Wheels go round and round...John Lennon
44 Years Since John Lennon Shot
It was December 1980, and I was 23 years old. I was living in my first shared apartment in New York City, in Bay Ridge, with Tommy Strumolo. Tony Manero was still wandering the streets, and there was good pizza to be found. We were not fans of disco and we may have said ‘disco sucked’ in our ignorance.
I was a traffic reporter for Shadow Traffic. My job was to gather traffic details while driving an AM and PM rush hour shift. This involved racing around in traffic, getting nowhere except to find pileups and sluggish, bumper-to-bumper, or whatever type of traffic existed.
Does anyone recall Fred Feldman? He used to fly the helicopter for WOR Radio in NYC and he coined the term ‘rubbernecking delays’. He was sort of the figurehead at Shadow Traffic. RIP Freddie….
Let me tell you one thing: Unless there was some major complication like an overturned tractor-trailer or a multiple-car pile-up that involved a fatality, traffic was pretty much the same each day. When I first started reporting I was driving over 200 miles a day. As I built up a network of commuters with CB radios, my handle was The Shadow, I got traffic updates from New Yorkers while I sat having a coffee and a bagel. If there was a major road incident, like the one pictured, I would make sure I got there as fast as I could.
This was going to be my break into radio. That never happened. Life got in the way, Shadow Traffic eventually got rid of us 3 folks on the road and I moved to a job at Dick James Music looking for hits. That is another story.
There were sightings of junkies running off the road, Colombian gang members shooting up cars and their occupants off the Van Wyck Expressway (when I arrived the police said I did not want to see the ‘massacre’ of a family in their wagon), and amazing accidents each week.
Never a dull moment.
On the second Monday of December 1980, I went to Floral Park to have pizza and beers with my sister Ginger and her hubby Rick. It was getting late, and I had to drive the 30 minutes or so back to Bay Ridge. It was just past 11 p.m. as I turned left onto the entrance to the Cross Island Parkway. I flicked the radio on, and I heard this from WNEW-FM via Vin Scelsa.
December, 8th 1980. Where were you?
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxtx8qJ8CSKRBl60q3PMnSBJeMLRTukUMQ?si=vq7xAqY7im_44kIi
I had not heard that clip above in 44 years. On the night I heard it live, I pulled my car over to the side of the road. I screamed and cried. Total disbelief. Lennon was part of NYC. You would see him around, he would drop into WNEW and spin records out of the blue, and he was part of the fabric of our town.
Besides that, he was a BEATLE.
I do not know how long I sat there and cried. Who the hell would shoot John Lennon? Through my tears and more radio reports, I gunned the car back to Brooklyn and Tommy and I stayed up for hours listening to the radio, crying and singing to his music.
Morning was coming fast so I got a bit of sleep, drove my AM shift, and once that was complete I drove myself to the Dakota where John and Yoko lived and where Lennon was killed. People were milling about, but it was not too busy (yet). One woman came by and she looked at me and asked, “What is going on?”
You have not turned on the news this morning?
She shook her head No.
I told her that John had been killed and she collapsed into my arms. Sobbing.
We hung around all day listening to music from boom boxes, telling stories of times we had seen Lennon play music, some people told stories of seeing the Beatles, it was so somber. I had my trusty Canon SLR and I was taking pictures of the people and the gathering. With only 36 shots in my camera, I was being choosy about what I shot. the joys of film photography.
It was time for my afternoon shift so I zoomed off in my little Japanese car and once the shift was over I found myself back at The Dakota. This continued for a few days until I was too exhausted from driving and the grief being experienced by the ever-increasing crowd on 72nd Street.
On the 14th of December, we said farewell to John by gathering in Central Park. There was no funeral. This was the farewell. 2PM arrived and there was 10 minutes of silence in Liverpool and our gathering in the park where Yoko and John often walked. In the freezing cold, 100-200 thousand people wept and the experience of that 10 minutes of silence in NYC was something I will never forget.
I took some more photos on this day and finished the roll of film.
It took me several years until I could listen to The Beatles or John Lennon’s music. It brought up too much sadness.
You may wonder why there are none of my photographs of other Beatles arriving, floral tributes, emotional fans, and the like outside The Dakota over those days. 2 days after the tribute I went and had a couple of beers with my good friend Bobby Andersen. We left the establishment we were at and a couple of hours later I could not find the camera.
I returned to where we had been but the camera had disappeared like John.
Memories are all that remain.
We still miss you, John.
People spoke about changing gun laws when this occurred. People in America talk about it all the time when mass shootings happen and when school shootings happen.
When will they ever learn?
Beautiful piece mate.