Doubtless every website, newspaper, radio station and TV outlet in the world is running something to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of an event no one could ever have imagined would happen - the murder of a legend.
The death of John Lennon probably seems like a distant and abstract event to a lot of people these days, particularly those who were either too young to know who he was at the time, or not even born yet to know anything other than published reports of some dim far off past.
But he did represent the voice of a generation, that inexorable link to a time when all things were possible and all experiences were new. It's hard to convey that to someone who only knows the gloss and the remastered version and not the endless days and nights of living in a world of uncertainty and upheaval.
Maybe it's putting too much pressure and expectation on the life and times of a single person. The weighty burden of being an icon often obscures the fact that, above and beyond everything, John Lennon was a human being with a gift and an ability. And his ability to transform what we were all going through and feeling as other human beings into a tapestry of words and music is what makes his place in the world a bit different and his place in history all that much more important, and his senseless death all that much more tragic.
So to commemorate this event I've put up two clips - the first (top player) is an interview Lennon did with Rolling Stone Owner/Publisher Jann Wenner in December 1970 broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 2005. The second (bottom player) are news reports from various sources (both radio and TV) surrounding John Lennon's death that evening of December 8th.
I can't really listen to the bottom player and, truths to tell, hadn't even broken the seal on the tape since I originally recorded it and put it away. And I've only included it as a matter of historic record.
The choice is yours.
