Nation COVER STORY The Last Day in the Life John Lennon is shot to death at 40, and a bright dream fades ust a voice out of the American night. "Mr. Lennon." He awful a way, that was mourned last week, all over the world. started to turn around. There is no knowing whether John The last Day in the Life, "I read the news today, oh boy ..." Lennon saw, for what would have been the second time Sorrow was expressed, sympathies extended by everyone J that day, the young man in the black raincoat stepping out from Presidents and Presidents-elect, Prime Ministers and of the shadows. The first shot hit him that fast, through the Governors and mayors to hundreds of fans who gathered at chest. There were at least three others. the arched entryway to the Lennons' Manhattan apartment Not that night, or the next day, but a little later, after the ter­ building, the Dakota, crying and praying, singing and dec­ ror ebbed and the grief could be managed, Lennon's wife, Yoko orating the tall iron gates with wreaths and single flowers and Ono, took their five-year-old son Sean to the spot in the apart­ memorial banners. CHRISTMAS IN HEAVEN, read one. Another ment courtyard where she had seen his father murdered. She recalled the magical invocation of a childhood memory that had already shown Sean a newspaper with his father's picture became one of his finest songs: Strawberry Fields Forever. on the front page. She tried to do what everyone else has done Ringo Starr flew to New York to see Yoko. George Har­ since that Monday night. She tried to explain. rison, "shattered and stunned," went into retreat at his home in Like everyone else, too, the boy Oxfordshire, England. Paul Mc­ asked simple questions to which Cartney, whom Lennon plainly there would never be simple or sat­ loved and just as plainly hated like isfactory answers. If, as was being the brother he never had, said, "I said, the man liked his father so can't tell you how much it hurts to much, why did he shoot him? His lose him. His death is a bitter, cru­ mother explained: "He was prob­ el blow-I really loved the guy." ably a confused person." Not good Having no wish to contribute to enough. Better to know, Sean Len­ the hysteria that always follows the non said, ifhe was confused or real­ grief at such public mournings, ly meant to kill. His mother said McCartney, who has hired two that was up to the courts to de­ bodyguards to protect himself and cide, and Sean wanted to know his family, said he would stay home which courts she was talking in Sussex, England, even if there about: tennis or basketball? Then was a funeral. There was not. Len­ Sean cried, and he also said, "Now non's body was cremated in a sub­ Daddy is part of God. I guess when urban New York cemetery, and you die you become much more Ono issued a statement inviting ev­ bigger because you're part of eryone "to participate from wher­ everything." ever you are" in a ten-minute si­ Sean did not really know or un­ lent vigil on Sunday afternoon. derstand about the Beatles, or what Before that, it had been a week his father was to the world. But of tributes. Radio stations from Sean will surely know, soon New Orleans to Boston cleared the enough, that his father did not air waves for Lennon and Beatles have to die to become part of ev­ retrospectives. In Los Angeles, erything. Given the special burden more than 2,000 people joined in and grace of his great gift, he al­ a candlelight vigil at Century City; ready was. Not just for his wife in Washington, D.C., several hun­ or son but for more people than dred crowded the steps of the Lin­ anyone could ever begin to num­ coln Memorial in a "silent tribute" ber, the killing of John Lennon was a death in the family. that recalled the sit-ins of the '60s. Record stores all over the For all the official records, the death would be called mur­ country reported sellouts on the new Lennon-Ono album, Dou­ der. For everyone who cherished the sustaining myth of the ble Fantasy, their first record in five years, as well as the back Beatles-which is to say, for much of an entire generation stock of Lennon's previous records. that is passing, as Lennon was, at age 40, into middle age, Some reaction was tragic. A teen-age girl in Florida and a and coming suddenly up against its own mortality-the mur­ man of 30 in Utah killed themselves, leaving notes that spoke der was something else. It was an assassination, a ritual slay­ of depression over Lennon's death. On Thursday, Ono