| BEATLE JOHN LENNON
SHOT TO DEATH
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| NEW YORK -
Former Beatle John Lennon, who with the long-haired British rock group was catapulted to
stardom in the 1960s, was shot to death late Monday outside his luxury apartment building
on Manhattan's upper west side, police said. A police spokesman said a suspect was in custody, but he had no other details of the shooting. "This was no robbery," the spokesman said, adding that Lennon was probably shot by a deranged person. Lennon, 40, was shot three times, police said, and was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, where he died in surgery. His wife, Yoko Ono, was with him. "There's blood all over the place," a hospital worker said when Lennon was taken into the hospital. "They're working on him like crazy." Police said the shooting occurred at 11 p.m. outside the Dakota, a giant stone co-operative apartment building across from Central Park. Lennon had an office and a residence in the building. Jack Douglas, Lennon's producer, said he and the Lennons had been at a studio called the Record Plant in mid-town earlier in the evening and Lennon left at 10:30p.m. Lennon said he was going to get a bite to eat and go home, Douglas said. A bystander, Sean Strub, said he was walking south near 72nd Street when he heard four shots. He said he went around the corner to Central Park West and saw Lennon being put into the back of a police car. "Some people...heard six shots and said John was hit twice," Strub said. He said others on the street told him the assailant had been "crouching in the archway of the Dakota...Lennon arrived in the company of his wife, and the assailant fired." He said the suspect, a "pudgy kind of man" 35 to 40 years old with brown hair, was put into another police car. Lennon, who turned 40 on Oct. 9, was responsible for writing many of the songs that launched the Beatles in the early 1960s and changed the course of rock music. In an interview earlier this year - his first major interview in five years - Lennon said he had wanted to leave the Beatles as early as 1966, but did not make the move until four years later because he "just didn't have the guts." After the Beatles broke up in 1970, Lennon continued writing songs and recording. But in 1975 he dropped out for five years, saying he wanted to be with his son, Sean, and his wife. It was not until last summer that
he returned to music, and his 14- song album, "Double Fantasy," was
released last month. The album, which includes songs by Ono, is based on Lennon's
experiences over the five years, during which he kept house, cooked and cared for their
son. Lennon, who became one of the most famous musicians in the history of rock 'n' roll while he was with the Beatles, made his last Beatle album, "Abbey Road," in 1969. He was the most irreverent member of the band, which also included bassist Paul McCartney, guitarist George Harrison and drummer Ringo Starr.
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Lennon
was born Oct. 9, 1940, in England's northern industrial seaport of Liverpool, the son of a
porter father who deserted the family when John was three. When his father surfaced once Lennon reached stardom, Lennon slammed the door in his face. He later recalled, "I don't feel as if I owe him anything. He never helped me. I got there by myself." Lennon attended secondary school in Liverpool, then went on to Liverpool College of Art, where he married a classmate, Cynthia Powell. They were later divorced, and in 1969 Lennon married Ono, a Japanese-American artist, who was pregnant. Lennon later said, "We went to Paris on our honeymoon, then interrupted our honeymoon to get married on the Rock of Gibralter." The seed for the Beatles band dates back to 1955 when Lennon met McCartney at a Liverpool, England church social. The two started performing as a duo, called the Quarrymen, and were joined three years later by Harrison. Starr did not come into the band until 1962 - a year before the Beatles hit the top of the charts in Britain with "Please Please Me." "Beatlemania" did not cross the ocean to the United States until 1964, when "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was released and the late Ed Sullivan invited the Beatles to appear on his weekly television show. "Meet The Beatles" became the best selling record album in history to that date. The British invasion had begun, and in August 1964, a Beatles film, "Hard Day's Night," opened to extraordinary critical and popular acclaim. Albums to follow included "Rubber Soul," "Revolver," "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "The Beatles (white album)" and "Abbey Road." The collaboration ended abruptly when the group disbanded in 1970 amid talk of falling out between Lennon and McCartney in addition to recriminations against the management of their recording company. Some critics blamed Lennon's 1969 marriage to Ono for the breakup of the Beatles after she was denied a "fifth Beatle" status. But Lennon denied it. Lennon, who released a dozen solo albums after the Beatles breakup, said he was most affected by early rock 'n' roll, blues music and Elvis Presley. In the near-decade of their collaboration, the group sold more than 250 million records.
( The Dakota - John's Fatal Tragedy ) |
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