Late on the evening of December 8, 1980 I was driving through Manhattan's west side when I saw a large group of people standing on a side street. I stopped to see what was happening. These people were gathered in front of the Dakota apartment building where John Lennon had been shot and killed earlier that night. This all happened more than 25 years ago but I remember it well because it was a very bizarre scene even by New York standards. I stayed for several hours even though I was something of a fish out of water. The year was 1980 but this was sixties redux.
       The people were mostly slightly overaged refugees from the Beatles era in counterculture dress smoking counterculture cigarettes. For about two hours the entire crowd swayed back and forth in something of a drug stupor chanting "All we are saying is give peace a chance." Even though I had never been a big drug user or anything more than a very casual sympathizer with some of the hippie attitudes I remember thinking how easily a youthful, impressionable mind could be enticed by such an all encompassing atmosphere of peace, love, and tranquil happiness.
       In the years since I have seen video of the gathering outside the Dakota many time on television during documenteries about John Lennon. I have looked very hard but have not been able to find myself. If I would have known that video of the Dakota gathering would be seen so many times on television over the next thirty years I would have made damn sure I got in front of the camera.
       While Ringo, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney are best remembered for their Beatle days John Lennon is remembered mostly for his radical left wing political activism. It is said that his killer, Mark Chapman, was upset about the perceived communist message of his songs. If Woodstock and Charles Manson were the cultural and intellectual end of the sixties then the murder of John Lennon was the end of the Seventies.


Links:

John Lennon in pictures

Lennon's death in pictures

Yoko Ono

An opaque look at John Lennon's politics

Remembering John Lennon