How Losing John Lennon Changed Me

[Music] 41 years ago today john lennon was shot and killed outside his home the dakota in new york city that night i remember it very well it was a monday night i was writing a term paper i was going to school freshman year at college at fredonia state university the term paper was for a history class my history teacher's name was dr chasinoff and my roommate at the time tim ferrell who was from my hometown was watching monday night football and he was probably five feet behind me i'm sitting there working on it writing it and the game's going on all of a sudden he goes oh my god john lennon was just shot because it came across the bottom of the screen i said what and then howard cosell got on and said that john lennon had been shot and i got the sickest feeling in my stomach you guys know that i'm a massive beatles fan i've made numerous videos on the beatles including one last week i have a one of my children named lennon and then five minutes later john lennon is dead and you could hear people pouring out of the dorms within minutes you could hear shrieks across the campus in other rooms in our dorm i was in shock i didn't really experience kennedy's assassination i was a year old when he was when he was killed but this was my favorite group and john lennon was the guy he was the out of the beatles i mean i love paul mccartney but john lennon was really the his songs really spoke to me and i called up my friend andy it's funny andy and i played together in high school in the band my middle name is john and andy's middle name is paul and he was a mccartney guy and i was a lenin guy and he lived in the dorm across campus so i called him and his phone was busy because he was calling me so i got through to him and we just went out and we all walked in the quad at fredonia and there were a thousand people out there just you know late at night and it was an experience i'll never forget um i lost aunts and uncles grandparents not long before in the 70s beginning in 1969 my mom's brother my uncle al passed away when i was seven years old and the next year on christmas day my dad's brother my godfather michael jim passed away and then the year after that my dad's sister my aunt caroline passed away she was 41 1971. and then i lost my grandma beatto 75 i lost my grandpa dimino in 77 my mom's dad and uh so people dying was not an uncommon thing which was odd for me being a kid to have all these people that were close relatives that passed away but this was different this was someone that was in my favorite rock group this is one of my favorite musicians and i didn't think about the fact that john had just turned 40 years old a month before you don't really understand time when you're 18 years old it doesn't occur to you that that he'd only lived a small portion of his life then you know at 40 you think oh john's an older guy but 40 is so young i'll be 60 in a few months and it was really difficult to it was really near the end of the semester and the next couple days were filled with vigils the news was all about john lennon about the beatles you couldn't go anywhere without hearing the beatles every room every person that's all we talked about and you figured the beatles had broken up just 10 years before so john got to to experience 10 years of life after the beatles where he did a number of solo records he was a dad again for the second time and but he really got to live very little of his life and if anything that we learned from get back the movie it's that the beatles worked all the time beginning in 1960 and all the way through 1970. when they were in the studio it was day after day after day after day of them working on writing songs recording those 13 some odd records in seven years essentially all those songs recorded written they toured the world multiple times and he hardly got to enjoy any of his life there's really no other death that i can think of other than i mean i don't remember jimi hendrix's death i don't remember jim morris and i remember these these are you know earlier when i was a kid uh being 18 and being in college this was really a big big thing kurt cobain's death prince's death these were huge things michael jackson's death but the way that john lennon died was um made it uniquely sad and i always think about this this time of year when it comes around on this day i've never made a video about it in the five years of my channel i never felt like it was necessarily appropriate to make a video honoring john's death i'd like to make videos on the beatles honoring their music but because the get back video just came out over the past couple weeks and seeing john then in 1969 in the studio and thinking to myself man he has 11 more years to live and he doesn't know that and that was um i i couldn't help but but think about that uh so those are my thoughts for today i want to want to talk about this i don't know if any of you have thought about that when you watched the get back documentary if you looked at him and thought wow he's a young guy there still and he's doesn't know that there's this date out ahead of him not long ahead of him that he's got you know 10 more years 11 more years left in his life at that point so love to hear your thoughts leave them in the comments and once again thank you so much for watching

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 276,303

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, music, music theory, music production, education, John Lennon, John Lennon Death, The Beatles, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Get Back, yoko ono, rock n roll, best band ever, new york city, double fantasy

Id: KPZoGZ-NeUI

Length: 8min 11sec (491 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/JamesM777]

He has been fully assimilated into the youtube algorithm that renders all creators of greedy yet weak constitution completely insufferable.

[u/StrangFrut]

I heard Lennon had been alive the day he died. Is that true?

[u/DrMonkeyLove]

I mean, he can relate to John Lennon in that they both treated their kids like shit.

[u/[deleted]]

Beato is such a boomer it hurts