Loving Lennon

This week brought an outpouring of remembrances of John Lennon on the thirtieth anniversary of his murder in New York City in 1980. It's close to impossible to measure the influence of the man, in musical history, in our culture, on a generation of adoring fans and on the world at large. All the paeans and tributes have said most of what there is to say about his enduring legacy. But I can add a few memories of my own.

When the Beatles first appeared on American television in February 1964 I was eight years old. Like millions of kids, I sat cross-legged on the floor close to the TV and witnessed the birth of something revolutionary in every sense of the word. Of course we didn't know that at the time. What we saw and most importantly, what we heard, was a riotous liberating awakening in pop music. I had already logged many hours dulling the grooves in my 45 RPM single of "I Want to Hold Your Hand." But nothing could prepare me for what I saw when they came crashing into our collective consciousness: sheer unadulterated joy. The lingering malaise of John F. Kennedy's assassination lifted. The four lads from Liverpool were about to rock our world...for the next six years and beyond.

Anna Quindlen wrote a column years ago about how women are defined by their favorite Beatle. She admitted that she was "a Paul girl." While Paul, George and Ringo were deliriously cute, my eyes fixed on Lennon--his sexy stance and raw, dangerous swagger. When the words "Sorry, girls, he's married" flashed beneath his picture, it made him all the more beguiling. Later I recognized John was the funniest of the the quartet, the cheekiest, and ultimately, the bravest. He combined a rare mix of cynicism and hope, of rebellion and affability.

In 1980 I was working in "A Christmas Carol" at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami. It was my first Equity job. Monday, December 8th was a much-needed day off. The cast was in final runthroughs and technical rehearsals, leading up to our first dress on Tuesday. I went to bed without watching my team, the Miami Dolphins, on Monday Night Football. The next morning my sister, sobbing and angry, broke the horrible news to me. Before going to the Playhouse I stopped at the mall to buy Double Fantasy. When I arrived at the theater the green room was full of actors who looked as if Doomsday had come. Wise-cracking techies were sullen. It was a walking nightmare trying to get through the show. The director couldn't grasp why his cast was in a deep funk. People were dropping lines, blowing entrances, fighting back tears.

On Sunday, December 14, honoring Yoko Ono's call for worldwide silence in memory of John, we held curtain on the matinee until 2:10. That night, having put in one of the toughest opening weeks of our lives, we gathered in the stage manager's apartment and methodically played every Beatles album in the catalog, one after another, in a state of drunken grief. Yet at the same time we were celebratory: no one could take the music away from us.

John Lennon dared to be achingly honest and vulnerable. He and the Beatles created art that will stand the test of time. The irony is that when they burst on the music scene many highbrow critics scoffed at their work. Talk to an musical "expert" now and they'll likely place the Fab Four's contributions on the same par as Beethoven, Bach and Mozart, and certainly Gershwin, Porter and Berlin. They were the minstrels of the twentieth century, cultural touchstones, the defining trailblazers we all followed as faithful acolytes. A few years ago I was driving one of my kids somewhere with a CD playing "Abbey Road." I realized why I drift back to their songs after tiring of current tunesmiths. "They make me happy, " I told my son, and that, in essence, is what makes them a lasting treasure.