death.  It was a Monday night and Monday nights were the nights that Boy Scout troop 81 of North Platte Nebraska would meet at the First Lutheran Church. We’d play Basketball before the scout meetings and catch up with friends etc. My friend-Brad and I were in the same scout troop and we also lived across the street from each other. So, our parents would work out some kind of transportation to and from our Monday night meetings. On this night, Brad’s dad picked us up in his Suburban as he had many times before with the car radio blaring that night’s Monday Night Football game.  So, it was either his dad that mentioned something about Lennon being shot or it was the subject of the radio broadcast.
It’s hard for me to remember when I first heard John Lennon or the Beatles. I grew up with 3 older sisters who were entering their teenage years the year I was born. I was born in July of 1967 which is just a month after the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band album was released.  So, with older sisters interested in the pop music of the day, the Beatles music was something that was around me from an early age.  I remember seeing the animated Beatles movie of Yellow Submarine at a very young age.  PBS started airing Sesame Street in 1969. So, it was also always part of my life.  The writers of Sesame Street found creative ways to use Beatles songs to teach. They took Twist and Shout and helped us to “Count it up Higher!…Higher…!”.  Let it Be became “Letter B” and they even had a Muppet version of Ringo’s Octopus’ Garden. 
My earliest memory of a Beatles’ Album was the “red” 1962-1966 Greatest Hits double album of the Beatles in the house. I remember flipping the album cover over and over trying to match up the picture of the young Beatles with the picture of them taken in 69-70 on the back side.   My sister Kathy had a copy of a double album called The Beatles Rock and Roll Music
These two albums were the primer for my knowledge of Beatles music. Then, in 1978, the Robert Stigwood Organization(RSO) took the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton and teamed them up for a movie version of the Beatles’ album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I wasn’t enough of a Beatles fan to be offended by this project. In fact, it wasn’t until I began reading my monthly reading of Dynamite Magazine(distributed through Scholastic book clubs) that I realized that the Bee Gees were making a movie where they did a bunch of Beatles songs from Sgt Pepper..

Dynamite magazine was very instrumental in bringing the Beatles into my consciousness as they would publish a monthly calendar that would feature celebrity birthdays. This is where I discovered that I shared a birthday with Ringo Starr and that John Lennon had a birthday in October. 
I actually enjoyed the Bee Gees/Peter Frampton versions of the Beatles songs. My sister Kathy and my friend Brad both owned the soundtrack album. I really wanted it. So, I asked for it for Christmas. Somehow, my mother knew best and got me the Beatles original album instead….(Good work Mom!)  I listened to the album over and over and really grew to love it.  As I learned  the songs, I realized the greatness of the Lennon/McCartney collaborations. I remember trumpeting that the Sgt Pepper movie may have been crap. But, the music was fantastic. Of course, it was fantastic..it was the Beatles.
By this time, the Beatles were still rather peripheral in my life. I respected the songwriting of Lennon and McCartney. I knew a lot of the songs. There was a song in the early 80’s called Stars on 45(Beatles Medley) that featured a bunch of 60’s pop songs that featured mostly Beatles songs. I had that on a 45 rpm(look that one up kids). Also, around that time, there was a Broadway musical called Beatlemania.  So the Beatles were beginning to grow in my tastes in music.
Then, that tragic night in 1980 changed something in me. At first, it was just tragic thinking that John Lennon had been shot outside his home. I watched the news reports on the Today show the next morning. I went to school the next day and we talked about this event in my 8th grade history class.  Mr Gulzow talked about what an influence the Beatles had been in pop culture. He made the comment that(along with their music) they made long hair fashionable. I was rather fond of having longer hair at the time. So, I related to that.  Of course, this was December and it was the Christmas Holiday season. I was singing in the Adams Junior High swing choir and we would perform for many Christmas parties around North Platte.  At one of the performances we did that week we sung the Carpenters arrangement of the Beatles’ Ticket to Ride.  Our director introduced the song to the crowd as a song written by John Lennon who had been killed earlier that week. That comment sparked something in me too. The local news station did a story on the death of Lennon and talked to the North Platte record store known as Dailey(or Daily) Records. Of course, one of the items that they mentioned was that Geffen records had just released Lennon’s album Double Fantasy.  All of sudden, I felt attracted to that record store and many more record stores for many years to come.  I was soon on a quest of everything Beatles. I was 13 years old and I was a Beatles fanatic. I had been a big fan of Styx, ELO and REO Speedwagon. But, I left a lot of that behind and became a big Beatles fan. I became more serious about playing drums and Ringo was someone I looked to for inspiration. I bought the Beatles biography book titled SHOUT. I read it on our family trip to Oregon. On that trip, I would draw sketches of the Beatles in my sketch book.  I would perk up when I would hear a Beatles vocal on the radio.  While on that trip, I wanted to go to every record store. In my 9th grade speech class, we were asked to prepare an informational speech. I did my speech on the life on John Lennon.  As I said before, I was a full on Beatles fanatic.
This was also the beginning of my love for music. This is definitely where I started my regular trips to record stores. I bought my own drumkit a year or so later and I was always perusing through record stores and music instrument stores. In North Platte, there was a store known as Murphy’s Modern Music that had both records and music instruments(including drums). 
I kept my love for everything Beatles even as I grew older and became a fan of hard rock and metal too. After all, Eddie and Alex Van Halen grew up as fans of the Beatles and it inspired them to take up their respective instruments too.  Even Ozzy Osbourne has stated that he was a huge Beatles fan as a teenager. In college, I had a speech class and the assignment was for an informative speech. Once again, I chose to do mine on the Beatles. The speech was only supposed to run abot 3-5 minutes. My speech lasted more like 15 minutes. There was so much I wanted to talk about because I knew so much more.
In 1993, I saw Paul McCartney live in Kansas City. It was an awesome concert and one that I'll never forget. I was on vacation that week and went from Kansas City back to Omaha and then out to Colorado for my neice's graduation. I was on such a Beatles high that I think my brother and I drove out to Colorado listening to nothing but Beatles CD's.

Fast forward to 1995 and the movie Mr Holland’s Opus. I related to the movie because I had started my college career as a music education major. But, it was the scene where Richard Dreyfus as Mr Holland sings (and signs) the lyrics to John Lennon’s Beautiful Boy to his son that really hit me. 

I was touched by that song. I put that song in my mind as a favorite. It would be in early 2004 when I found out that my wife and I were to welcome a son into the world in late April/early May of that same year.  I came home and sat in my recliner and listened to Beautiful Boy as the tears ran down my face.  My son Joe was born in May of 2004 and I wanted to sing him a song that was special to him and I.  For the first year of his life, I would get up with him at night and feed him to get him back to sleep and the lullaby I sang to him was Beautiful Boy (Darling JOE).  Years later, when I would play that song in the car to ease him to sleep, He would say “That’s my Joseph Ferris song..Dad!”

As I think back to that night in 1980, I am reminded of all the things I’ve known, learned and grown from. I related to John when he said that he was “just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round” and when he told Yoko…”Woman..I love you!” I felt the same for my (now ex) wife. But, It was a few years back that I realized that his death was a very very big event for me. I didn’t know it at the time. But, it definitely started me on a life and love of music and making music that still revs me up and gets me going. Many talk about where they were John Kennedy was shot or when the World Trade Center was attacked by terrorists.  For me, December 8th 1980 is a day that will be one of those landmark days in my life.