John Lennon's last day

John Lennon signs an autograph to Mark David Chapman who will then kill him

• They killed John Lennon!

  Live chronicle of the night the Beatles visionary died

• John Lennon and Yoko Ono and that moving shot of Annie Leibovitz

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December 07, 2020Monday December 8, 1980 is an incredibly mild day in New York. It will reach 18 degrees. On the seventh floor east side of the Dakota Building, in the apartment with four bedrooms and a splendid view of the Park with a partial view of The Lake inhabited by the Lennons, you wake up early. But beware, this is nothing new. Anyone who thinks that the most popular and controversial couple of artists in the world lead a wild life is wrong. To testify this the wealthy roommates of John and Yoko who seven years earlier had laboriously given the green light (a necessary act and with a completely obvious outcome in the condominiums of New York, so much so that the real estate agent who followed the operation spoke of a miracle) to the Lennons' purchase of the property put up for sale by Robert Ryan.

Ryan was an actor with a bright past.

After the war he had taken part in countless Hollywood films, arriving at an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1947 for his portrayal of the villain Montgomery, an anti-Semitic killer (in the novel he was homophobic, but it would have been too much for Hollywood in the 40s. ) of Unrelenting Hatred (Crossfire).

Ryan was often called upon to play tough or villain roles in noir, western and war movies.

Bad on screen but good and socially engaged in real life.

Good and in love with his wife Jessie, so in love that on his death from cancer in 1972, Robert decided to sell the house where they had lived together and raised their three children and to move to 88 Central Park South where he too will die of cancer in July 73. Before settling in Dakota, the Lennons asked a medium to arrange a séance to ensure that the apartment was not inhabited by evil spirits.

During the session, the spirit of Jessie Ryan manifested itself and let the Lennons know that she still believed the house to be hers and that she would continue to live in it, but she had no objection to their entry and would let them live their lives in peace.

After the approval of the roommates also that of the ghosts: the move from the somewhat hippie loft in Bank Street, West Village, to the interior aristocrat 72 of the Dakota could begin.

Yoko took the trouble to call Lisa, the Ryanos' youngest daughter, to tell her that her mother still happily lived in that apartment with them.

"If my mother's ghost is really somewhere, I think it's near me and certainly not there with you" was his reply.

Extravagance of artists, therefore, but embedded in a life that is, after all, regular, especially since 9 October 1975 when, on John's thirty-fifth birthday, Yoko gave birth to little Sean.

On the morning of December 8, 1980, however, there is one more reason to get active early: the photographer Annie Leibovitz is expected at the Lennon house, who is to shoot a shoot for Rolling Stone.

Lennon has just released (on November 17) Double Fantasy, the first album after 5 years of absolute silence during which he concentrated mainly on being a dad.

John had already had a son, Julian, with his first wife Cynthia.

But it was 1963, full Beatlemania, years in which John (and Paul and George and Ringo) were public domain characters, in the strictest sense of the term, the one who excludes themselves from the possibility of determining their own movements, their actions. .

Something very close to the definition of "prisoner".

Twelve years later and in a city like New York, accustomed to chewing and digesting carelessly anything that goes through its dazzling chaos, John is allowed out of the house on his bicycle with Sean and take a ride in the park going completely unnoticed.

The maximum of the hassle is some autographs to sign to the small group of fans who - almost every day and almost in any weather condition - stand in front of the entrance to the Dakota hoping to cross paths with the former Beatle.

Drappello that is not missing even that 8 December and which is already positioned in front of the entrance on 72nd street when, shortly after 9, the Leibovitz is announced to the Lennons.

Annie goes up to the seventh floor, chats, sets up, shoots.

Around 11.00 she is satisfied with the work done, but John is not.

He insists on being photographed with Yoko.

Leibovitz is reluctant.

Jann Wenner, co-founder and editor of the magazine, has entrusted her with a very specific task: take home a shot like that of Unfinished Music No. 1 but without Yoko.

Unfinished Music No. 1 is John Lennon's first solo album, recorded with Yoko Ono in a single night on May 19, 1968. It is an experimental and avant-garde work that had very little to do with music. produced by the Beatles at that time.

