John Lennon Remembered

(This is a post I originally published on Dec. 8th, 2006, the 26th anniversary of John Lennon's death. I am putting it out again today, the 30th year, in case you hadn't seen it before.)

Mozart had it.

Beethoven had it.

Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and Richard Rodgers had it.

Brian Wilson and Bob Dylan had it once.

I guess Paul McCartney also had it, but I'm not sure if he still does. And Stevie Wonder, he may still have it.

But, man, John Lennon really had it: the rare ability to master each element of a musical composition - lyrics, voice, melody, rhythm, harmony, instrumentation - in order to produce perfect music - a lot of perfect music, actually - that stands the test of time. Music that sounds fresh, interesting, and vibrant no matter how many times you listen to it. Music that continues to intrigue the listener, to produce emotional impact upon the listener, year after year, and that just doesn't get old.

Plus, at least in the case of John Lennon, a social conscience to go along with it and courage in the extreme to take a stand.

I really miss this guy and continue to feel cheated that he was taken from us. I think of him each time I drive past the Dakota in my taxi and wonder what further music he would have created that now we will never hear. In fact, if I ever find myself feeling a bit too cheerful, all I need to do to restore my cynicism is remind myself of his tragedy - that the reward you get from a certain segment of the human race for creating great art is to be snuffed out like an insect if you make the mistake of letting them know where you live.

I would like to use this occasion, the 26th anniversary of his absurd death, to share with you a few John Lennon stories - really just glimpses - I happen to have as both a New Yorker and a taxi driver. A little trip down the misty passageways of time, if you will indulge me...


I actually used to live across the street from him. Mini (my ex) and I shared a large, two-bedroom apartment with another couple, Bob and Claire Luhrs, in the Bancroft building at 40 W. 72nd Street in 1975 and 1976. It was quite a kick in those days to be able to say to someone, "Oh, yeah, well, John Lennon is my neighbor, you know..."

Spotting him was kind of a game people in the Upper West Side would play in those days. You might walk into a shop and the girl behind the counter would say, "Hey, guess what, John Lennon was just here!" And lots of people would mention that they'd seen him walking around at one time or another. But I lived there for a year and had never laid eyes on him. After awhile I began to feel like there was something wrong with me! Why were these other people seeing John Lennon all the time and I never was? And then one day, finally, there he was, walking down 72nd Street toward Columbus Avenue.

The truth is, I never would have noticed him if he hadn't been with Yoko Ono. She stood out like a beacon, smiling right at everyone on the street, as if to say hello to the world, and you recognized her instantly. And then you looked around to see if he was there. And yes, there he was! - along with the baby, Sean. But his way of carrying himself was the opposite of Yoko Ono's. He wore a big hat, a scarf covered half his face, and his gaze was downward, not outward. She was the extrovert and he the introvert, it seemed. (Of course, appearances can be deceiving. If you really want to know about John Lennon's personal life, I suggest reading LOVING JOHN, by May Pang, John's companion for the year and a half he was separated from Yoko Ono.) I felt an impulse to say hello, but immediately sensed that that would be an harrassment to him, so I just smiled and kept walking.

And I saw him one other time, in 1977, when I was doing a brief stint as a street peddler. One morning Phil Reinstein and I were waiting on the 3rd Avenue side of Bloomingdale's for the truck with the umbrellas to arrive, when suddenly John and Yoko walked by. And it was just as it had been the first time - Yoko was smiling at the world and John was looking down at the sidewalk (perhaps composing a song in his mind, who knows?). And again I wouldn't have recognized him if he hadn't been with her.

They crossed 3rd Avenue and walked down 60th Street toward 2nd. Phil and I looked at each other and said, "Let's follow them!" And for a block we shamelessly did trail them, from a distance, of course, so they wouldn't know we were there. I remember two things from this little adventure: John and Yoko stopped and did some window shopping in the stores that were not yet opened, and a girl, walking by them, turned around and did the most classic double-take (widened eyes and dropped jaw) I have ever seen a human being do.

By 1979 I was a full-time taxi driver. One summer night I had two gorgeous "party girls" in my cab and they were going to the Dakota - John and Yoko were having a party.

They were both very friendly and quite conversational and one of them was kind of silly, as well. She was interested in what it's like to be a cab driver and was asking me all sorts of questions. One thing she wanted to know was how much money we made.

"Is it ludicrous?" she asked (meaning "lucrative").

