December 8, 1980.
I was 25 years old and single. Working in the head office of a faceless insurance company in downtown Toronto. Wearing a suit and tie to work every day. But in the evenings and on weekends I was still countercultural, listening to rock-and-roll, going to friend's houses to listen to tunes, avoiding television and especially televised sports like the plague.
On my way home from work that day I stopped in my favorite local record store and found a 45-RPM single that I'd been looking for for quite some time. It was a John Lennon single on the Apple label, and it had a B-side that wasn't on any album ;; Move Over Ms. L. I lived in a two-bedroom flat wherein one bedroom was packed to the rafters with 80 or so milkcrates full of albums, and after arriving at my house that Monday evening and giving the 45 a quick spin on the turntable, my friend Frank called and suggested I come over for a game of Risk and some tunage. So I brought the Lennon 45, plus the Double Fantasy LP which I had bought the day it had come out 3 weeks earlier, and a few other good tapes and records.
That Double Fantasy album was a Big Deal. Lennon hadn't released any new music in five years, and when word got out in the summer that he was recording again, it was actually newsworthy even in real newspapers. I remember cutting out a story from the Toronto Star, on my birthday no less, that had a picture of two members of Cheap Trick going into the studio where John and Yoko were recording. In the first week of October, I called the Canadian head office of Warner Music, the distributor of Lennon's new label Geffen Records, to find out when the album was coming out.
I heard the first single, (Just Like) Starting Over, on my car radio the day it was released in mid-October. It wasn't earth-shattering, but it was pleasant, and I felt good about hearing Lennon's music on the radio again.
So, over to Frank's house that cold Monday evening. It was a half-mile walk, and I preferred walking to driving. Three other guys were there for the Risk game. I remember playing Double Fantasy a few times, and when John sang, on Watching The Wheels, "People say I'm lazy...", one of the dudes mumbled under his breath, "They're right..."
The next day being a work day, I left around nine o'clock and fell asleep on my couch back home. At 11:30 the phone rang (which it almost never did at the time). It was Frank, insisting that I turn on the TV right that moment.
If this wasn't a family-friendly board, this is the point at which I would type the eff-word about sixty times.....
So every year on this date, in my house --- John's music MUST be played.
Almost as disturbing as the murder that happened that night is knowing that a whole lot of Americans learned about the event from Howard-Bleeding-Cosell on Monday Night Football.....
Edited to update the number of years ago....
I was 25 years old and single. Working in the head office of a faceless insurance company in downtown Toronto. Wearing a suit and tie to work every day. But in the evenings and on weekends I was still countercultural, listening to rock-and-roll, going to friend's houses to listen to tunes, avoiding television and especially televised sports like the plague.
On my way home from work that day I stopped in my favorite local record store and found a 45-RPM single that I'd been looking for for quite some time. It was a John Lennon single on the Apple label, and it had a B-side that wasn't on any album ;; Move Over Ms. L. I lived in a two-bedroom flat wherein one bedroom was packed to the rafters with 80 or so milkcrates full of albums, and after arriving at my house that Monday evening and giving the 45 a quick spin on the turntable, my friend Frank called and suggested I come over for a game of Risk and some tunage. So I brought the Lennon 45, plus the Double Fantasy LP which I had bought the day it had come out 3 weeks earlier, and a few other good tapes and records.
That Double Fantasy album was a Big Deal. Lennon hadn't released any new music in five years, and when word got out in the summer that he was recording again, it was actually newsworthy even in real newspapers. I remember cutting out a story from the Toronto Star, on my birthday no less, that had a picture of two members of Cheap Trick going into the studio where John and Yoko were recording. In the first week of October, I called the Canadian head office of Warner Music, the distributor of Lennon's new label Geffen Records, to find out when the album was coming out.
I heard the first single, (Just Like) Starting Over, on my car radio the day it was released in mid-October. It wasn't earth-shattering, but it was pleasant, and I felt good about hearing Lennon's music on the radio again.
So, over to Frank's house that cold Monday evening. It was a half-mile walk, and I preferred walking to driving. Three other guys were there for the Risk game. I remember playing Double Fantasy a few times, and when John sang, on Watching The Wheels, "People say I'm lazy...", one of the dudes mumbled under his breath, "They're right..."
The next day being a work day, I left around nine o'clock and fell asleep on my couch back home. At 11:30 the phone rang (which it almost never did at the time). It was Frank, insisting that I turn on the TV right that moment.
If this wasn't a family-friendly board, this is the point at which I would type the eff-word about sixty times.....
So every year on this date, in my house --- John's music MUST be played.
Almost as disturbing as the murder that happened that night is knowing that a whole lot of Americans learned about the event from Howard-Bleeding-Cosell on Monday Night Football.....
Edited to update the number of years ago....