The cover photo to which Wenner refers is a full frontal nude (on the front of the record and rear on the back) of John and Yoko, taken (or rather, self-photographed) in Ringo Starr's London apartment in early October 1968.

Obviously the initiative caused a sensation at the time and the album was released in November of that year, but "protected" by a brown dust jacket that only allowed the faces of the two artists to be seen.

For Wenner, however, that shot has a particular evocative importance.

He asked for and obtained permission to use it (in the “rear” version) for the cover of the Rolling Stone issue celebrating the year of the magazine's life, in November 1968, doubling sales.

After all, just a photo of Lennon had been the christening of the cover of the first issue of Rolling Stone.

It was November 9, 1967 and it was Douglas Kirkland's shot on the set of the movie How I Won the War: a close-up of John whistling with a military helmet on his head. 

Eventually Leibovitz gives in to Lennon's pressing demands and takes a series of photos of the two together with a Polaroid.

First clothes, then - this is his request - naked.

John undresses smoothly, but Yoko is unwilling to take off her pants.

“Then don't take anything off,” the photographer tells her.

It is the right intuition.

The result is that shot of John naked who, in a fetal position, embraces Yoko kissing her on the cheek.

With closed eyes.

While she looks elsewhere over her head.

Leibovitz was looking for a kiss similar to the one the two share on the cover of Double Fantasy, but finds something far more powerful, and not just because of the tragic circumstances that will follow.

"This is it.

This is our relationship ”is what Lennon exclaims after seeing the shot.

“It is the photo of my life - Leibovitz will later say - the one for which I will be remembered”.

The photo will become the cover of Rolling Stone on January 22, 1981 and in 2005 will be named by the American Society of Magazine Editors as the best magazine cover of the last 40 years.

In the squad that stops in front of the Dakota's entrance that warm morning there is also Mark David Chapman, the man of destiny.

He has, like many others, a copy of Double Fantasy.

Unlike everyone else, he also has in his pocket a copy of the book The Young Holden by JD Salinger and a revolver, a Charter Arms "Undercover" .38 caliber, which he armed with five hollow point bullets.

Chapman was born 25 years earlier in Fort Worth, Texas, but now lives in Kailua, Hawaii where he married Gloria Hiroko Abe, an American of Japanese parents.

He suffers from depression and various mental disorders that have led to a suicide attempt and some hospitalizations.

Nevertheless, he works as a security guard for a living.

He arrives in New York with the declared intent to kill John Lennon.

Declared days before leaving for New York to his wife Gloria.

He talks to her about his obsession at length and shows her the revolver and ammunition, but she doesn't notify the police or social services.

On December 7 Chapman meets singer James Taylor in the subway station of 72nd street, recognizes him and turns to him over-excited raving about his phantom artistic projects of which - he says - John Lennon would have been aware and enthusiastic.

That night, in a long phone call, he tells his wife everything and agrees that it is necessary to ask someone for help.

Awareness that leaves him when he wakes up the next morning, when he leaves his room at the Sheraton to go one last time under the Dakota.

In the morning Chapman familiarizes himself with some of Lennon's fans who are stationed with him in front of the entrance to the Dakota.

In particular with Jude, Jerry and an amateur photographer, Paul Gores.

During the morning there is also a first contact of Chapman with the Lennons, and it is with the little Sean.

The parents were "kidnapped" by Leibovitz and so to accompany the little Sean for a walk is the nanny Helen Seaman.

Upon exiting the Dakota Sean is recognized, Chapman approaches him, gives him a compliment, a pat on the head.

Helen Seaman is no ordinary nanny: she is the wife of Norman Seaman, a famous New York impresario of young avant-garde artists.

He is a man who has a passion for this work and for avant-garde art, he really believes in it.

He is number one because he always manages to find an off-Broadway theater willing to welcome one of his unknown artists, a journalist willing to do a review.

And always manages to sell out.

It matters little that you actually give away most of the tickets.

He does it because he doesn't want a half-empty theater to upset the artist and ruin the performance.

Much love, little gain.

