Lennon Felt Reborn Only to Die After All (1980)

This is what Robert is remembering in this article-- that is him in the background 

John is being given a birthday card, as Robert mentions. 

 

Lennon Felt Reborn Only to Die After All

By Robert Hilburn 

Los Angeles Times

December 14, 1980 

     On the way out of his New York apartment building one evening in October, John Lennon paused in the lobby to ask the doorman if there was much of a crowd outside. The ex-Beatle was accustomed to fans waiting for hours to see him. "Not too many tonight", the doorman replied, "It's kind of chilly out there."

     Still, a half dozen people rushed toward Lennon when he and wife, Yoko Ono, stepped from the building and began walking to their nearby limousine. They were up on Lennon so quickly that I was startled. One was shoving an envelope into his hand, another was handing him a belated birthday gift. Another just touching his arm. Lennon stopped, signed a couple of photographs, and chatted briefly before slipping into the car. 

    More fans were waiting when the car arrived a few minutes later at the recording studio where the Lennons were finishing their new album. Those fans quickly surrounded the couple. Without bodyguards, they were helpless if somebody wanted to harm them.

     Didn't he worry about his and Yoko's safety? Lennon shook his head and said, matter-of-factly, "They don't mean any harm. They're just fans. They just want to let you know they care. Besides, what are you going to do? You can't spend all your life hiding from people. You've got to get out and live, don't you?"

    When Lennon stepped from the limousine for the final time Monday night, he just figured he would be with the crowd for a few seconds, as he had been so many times before. Again, he was returning from the recording studio, but bullets hit him in the chest, stunning the rock world once more. At 40, John Lennon was dead, murdered. 

    The added tragedy of Lennon's death is that it came at a time when he believed that he had rallied against the rock excesses that had threatened his life in the mid-70s. He spoke of being renewed and full of life and optimism.

     Depressed by a separation from Yoko and the pressures of living up to public expectations, he had spent nearly 18 months in Los Angeles on a "lost weekend" of drugs and alcohol. "I think I was suicidal on some kind of subconscious level," He told me last month. "The goal was to obliterate the mind so that I wouldn't be conscious. I didn't want to see or feel anything. Part of me can't believe I would self-destruct, the youthful part that feels invincible, yet another part realizes I could have died with Yoko's help."

     Lennon pulled himself out of that depression, patched up his life during a five-year self-imposed exile, and excluded himself from recordings and public appearances, resurfacing last month with the new album and single. He looked forward to touring and more recording. 

    When I last spoke to him on the phone three weeks ago, he was excited by the acceptance of the record. The single "Starting Over" was already in the top 10. "It's still a thrill to hear your record on the radio," he said. "It sort of finally makes the music real to me. Even though I've heard the songs a million times by now in the studio. It also makes me feel good to hear the way the disc jockeys are responding to it when they play the song; the DJs don't have to say anything, but they've been saying all sorts of wonderful things that make me feel like they really like it. Yoko and I are excited that we are going right back into the studio to begin working on the next album. I feel just like a kid again!"

     "So this is a good time for you?"

     "The best."

     Lennon, as a Beatle or an individual, was to much of his generation what Elvis Presley was to an earlier one, a man who not only inspired and entertained with his music, but also comforted. Lennon seemed like an ally, someone who understood and made things appear a bit clearer and manageable

    . Understandably, perhaps Presley was Lennon's own biggest pop hero. I noticed several of Elvis's records on the jukebox in Lennon and Yoko's apartment in the Dakota Building. "Lots of other people were important to me," he explained last month. "I loved Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and Fats Domino, all the classic guys from the '50s, but Elvis had it all. He had the looks, the image, the voice, everything.

     "Everybody tried to contact me when he died, but I was still doing my Greta Garbo disappearing act. I nearly opened my mouth and said something, but I was in the mountains in Japan, and that helped me maintain my silence. 

    "It's hard for me to speak about death. I have had so much death around me. My mother was killed in an auto accident. Stuart Sutcliffe died of a brain tumor. So did Len Gray, another guy in one of our groups. Buddy Holly died when I was in art school. They all affected me, but I can't find a way to put the feelings into words. It's just like you lose a piece of yourself each time it happens."