A man who helped define rock and roll, a leader of the peace movement, an icon of the Baby Boom generation, his sudden shooting death at the hands of Mark David Chapman inspired shock and mourning, and for many marked the end of an era.
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In a 2014 interview on U.K. TV program The Jonathan Ross Show, Paul McCartney discussed how he felt after hearing the awful news of Lennon’s death.
We continue to mention Lennon’s name throughout the years, keeping his memory alive.
On Tuesday morning, Ono tweeted an update on a post she shared two years ago featuring Lennon’s blood-smeared glasses from the night of his murder with a view of Central Park in the background: “Over 1,100,000 people have been killed by guns in the United States of America since John Lennon was shot and killed on December 8, 1980”.
“It was Monday night, Monday Night Football, I was in my freshman year of college”, she explained.
Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello said, “It was very, very sad, and it’s still hard to even factor in that, like, a Beatle was murdered, you know?” And although we have a lot of great music to remember him by, most notably, we remember “Imagine”.
The death of John Lennon still reverberates as a defining moment for a generation and for the music world.
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The loss of the beloved 40-year-old member of The Beatles provoked a debate over gun violence that is eerily similar to the current national conversation sparked by a shooting massacre last week in San Bernadino, California. Chapman was imprisoned in 1981 and has been denied parole eight times. He next comes up for parole in August of 2016.