said, ing of something that could hardly be named. Hope, perhaps; "This is not the end of an era. The '80s are still going to be a beau­ or idealism. Or time. Not only lost, but suddenly dislocated, tiful time, and John believed in it." fractured. All the brutal and finally confounding facts of the killing The outpouring of grief, wonder and shared devastation that were examined like runes and held up to the light like tal­ followed Lennon's death had the same breadth and intensity as ismans, small shards of some awful psychic puzzle. A pudgy the reaction to the killing of a world figure: some bold and pop­ Georgia-born ex-security guard from Hawaii named Mark Da­ ular politician, like John or Robert Kennedy, or a spiritual lead­ vid Chapman fired his shots at Lennon from what the police er, like Martin Luther King Jr. But Lennon was a creature of call "combat stance": in a stiff crouch, one hand wrapped around poetic political metaphor, and his spiritual consciousness was di­ the butt of his newly purchased revolver, the other around his rected inward, as a way of nurturing and widening his creative wrist to steady it. As Lennon took six staggering steps, Chap­ force. That was what made the impact, and the difference-the man, 25, simply stood still, and then went with the arresting of­ shock of his imagination, the penetrating and pervasive traces ficers like a model citizen who had been unfairly rousted on a of his genius-and it was the loss of all that, in so abrupt and traffic bust. Chapman's personal history showed, in retrospect, 18 TIME, DECEMBER 22, 1980 John Lennon, signing his life away, stops to give an autograph to Accused Killer Mark David Chapman many ominous byways (see following story), but immediately On Monday afternoon Chapman spotted Lennon and asked after the shooting, he offered no explanations. And no regrets. him to autograph an album. Lennon hastily scribbled his name Chapman arrived in New York three days before the kill- and climbed into a waiting car to take him to a recording stu­ ing, checked into a Y.M.C.A. nine blocks from Lennon's apart- dio. Did Chapman feel slighted by Lennon? Possibly. But the ment, and started hanging out in front of the building, waiting night before he had suddenly checked out of the Y and moved for Lennon like any other fan. There were usually fans at the into the cushier Sheraton Center hotel and bought himself a big gates of the Dakota, a grand, gloomy, high-maintenance Goth- meal. It was as if he were rewarding himself in advance for ic fortress overlooking the west side of Central Park, because some proud accomplishment. Now on Monday, only hours af­ the building houses several celebrities: Lauren Bacall, Roberta ter getting Lennon's autograph, Chapman was waiting again, Flack, Leonard Bernstein. Fans of the this time in the shadows of the entry­ Beatles and Lennon lovers accounted for Mourning outside the Lennons' New York apartment way, wilh a gun. When the police the largest portion of the curious. Two ~ grabbed him after the shooting, they unidentified women told an ABC tele- ~found he still had the autographed al- vision reporter that they had fallen into ~ bum with him. He also had a paper- conversation with Chapman outside the ~ back copy of J.D. Salinger's The Catch- Dakota. Said one. "He just seemed like er in the Rye. a really nice, genuine, honest person , Lennon was n stranger to threats who was there because he admired on his life. As early as 1964, at the first John." Others, like WPLJ Disc Jockey Beatles concert in France, Lennon got Carol Miller, who lives near the Dako- a note backstage that read, "I am going ta, had aoticed Chapman and thought to shoot you at 9 tonight." He had only .. he looked strange. He was older than lately become accustomed to the free- the kids who hung around there." When wheeling anarchy of New York street Miller first heard that Lennon had been life: "I can go out this door now and go I I shot. Chapman's face flashed in her int a restaurant ... Do you want to mind. know how great that is?" he told the On Saturday night, Chapman hailed BBC. But friends remember him as be- ~ cab and told Driver Mark Snyder to ing guarded both in public and around take him to Greenwich Village. On the the few people he and Ono met during way he boasted that he had just dropped the long years of self-willed isolation off the tapes of an album John Lennon that were only ending with the comple- and Paul McCartney made that day.