In fact, he is forced to live in the Bronx in a modest home with Helen, several children, an army of cats and a beagle.

Yoko Ono meets him thanks to her first husband, Toshi Ichiyanagi, an avant-garde composer.

Seaman will help her to establish herself by taking her from the lofts and galleries of Downtown Manhattan, where she was at home, to the most popular shop window in Midtown, staging on November 24, 1961, her recital "A Grapefruit in the World of Park" (the whose subtitle was “Piece for strawberries and violin”) at the Carnegie Recital Hall, a 298-seat room (obviously all sold out) located on the third floor in the very prestigious Carnegie Hall building.

The bond between Norman Seaman and Yoko Ono will never dissolve and, indeed, will tighten considerably with the arrival of the Lennons in New York.

So much so that Helen was chosen as Sean's nanny, living with the Lennons on the seventh floor of the Dakota, and to give Norman one of the other 5 apartments purchased over time by the Lennons in the Building.

That brief contact with Sean gives Chapman confirmation that the Lennons are in New York, at home.

The morning passes without further emotions.

At lunchtime, Jude and Chapman go off to eat something together.

She asks him about Hawaii, they talk about this and that, then they go back to the station waiting for something to happen.

And something happens.

It's just after 5:30 in the afternoon when a gray limo pulls up to the entrance to the Dakota.

Chapman realizes it might be a good time and approaches the limo.

At that moment, the Lennons leave the Dakota and go to the car.

Yoko has to be sent and gets in the car while John stops to sign some autographs.

Chapman is paralyzed.

Paul Gores, the young amateur photographer, physically pushes him towards John and urges him: “Hey, what are you doing?

Come on, it's your time.

You've been waiting here all day, you came from Hawaii… go get your autograph! ”.

Chapman wakes up and mechanically hands his copy of Double Fantasy to John along with a blue Bic pen and asks him for an autograph.

"Sure", certainly, replies John who takes the album and the pen, chooses a clear area of ​​the cover photo, in correspondence with Yoko Ono's neck, and makes an autograph under which he writes "1980".

Then he looks up and says to Chapman, “Is that all?

You want something else?".

The scene is captured in a shot by Gores where Lennon is seen in the foreground autographing the album and Chapman behind him on the right.

It is the last image of John Lennon alive.

Chapman has no other requests and John joins Yoko in the limo that will take them to the Record Plant Studio, between 44th and 8th, where the two are expected to work on Walking on Thin Ice, a piece by Yoko produced by John who also plays lead guitar. .

Chapman senses his Maelstrom is approaching and tries to reverse course.

He asks Gores not to leave, invites Jude to dinner.

In one of the very few interviews released in these forty years Chapman will explain that those requests were a desperate attempt by the sane part of himself to give a different ending to the story.

If Jude had accepted his invitation to dinner he would have left.

And, no, he didn't want Gores to stay to immortalize his act of madness, he wanted him to stay to stop him from committing it.

Both refuse and leave the 72nd to return to their homes and, unwitting characters of this Homeric tragedy, to give way to destiny to be fulfilled. 

And fate is punctually fulfilled, lining up another series of randomness.

At 10.30 pm, once the work in the recording room is finished, John and Yoko decide to go home instead of going directly to dinner.

John decides to drop by to say goodnight to Sean before heading to Stage Deli on Seventh, two blocks from Carnegie Hall, to have a bite to eat with Yoko.

The Lennons decide to be dropped off in front of the Dakota's entrance instead of being escorted to the inner courtyard.

They are a few steps, fifteen, twenty meters at the most, but they will make the difference between life and death.

It is 10.50 pm when Yoko first gets out of the limo, left side, and walks towards the entrance.

After her, John goes down and follows her about 5 meters away.

Chapman places his signed copy of Double Fantasy in a planter.

He steps up behind Lennon and fires all five bullets from his revolver at him from about 10 feet away.

Four hit.

Three of these pass through the left lung and the left subclavian artery.

One of the three, after crossing the chest, ends his run in the left arm.

The fourth remains stuck in the aorta.

The fifth, the one that fails, breaks a glass window of the Dakota.

