Now it really was.
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. 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," said former song-writing partner Paul McCartney. "It was a horrific day for all of us."
Heartbreaking news
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.
In her own tribute, Parton shot part of a video for Imagine in Strawberry Fields, the Central Park memorial for Lennon. Sharp-eyed viewers will spot the Dakota in the background.
"Like all young teenage girls back then, I fell in love with the Beatles," she said. "Back there in the Smoky Mountains, it was like something had been dropped from outer space."
'I owed him something
Also in California, rock singer John Fogerty felt the loss of a kindred spirit. In 1969, Fogerty's band Creedence Clearwater Revival had sold more records than the Beatles, then an astonishing accomplishment. But both men spent the latter half of the 1970s publicly silent; Fogerty because of a business dispute, Lennon because he was "watching the wheels".
Singer Neil Diamond had been in New York that December night for the premiere of his movie The Jazz Singer.
Diamond had been a struggling songwriter when the Beatles hit. No one was interested in hearing him sing. No one was particularly interested in his creativity, either: They just wanted him to churn out songs that sounded like current hits. The Beatles made it standard for musicians to interpret their own songs, and to experiment.
"Aside from being broken-hearted about the loss of this man, I felt I owed him something," he said. "My life would not have been the same without the Beatles."
Legacy frozen in time
What has the world missed in 25 years without John Lennon?
Yoko Ono has grown old without a husband; she still lives in the Dakota and is the caretaker of the work he left behind. Sean Lennon grew up without a dad. He's tried music, too.
John's legacy remains frozen in time and, like James Dean's or Kurt Cobain's, burnished by sudden death far too young. Lennon didn't grow old in the spotlight, didn't have to contend with tired "steel wheelchairs" jokes like his peers in the Rolling Stones.
He didn't have to watch his talent fade, his instincts betray him or hear the whispers that he'd lost it. McCartney could tell him a few things about that.
Predicting what could have been
It's impossible to predict from his catalogue where his muse would have taken him.
Truth be told, his track record as a solo artist was wildly uneven in style and quality. The brutal confessional of The Plastic Ono Band was followed by the perfectly polished Imagine. There's the leftist screeds in Some Time in New York City, the tired wistfulness on Walls and Bridges and the domesticated work he made at the end.
Even during the Beatles' intense creative period, author Bob Spitz in this fall's new The Beatles: The Biography portrays Lennon as tormented by personal demons and drug abuse. Would it have crippled him as he got older?
"The level of engagement wouldn't have gone away," said music journalist Alan Light. "If he was going to be an activist, he would have been all the way an activist. If he was going to be a father, he would have been all the way a father."
Lennon clearly had courage as an artist. He wasn't afraid to mess up, or to speak up. Lennon mocked Bob Dylan with a song, Serve Yourself, when he didn't like Gotta Serve Somebody. It's not too hard to envision him making his own cracks about the Stones during their dreary years. Few others today have the stature or nature to speak up with a contrarian word, and know they'll be listened to.
McCartney's battle
By moving to New York and walking the streets, Lennon always seemed more accessible, more human than his peers, Light said. No one had more reason to fear the warped effect of fandom than the four men who lived through the hysteria of Beatlemania. Living outside of a bubble made Lennon a target.
Chapman remains in New York's Attica state prison, where his third request for parole was denied in October. Ono wrote to the parole board urging he not be released. Chapman won't be eligible for parole again for two years.
A legacy of Lennon's death is a lingering uncertainty among musicians about being in public.
Losing the partner to whom he's wedded in history has been difficult for McCartney, in ways he could and could not control. With Lennon lionised, McCartney's reputation shrank in comparison.
It was unfair, and has since been corrected, but not before breeding an unwarranted insecurity. McCartney has spent years seemingly saying, "Hey, I was cool, too."
Burying the hatchet
If Lennon had lived, McCartney said he believes they would have written songs together again. It all depended on the state of their relationship, badly frayed in the Beatles' fracture, but improving at the time of Lennon's death.
"We were having long telephone conversations about his cats and baking bread," McCartney said. "Ordinary things, which I think easily could have led us into being mates again."
After seven years of studying the Beatles, author Spitz said he doubted it. Lennon had left the Beatles behind and hadn't gone back before he died. The closest the world got was when McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr transformed Lennon leftovers Free As a Bird and Real Love into "Beatles" songs.
"I always assumed I would meet him," Fogerty said. "And when they are gone from you, you're almost overcome with the sense that you never got to say goodbye. I never got to touch base from my heart to his heart and I'm sure that millions of us felt the same way."
Lennon's words from #9 Dream still echo.
So long ago. Was it in a dream? Was it just a dream?
- AP
South Africa