"Not as ludicrous as this conversation," I replied with a smile, doing my imitation of Groucho Marx.

"Touche," her friend said, laughing. The silly one laughed, too, but didn't realize anything funny had been said. We pulled up to the Dakota and they jumped out of the cab, merrily waving goodbye before disappearing into the caverns of the building. Out of my world and into the world of John and Yoko, where so many people of my generation wanted to be.

Now, a hundred years later, I look back and think that if I'd played my cards right, I could have gotten those girls to bring me upstairs to that party. I could have said this or that and one of them would have said, "Hey, why don't you come on up with us? Come on, you'll be our guest, no one will mind." And I would have gone upstairs with them and had that experience.

When the Time Machine is invented I'm going to go back to that night and I'm going to that party. I'll stand in a corner like a ghost and take it all in and I'm sure I will realize then, more than I ever could have in 1979, what a very special and fragile time it was.

I was driving a cab on that night of December 8, 1980. Around midnight a bizarre bulletin came across the radio - John Lennon had been shot and was taken to Roosevelt Hospital. The hospital wasn't far from where I was at that moment and I decided on impulse to go there to find out for myself what condition he was in. It actually hadn't occurred to me that he might have been killed. I thought it must have been some stupid accident and he'd been shot in the foot or something.

I parked my cab on 9th Avenue near 57th Street and walked two blocks to the hospital's emergency room. There, in the ambulance parking area in front of the E.R., was a scene quite surreal. People scurried in all directions. Television broadcasting trucks and cameras were everywhere. A young man was making a spectacle of himself by kneeling in prayer with the TV cameras on him. A girl came running out of the hospital crying and screaming. Jimmy Breslin, the reporter, showed up and was ushered inside. Then someone announced that everyone should go to the hospital's lobby on 59th Street where a statement would be made to the media.

I went along.

The lobby was a small area with a few tables and chairs. The room was tight and tense and filled with about sixty or seventy people, mostly reporters from news agencies. A middle-aged woman representing the hospital came out first and briefed the reporters on how to correctly spell the name of the place and the name of the doctor who was about to talk to them. She had an odd smile as she spoke that I found annoying.

A girl standing next to me started to move her body to sit down on a wobbly table that would not have supported her weight. I stopped her from sitting there by touching her on the back, probably saving her from injury. She didn't seem to appreciate my helpfulness, however, not bothering to thank me. (It's funny how I remember this, considering the magnitude of what was happening, but I do.)

Then the doctor whose name it was important not to misspell came out and read a prepared statement. John Lennon, he said, had been admitted to the hospital at such and such a time - and was "dead on arrival".

A collective gasp - a terrible sound I have never forgotten - immediately filled the room.

A few months later I had three women in my cab who turned out to be nurses at Roosevelt Hospital. They spoke among themselves but I, the fly on the wall, overheard their conversation. John Lennon was still alive when he was brought into the hospital, they said. The doctors didn't know who he was, they said. He was NOT "dead on arrival", they said.

Could the doctors have saved him? Based on the very carefully worded statement the doctor made and the conversation I overheard, I speculate that they thought they might have been able to had they been totally on the ball. But I doubt that there's any real blame to be shared. I would suppose they did the best they could. Still, I find it disturbing to have the feeling that they were more concerned with protecting their reputations than in telling the whole truth.

So those are my Lennon memoirs. Just a few glimpses from a distance. The pictures are from the ironwork that surrounds the Dakota building, by the way.

I do think John Lennon's music will be listened to as long as people have ears. It continues to speak to us, people of all ages. I am often impressed by how well many teenagers I have in my cab are very knowledgeable of the music of the Beatles, indeed.

One other thing. You know, I wish I'd said this to him when I had the chance: thank you, John.

Characters

Some recent ones...

Sunday night, 3:48 am, 49th and Broadway. A twenty-something, good-looking female comes out of the Playwrights Tavern, gets in the cab, and we are headed for 79th between West End and Riverside. She has a nice, friendly space about her and it would be easy to have a conversation with her, but, as is the case so often these days, she is preoccupied with a cell phone conversation that was already in progress before she got in the taxi. Some kind of a late-night emergency is underway and she asks me in a polite way to get her there as quickly as possible.

