It was 30 years ago today. Monday Night Football was on the tube and Howard Cosell was pontificating, as he would so often do, when suddenly, the game went meaningless. There was a dull, ominous pause, the kind that you know is a precursor to something bad.
Cosell broke the silence, telling America that Beatle John Lennon had been shot and killed in New York City.
At 40, Lennon was just reviving his career, which had sat dormant for too long. He was in the studio, recording new stuff, good stuff.
It wasn't quite as edgy as some of his earlier work, but it was John Lennon and after disappearing into his apartment in The Dakota for years with his wife Yoko and son Sean, he was venturing back into the musical world again when Mark David Chapman acted out his sick, delusionary singular fantasy.
It was one of those striking moments in time that remains frozen in my heart and mind.
I had never met Lennon, only ran into him once at Los Angeles International Airport as he was arriving and I was, well, I'm not sure what I was doing there that night. It was a long time ago, you know. But he flashed a friendly smile as he walked by.
I had come to know George Harrison. I had bumped into him at a Long Beach Grand Prix race, did an interview he liked and had visited his home on Selkirk Drive in Los Angeles, overlooking the L.A. Reservoir. He was at his estate at Henley on Thames. One of his family members, who was boarding a flight to be with him at his home in England, called.
"He's devastated," the man said. "He doesn't know what to say."
"He doesn't have to say anythjing," I replied. "Not yet, not now."
"He's locked the gates. He's fairly paralyzed by this. All he says if, 'Bloody, 'ell...if they did this to John, what would they do to me?'"
We found out about 20 years later, of course, when on a cold, damp English New Year's Eve another psycho did his best to rid the world of yet another Beatle, breaking into Harrison's home and stabbing him in the chest. Harrison came within an inch of losing his life from the wound.
I went immediately to the radio, tuned in a station that was legendary in Los Angeles -- KMET, perhaps the greatest West Coast rock ' n' roll radio station ever -- and followed the story from there.
There wasn't a lot of news other than Lennon was dead.
The music they played that night -- all Beatles, all Lennon -- that was once so lively, so full of hope was suddenly a mournful reminder of what we had just lost.
Lennon, of course, was no saint. He could have a particularly cruel side, as a matter of fact, that was, during his "lost weekend" in Los Angeles often fueled by drink.
But, it seemed he had come through it OK. It seemed he had re-routed himself, was fresh and inspired to perform, talk, visit with the world again after the persecution he suffered at the hands of Richard Nixon and a U.S. government that tried to run him out of the country because he had a cannabis bust on his rap sheet and was an advocate of peace.
We really haven't had much in the way of inspirational leaders since then. Nobody has motivated a generation like Lennon, Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Nobody has held our attention, pointed out the hypopcrisy around us, given us a new path like those guys did.
What would have happened had he lived?
I would like to think he and his mates would have buried the hatchet and gotten together for one last album, one last tour, one last gig, at least, to scrub the sour aftermath of the "Let It Be" movie from our souls.
Would it have happened?
We can only imagine.
RIP, John.
RIP, George.
Keep on rockin' Paul and Ritchie.
We need you now more than ever.
Peace.
