25 years later, Lennon's loss still being felt

updated 4:56 p.m. ET Nov. 21, 2005

NEW YORK - The song was only six years old, but might just as well have been 60.

Walking out of a college dormitory after visiting a friend one December night 25 years ago, I heard John Lennon’s sweet song of longing, “.9 Dream,” wafting out from an open door. It sounded wonderful. It sounded odd.

Why would a radio station or stereo be playing that? So much had happened since. Disco. Punk rock. Lennon had reconciled with Yoko Ono after a separation and was only then beginning to publicly emerge from a period where he concentrated on home life more than music. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard the song.

I walked home. Then, when I saw a cluster of friends quietly gathered around a television set, the reason became sickeningly apparent.

It was Dec. 8, 1980. A mentally disturbed fan who had collected Lennon’s autograph earlier in the day waited outside of the Manhattan apartment building called the Dakota for the singer to return from a recording session. Mark David Chapman opened fire. Lennon didn’t survive the trip to the hospital.

The musical hero of a generation was dead, and anyone who had ever sang along to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or chanted “give peace a chance” also remembers where they were when they heard the news.

In his typically blunt manner, Lennon had told Beatles fans a decade earlier that “the dream is over.”

Now it really was.

McCartney: ‘I still miss him massively’
Twenty-five years later, the day stands as a cultural black hole. Lennon became an instant legend, even more so than before, but it was hardly worth the price.

Slide show   Imagining what might have been Even after 25 years, the loss of John Lennon is still staggering. See images of John Lennon as a Beatle, musician, author, political activist, father, and husband. more photos

Millions of people who never met him felt they knew him, felt they knew all the Beatles. His music often felt like personal letters; on “Watching the Wheels” he explained why he needed to step off the merry-go-round of stardom. A friend was gone.

“I still miss him massively,” former songwriting partner Paul McCartney told The Associated Press. “It was a horrific day for all of us.”

That night, an ambitious young woman who had just moved to New York to make it as a singer or dancer was out walking a few blocks from Lennon’s home on the Upper West Side. She heard the sirens, saw a crowd beginning to gather. A curious Madonna joined them outside the Dakota.

“I remember walking up and going ‘What’s going on? What’s going on?”’ she recalled. “And they said John Lennon was shot. It was so weird.”

Madonna was a toddler during the feverish days of Beatlemania. But she later recorded Lennon’s utopian vision of a peaceful world, “Imagine,” which has matured into an anthem and, 25 years from now, will likely be Lennon’s best-remembered song.

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