from The Telegraph:
I remember the real John Lennon, not the one airbrushed by history.
Thirty years after the Beatle was murdered, Ray Connolly examines the cult which has grown around his much-missed friend - and asks if we're finally starting to move on from the Fab Four.photo from Getty Images
By Ray ConnollyLoitering outside the Dakota apartment building on West 72 Street, New York City, on the night of December 7, 1980 - thirty years ago next week - Mark Chapman couldn’t have selected a more famous victim through whom to demonstrate his insanity. Within hours of his five bullets pumping into the back of John Lennon, as he returned home from a recording studio at just before eleven o’clock, Chapman’s name had gone around a world convulsed with shock and grief.
The Beatles had connected with hundreds of millions though their music, but Lennon, largely by dint of his confrontational individuality, had been the one mostly admired, the one who seemed to reflect the attitude of his generation.
Yet as he lay dying, and his killer hung around waiting for the police to arrest him and thereby anoint him with the celebrity he craved, something new was beginning.
For thoughts, memories and more on John Lennon visit imaginepeace.com
