John

John Winston Lennon
October 9, 1940 - December 8, 1980
Imagine all the people living life in peace.
Maybe first hearing the news from Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football was part of it... Not realizing that Roone Arledge was the head of both ABC Sports and ABC News, and the latter organization's standards would apply to making such an announcement 30 years ago.


Suddenly phone lines lit up with listeners looking for confirmation, contradiction or consolation from KGB-FM in San Diego, much as they had ten years before at WBCN in Boston when we lost Jimi and Janis within a few weeks. They wanted a source more invested in the truth.

I went into our music library and brought out fresh copies of all the Beatles and Lennon solo albums into the air studio right away... And over the rest of the week, both staff and our audience rediscovered the breadth and depth of what had been removed from the spotlight as those responsible for manipulating music narrowed their focus.

As it happened, I was to be on the air that following Sunday, when many radio stations were going to observe a period of silence. Our boss thought Yoko's call for ten minutes was excessive. He'd only go for one minute. So I wanted to make it memorable.

Two hours before the scheduled time, I had started with a solo song: "God is a concept by which we measure our pain," but then doubled back to the beginnings of the Beatles career. What followed was every song identifiable as John's woven together in roughly chronological order from the American releases.

And as we approached the hour when the center of the rock world was to be Central Park across the street from the Dakota, across the continent I began the suite that ends side two of Sgt. Pepper:

• "Good Morning Good Morning"
• "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)"
• "A Day in the Life"

And as the final crescendo built, I cracked the mic to tell listeners we'd be joining others around the world for silence in John's memory.

The final chord hit exactly at the top of the hour... And as it died away, I started my timer after hearing the piano bench move on the floor at Abbey Road as the chord decayed. Time seemed to dilate in a space where I could only hear my own heart. Until exactly 60 seconds later, the first plaintive notes sounded on McCartney's mellotron...


Looking back at a career, where in the end "I just had to let it go," regardless of how much love I had made and/or taken, there were lots of playful, participatory or provocative on-air moments I still can recall... But none any more poignant than playing "Strawberry Fields Forever" that day, and hearing every caller cry for the next half hour.