There is virtually no traffic at this time of the night and I know where the green lights are, so within four minutes we have shot up the Henry Hudson Parkway to the 79th Street exit and have arrived at her desintation. But she directs me not to turn off the meter - another passenger is going to join us and then we will be proceeding to 88th Street between Columbus and Central Park West. Within a minute her friend, another twenty-something female, comes running out of an apartment building, crosses 79th Street, and jumps in the taxi.

Of course my curiosity has been aroused and I am wondering what the emergency is all about. I'm thinking it's most likely a romantic problem. The second girl is probably having boyfriend troubles and needs a shoulder to cry on. Or maybe it's a family crisis. Maybe she just got a phone call from her mother in San Diego and learned that her brother was in a car accident. Or maybe her dog is sick and she needs to get him to a vet. No, that couldn't be it - she doesn't have a dog with her. Maybe she realized she doesn't have any decent clothes to wear to work the next day and she wants to borrow something from her friend. No, who the hell would do that at 3:48 in the morning?

I find myself in full fly-on-the-wall mode with the radio off and my ears straining to hear what they're talking about (also known as "eavesdropping"). I have a feeling this is going to be a good one. And it is. The second girl, it turns out, was awakened from a deep sleep by something moving under her pillow and now is afraid to stay in her own apartment. So she's going over to her friend's place to spend the rest of the night. What was under her pillow?

A mouse!

She goes on to say that she's not sure if there's one mouse or more than one mouse but her attempts to kill it, or them, with mouse traps coated with peanut butter and chocolate syrup have failed. And now she's too freaked out to stay there.

When we arrive at 88th Street I tell them I couldn't help overhearing their conversation (which was fine with them) and I make the obvious suggestion: get a cat! The second girl says that, in fact, she is planning on "borrowing" the cat of another friend of hers. Which gets me thinking this could be a brilliant business idea - "Rent-A-Cat". Hmmm....


Monday night, 11:15 pm, Empire State Building. two young guys come out of the Empire State Building on 33rd and 5th, jump in the cab, and we are off to Greenwich Village. They turn out to be from Sweden and are in search of a bar I had never heard of, The Spotted Pig, at Greenwich Avenue and 11th Street. They tell me it was recommended to them by a customs agent at the airport which sounded like a weird source of information to me so I joke that it's probably a set-up for a drug bust. They wonder if I'm familiar with a band that's supposed to be playing there but I tell them my usual answer to the subject of popular music which is that I haven't been aware of anything new since the Beatles broke up. And, in fact, I'm still waiting for the Beatles to get back together again.

Well, I said the magic words. They are Beatles fans, big time. One of them is actually wearing a Beatles t-shirt and the other has a very cool Beatles belt on. AND they are members of a rock band called Like A John Needs A Yoko! I am blown away. How refreshing it is to meet a couple of guys who are about 30 years younger than I am and who know more about Beatles music than I do!


Their names are Jon (on the left) and Andy. You can hear some of their music if you click onto their link, above. I tell them my John Lennon stories (click on the "John Lennon" label below to read it) and a May Pang story I happen to have and they are truly a receptive audience.

It's too bad these guys are over twenty-one. I want to adopt them.


Tuesday night, 9:35 pm, 52nd and Broadway. Two thirty-something fellows and a sixty-ish woman, all from the U.K., squeeze into the back seat and are en route to the Marriott hotel in Brooklyn Heights. One of the gentlemen is the stage manager of a Shakespeare company that is performing The Taming of the Shrew at B.A.M. (the Brooklyn Academy of Music). We engage in a lively conversation about the show, his job, and the Bard, but it is something that the lady says that amazes me.

She mentions that she is from Wales but has never been to London.

I have been to London. Twice. And she has been to New York. But never to London. I didn't delve into how that could be - it seems incredible to me - but I found it to be fascinating. And it reminded me of another fare I had many years ago.

In 1986 I picked up a woman who was in her thirties who was accompanied by her mother, who was probably close to seventy. The daughter lived and worked in the city and was playing tour guide hostess for her mom, who was seeing New York for the very first time. What amazed me was that Mom was from New Hampshire, only a five or six hour drive away.

How could someone live their entire life so close to the greatest American city, the center of the universe, so to speak, and never think it worthwhile enough to come see it? I asked her why she had decided to come now.

"To see Liberace!" she said.

Indeed, the great showman was playing at Radio City Music Hall at the time. And it turned out to be his last appearance in New York, as he died a year later.

Timing is everything.

Click here for Pictures From A Taxi.