The End of My Generation’s Innocence

John Lennon’s Death Still Stings 25 Years Later

Last week I was in touch with some of my old college chums through the magic of email. Like many people, I found my friends in college not in the classroom but through extracurricular activities. For some, those friendships come from working on the college newspaper or yearbook. For others, bonds are made inside the fraternity or sorority house.

John Lennon, the thinking person’s Beatle, was gunned down in New York City 25 years ago this month.

For me, and many others of my ilk, it was the campus radio station—WXYC-FM at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill—that was my home away from dorm.

I don’t think that any of the people who and hung out at and ran WXYC in the early and mid-eighties were music majors. That’s a pretty astounding bit of trivia considering that nearly all of us considered music our religion. Our conversations were about little else. We could chat well into the night about obscure garage bands from the sixties, we could philosophize on the subtle differences between American and British new wave, and we argued incessantly about the merits of our favorite styles of music.

When not hanging around the radio station, most of us spent our nights following some of the local bands such as The Pressure Boys, The X-Teens, and The Fabulous Knobs to clubs like the Pier in Raleigh and the Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill. We also worked tirelessly to bring out of town music acts such as Elvis Costello, Squeeze, U2 and Talking Heads to play on campus.

None of which, by the way, helped us as undergraduates working toward degrees in journalism, poli-sci or math. Neither did the decision we made in 1980 to turn WXYC into a 24-hour-a-day operation. That decision turned our small campus radio station into a real entity on the FM dial, but it also meant that some college students had to be DJs for the dreaded 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. shifts.

Those shifts had the advantage of being relatively free of restrictions from the upper brass at the university. You would hear the most delicious mix of new wave, reggae, oldies, classic rock, soul, punk and jazz during those hours—along with songs and commentary that pushed the boundaries of good taste and FCC restrictions. Those late night shifts also meant that the DJ behind the board would either be absent from or absent-minded in his early classes the next day.

It was a tradeoff that most of us at the station made without hesitation.

Lennon self-portrait from the 1970s.

The reason that some of the old gang from XYC were chatting online the other day was the 25th anniversary of the death of John Lennon. It was for my generation the event that everyone remembers exactly where they were when “I heard the news today, oh boy.”

Several of my friends, including Rebekah Radisch, were actually at the radio station that Monday night when the news of rock and roll’s first assassination came over the teletype machine.

“My apartment-mate, Julia McManus, had tagged along out of curiosity,” explained Radisch. “She just kind wandered around and was in the adjoining newsroom when the bells on the UPI wire machine started ringing. She called me wanting to know what was going on with the bells. I explained that it was probably just some late sports scores coming across; they were always going off for sports scores.

“Momentarily satisfied—but still curious—she walked to the wire and glanced at the copy coming out. As more bells rang with every update, she called out, ‘Uh, Becky, it’s not sports. It’s really important. It says John Lennon has been shot!’”

Rebekah ran with the copy into the control room and gave it to the DJ to read over the air. The DJ on the air at the time was my friend and fellow Watauga High graduate Charlie Ellis.

“I remember reading the news and obit to myself and wondering how this could be in my hands so quickly,” recalled Ellis. “News travels fast, even in 1980, but did the AP keep detailed obits at the ready for those it deemed newsworthy? Somewhat frantically, I tried to figure out what to do. I had to talk about the unspeakable and then follow that with music. With scant time left on the LP playing, I ran back to the music library and pulled a copy of the only album that made any sense.”

Over the airwaves, Ellis relayed the tragic news to a good portion of the Research Triangle and then played Lennon’s song “Imagine.”

For myself, I was at my dormitory—Hinton James—watching Monday Night Football with friends in the large study room across from the elevators on the eighth floor. From out of nowhere, Howard Cosell announced that Lennon had been shot and killed in front of his apartment building, the Dakota, in New York City. In subsequent days many music and Beatle fans expressed dismay that they had learned of the tragedy from—of all people—Howard Cosell. In retrospect, however, it was somewhat appropriate. Lennon had been a guest on ABC’s Monday Night Football just a few weeks before and he and Cosell were friends who had both made New York City home rather late in life.

For the next few days, everybody associated with WXYC commiserated at the station with that “punched in the stomach” feeling. My friend Dave was especially hard hit. A devout Beatle fan, Dave had been as excited as a kid on Christmas when Lennon ended his long sabbatical from the recording studio and released the album Double Fantasy just weeks prior to his murder. Many of us uber-hip new wavers at the station felt that the album was overly sentimental and that songs like “Just Like Starting Over” and “Beautiful Boy” weren’t in the same league as “Imagine” or “Instant Karma.”

Dave, however, loved the album. I think of him and those sad days every time I hear “Watching the Wheels.”

Dave was put in charge of compiling a Lennon tribute for WXYC and for the next few days he skipped most of his classes to devote himself to the project. The tribute itself was a powerful mix of Beatles songs that were more Lennon than McCartney, Lennon’s solo work, and interview snippets that had been collected from TV and radio. It was unbelievably moving. I wish I had taped it.

I’m not foolish enough to put Lennon’s death into the same category as the JFK assassination or 9/11. But for my particular generation it felt pretty big. It still does.

In my email conversations of last Thursday, “Doo-Wop” Dan Greenfield, WXYC’s resident oldies expert from those days, pointed out that the attack on Pearl Harbor, JFK’s assassination, Lennon’s murder, and the terrorist assault on the Twin Towers all happened at roughly twenty-year intervals. Maybe that’s why it feels like a defining moment for us forty-somethings.

I’ve recently learned that the Beatles are one of the most popular groups among today’s high school students. Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the same is true 500 years from now.

RIP John Lennon.