John’s death: where were you, how did you react? | Page 5 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Zig said
This came up in different thread a while back. It was a thread that did not address this specific topic to begin with, so I’m glad @Ahhh Girl found this one in which to place the post from @Oudis .

Anyway, Howard Cosell was the one that told me. I had just come home late from my after school part-time job and decided to unwind by watching the rest of Monday Night Football. Not long after turning on the TV…

I did not take it well. At the school bus stop the next morning, I saw my best friend who also loved the Beatles – especially John. When I saw his eyes were red, it really hit me. This really happened. Without a word we hugged each other and bawled our eyes out. The rest of the day at school was surreal. Teachers and students alike walking the hallways stunned. Moments like the one I mentioned at the bus stop breaking out everywhere. It was a really BFDay.

Watching that video is bizarre in regards to my reaction as it still feels like a shock and gutting and a part of me doesnt want it to be real despite knowing that it happened over 34 years ago.

You’d think it would get easier as time moves on yet it seems to get harder.

Closely related…a story from someone who was in the recording studio John left the night he was killed.

Willie Nile shares new details on the night John Lennon was killed

Beatles alum John Lennon , who taught us all to “Imagine ,” had just returned home with his wife Yoko Ono when he was assassinated outside the Dakota Building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Now, WTOP is learning exclusive insights on that fateful night from singer/songwriter Willie Nile, who performs at Hamilton Live on April 8 and was at the recording studio with Lennon that night.

“On Dec. 5, 1980, I took my band in to make my second album for Arista Records,” Nile told WTOP. “I was in Studio A and John was in the mix room upstairs with Yoko working on a Yoko project. My co-producer, Thom Panunzio, knew John [and] said, ‘Do you wanna meet John?’ I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely, but let’s wait a couple days.’ … This was Friday night, so I figured Tuesday we’ll see him.”

During the interim, Lennon’s team actually called downstairs to ask Nile a favor.

“Sunday night, the 7th of December, we’re in the studio recording and the phone rings at midnight,” Nile said. “It’s one of John’s engineers saying, ‘John is out of guitar strings. Do you have any guitar strings he could use?’ We just looked: ‘John Lennon needs guitar strings?!?’ So we go diving into our bags and pull out guitar strings. I was gonna put a note with the strings: ‘To John, thanks for the music. Love ya,’ but I decided that’s too corny. I’m gonna meet him in a few days. I’ll tell him when I see him.”

As fate would have it, that meeting never happened. But Lennon did, in fact, play on Nile’s strings.

“The next day, Monday, Dec. 8, 1980, we came in about 4:30 [a.m.],” Nile said. “I’ve got the call sheet, he was in at 7 [p.m.] and we were in at 4:30 [a.m.]. The engineer said John played on those strings from about midnight to 4:30 in the morning on a song called ‘Walking on Thin Ice.’ It’s a great track, a Yoko song, (@Expert Textpert) and the guitar playing is so visceral, so raw and rockin’. It’s the last thing he ever recorded.”

Nile will never forget how the rest of that fateful day unfolded.

“About 10:30 that night, we’re in the studio recording Monday night, Dec. 8, and the phone rings,” Nile said. “Thom Panunzio, our co-producer, had a buddy in New Jersey, a collector, bugging him all week, ‘Can you get me John’s autograph?’ And we had done a favor the night before, so Thom called the engineers and said, ‘The guy who gave John the strings would love an autograph.’ … So the phone call was saying, ‘John’s coming down now,’ and Thom said, ‘I’ll be right back’ and he left the room.”

Moments later, the tragic news arrived.

“We’re listening back to a take we’d just done without Thom, and Thom comes in and says, ‘Somebody just shot John!’ I said, ‘John who?’ It didn’t make sense. He said, ‘John Lennon .’ I go, ‘What?’ Then you figure, ‘shot,’ what does that mean? Maybe in the hand, maybe in the foot? Sadly, that wasn’t the case.”

Nile says the aftermath was chaos.

“The phone started ringing off the hook,” Nile said. “David Geffen called, the secretary answered, and he said, ‘John’s there right? Yoko’s friend just said he’s on the way to the hospital and had been shot! But he’s there recording right?!?’ And she said, ‘Well, no, he left about 15 minutes ago.’ It was so, so, so terrible. We were all crying. So we watched TV like everybody else. One of my heroes, John Lennon .”

The next day, Nile learned more details on the tragedy, which he claims are exclusive to WTOP.

“Nobody knows this,” Nile insisted. “The record plant hired a bodyguard to guard him whenever he was in studio. His name was Bobby, African-American, great guy, big guy, 6-[foot]-6, 300 pounds. … I was talking to Bobby, ‘What happened?’ He told us with tears in his eyes, ‘When we got in the elevator, John was in the greatest mood,’ because ‘Double Fantasy ’ was No. 1. Bobby said, ‘John was so happy because Yoko was finally getting respect from the press.’ That meant the world to him.”

While John and Yoko were flying on this personal high, the wheels of fate started tragically turning.

“John said to Bobby, ‘Bobby, let’s go to dinner and celebrate,’” Nile said. “Bobby said, ‘I’m sick to my stomach, I don’t feel good.’ John put his arm around him, ‘Don’t worry. You go home, feel better, we’ll do it another night.’ So instead of Bobby getting in the car with him and going to the restaurant then home, he would’ve been with him and been watching out. Had he gone with him, things maybe could have changed and he felt really bad about it. I said, ‘Bobby what can you do? You can’t see the future.’”

Nile himself carries similar “what if” regrets.

“I’d give anything to go back in time,” Nile said. “To know that, go upstairs and say, ‘Hey, [don’t go]’.’”

{snip}

From an earlier Willie Nile interview (2011)

“Did you know that today would have been John Lennon ’s 70th Birthday ?” He asked. “Did you know I was in the studio next to him the night he got shot? We had passed each other a few times and said ‘hello’ and through a mutual friend John had agreed to meet for dinner later that week. I was nearly finished recording my second album, Golden Down and he was along the corridor putting the final touches to Walking on Thin Ice when his engineer asked if we had any spare guitar strings as John’s needed replacing. I had some in my bag so sent them along.

I was sitting at the piano that John had played on Instant Karma ready to do one last take on a song when David Geffen rang at 11.30 to say that John Lennon had been shot.

I don’t really know why; but the song I was listening to was I can’t get you off my mind which seemed somehow appropriate and I had tears running down my cheeks when I finally finished the piano part.

From 2012

In December 1980, Nile and John Lennon were recording in adjacent studios. Lennon ran out of guitar strings, so Nile had someone take his extras to his famous neighbor.

“I was going to put a note to John – ‘Thanks for all the music. I love you. Willie,’” recalled Nile. “Then I thought, ah, too corny. I’ll tell him when I see him in person” in a couple of days.

“The last thing he played was my guitar strings,” says Nile.