Remembering

I was still young. Alive in my excited youth, full of sensation and eagerness and anticipation. I was fresh out of college and had yet to experience the repeated beat-downs of economic downturns and jobs that turned on the whim of share price valuation-obssessed CFOs.

A buddy and I were enjoying a late-night snack at McDonald's, back when their french fries were still fried in beef fat and were amongst the best in the land. Flipping through the radio, we became aware of something unusual: every rock station in town (which, counting oldies stations, numbered at that time about a dozen) was playing Beatles' songs.

Only a decade after their messy break-up, it wasn't at all unusual to hear their music on a couple of stations simultaneously. But a dozen? Still naive in the ways of mass-market media, we looked at each other, confused.

Then it hit us: something bad had happened.

There was a chill.

Brian Epstein had already passed. George Martin's passing wouldn't provoke this type of tribute. What else could it be?

A few seconds on the unmodulated side of the frequency spectrum (in other words, one of those AM all-news-all-the-time stations) told us what we didn't want to hear: John was dead.

The horrors of the Lennon's return from a recording studio and their fatal encounter with a deeply disturbed young man unfolded over the radio and I fell into a deep, morose silence.

An emotionally rugged childhood had been made bearable by the light of the Beatles, and the fact that one of them was dead was inconceivable. Like the the one ten years earlier that maintained they no longer existed.

Had I been alone, I would have cried.

In succeeding weeks an avalanche of stories and tributes and remembrances came pouring out. Far and away the most-chilling of them was a photograph in Time magazine of Lennon signing an autograph for the man who would kill him.

A brave, funny and sometimes acerbic soul had been shattered. One of the most-unflinching, plaintive, authentic and unvarnished voices in rock music had been stilled.

Listen sometime to the Beatles' cover of the Miracles' You Really Got a Hold on Me. Or You Can't Do That. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown). Or Across the Universe, Mother, Jealous Guy and Instant Karma.

The voice never faltered. Only our widespread embrace of firearms did.