It was cold that December night, 40 years ago, when Mark Chapman decided to kill John Lennon just for the sake of it, in order to sneak into the biography of one of the most influential figures in pop culture.
Moments earlier, the member of the quartet The Beatles had autographed a copy of his most recent album for Chapman, and Chapman had no better way to thank him than to shoot him five times. Just 15 minutes later, Lennon was dead and his estranged killer was waiting for police at the New York Dakota building. In one pocket he carried a battered copy of the novel “Catcher in the Rye”, by J.D. Salinger, while a few meters from him a person died and a myth was born…
The life of the famous musician was anything but boring, and was marked by that cult group he founded in Liverpool, practically unclassifiable, simply essential.
John Winston Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in the middle of the World War. He grew up without his father, raised by an aunt who did not welcome his musical tastes and with a mother haunted by her own demons, whose early death would mark him. In his teens, wandering the gardens of the Strawberry Field orphanage, John encountered his great musical buddy, Paul McCartney. Together they founded the band Quarry Men, and together they also put together The Beatles, in 1960. The rest is history…
From the sordid clubs of Hamburg and Liverpool to the crowded Shea Stadium in New York or the roof of the Apple Corps building, The Beatles revolutionized pop and left authentic generational anthems, exploring from the most commercial sounds to the most psychedelic, mystical and rock-and-roll, with suggestive lyrics and a luxurious production.
John‘s complicated personality marked the group, completed by Paul, his old friend George Harrison and the always underrated Ringo Starr. A genius guy as acid and biting, Lennon left behind numerous musical classics, but also inflammatory phrases, such as that The Beatles were more famous than Christ or that they were heroes of the proletariat.
His relationship with Yoko Ono, which began in 1966, perhaps precipitated the separation of the band, which was already a matter of time, more because of egos and personal searches than because of the role of villain who never abandoned the eccentric Japanese artist.
After “Imagine”‘s solo success came years of little music and a lot of activism, his breakup and reconciliation with Yoko, the home life he always longed for and never had, and the recording of “Double Fantasy”, the album he was putting together when five point blank shots ended with his life. It was December 8, 1980, and it was cold in New York…