Lennon bleeds profusely from his wounds and mouth, but has the strength and time to seek shelter by climbing five steps inside the building and to say "I'm shot, I'm shot".

At first Yoko instinctively runs away, then goes back and throws herself on the body of John now collapsed to the ground.

Jose Perdomo, the Dakota goalkeeper, runs towards a motionless and absent Chapman, takes the gun from his hand and throws it away.

Then he yells at him "Do you realize what you've done?".

Chapman calmly replies: "Yeah, I just shot John Lennon."

Jay Hastings, Perdomo's assistant, rescues Lennon.

He opens his black leather jacket and lifts his shirt to try to dab the wounds, but in front of John's torn chest he gives up, covers him with his uniform jacket, takes off his blood-covered glasses and calls 911. Nel Meanwhile Chapman, helpless and unarmed, has taken off his jacket (to make it clear to the police, when he arrives, that he has no other weapons on) and is now on his feet, wearing a t-shirt from Todd Rundgren's Hermit of Mink Hollow album on him, in front of the entrance to the Dakota reading his copy of Il Giovane Holden.

Agents Steven Spiro and Peter Cullen with their wheel are on the corner of 72nd and Broadway when the call comes.

In less than 2 minutes they are at the Dakota, handcuffing Chapman and sitting him in the back seat of the car.

Chapman offers no resistance.

The wheel with agents Herb Frauenberger and Tony Palma is between 82nd and Columbus Avenue and arrives shortly after.

Palma gets out and sees the colleagues who are securing Chapman.

Asks: "Where is the wounded".

“He's inside”, they reply.

Enter and find John face down in a pool of blood.

He understands that the situation is desperate.

She takes John by the arms while Frauenberger lifts him by the legs and they lead him out.

There is no time to wait for an ambulance you have to rush to a hospital.

Palma and Frauenberger put John in the back seat of another newly arrived steering wheel.

At the helm is agent Jim Moran, 45, with Bill Gamble.

Moran had seen the Beatles up close in 1964, when, as a young policeman, he had to defend the Delmonico Hotel, on Park Avenue and 59th Avenue, where the four occupied the top floor suite, from the assaults of crazed fans.

Where Dylan went to see them, taking some weed to smoke with him.

Where was their first time.

Where an incredible race began that was ending that night in the back seat of his steering wheel.

Moran leaves for St. Luke's - Roosevelt Hospital at 1111 Amsterdam Avenue, just under four kilometers from the Dakota, almost all of them running with sirens on Central Park West heading north.

Moran does not understand, turns and asks "But are you John Lennon?".

John gasps something, but it is impossible to say if he is aware of what is happening.

While driving, Moran calls Roosvelt Hospital and asks to prepare to take in a wounded man in desperate conditions.

All the doctors on duty in the Roosvelt emergency room stop all activities and prepare to manage the emergency.

At 11.00 pm Moran's wheel arrives at the Roosvelt emergency room.

John is not breathing and his heart has stopped beating.

He is loaded onto a stretcher and rushed to an emergency room.

Immediately after the Roosvelt a second wheel arrives, that of agents Palma and Frauenberger who took care of accompanying Yoko Ono.

Among the patients treated at the time at Roosvelt Hospital, leaning on a stretcher in an emergency room corridor, is Alan Weiss.

Alan Weiss, 29, is a senior producer, the equivalent of a reporter, on the popular news show Eyewitness News on Channel 7. He was transported there following a car accident.

He was riding his helmetless Honda 650 through Central Park when a taxi dropped him.

He hit his head, his ears ring and he's confused.

A doctor has just begun to look after him when the emergency call comes: a seriously injured man is arriving.

Weiss can wait.

As confused as he is, he cannot help but see what passes before his eyes: doctors, nurses and two policemen push a stretcher that carries a man covered in blood.

They enter exactly the room next to the entrance to which he is positioned.

The two policemen come out and stop for a moment a few steps from him.

"Incredible, John Lennon ...".

Weiss wakes up from his slumber and asks the policeman "Excuse me, does that mean John Lennon?"

The cops don't answer and leave.

Weiss hands a business card and twenty-dollar bill to an orderly and asks him to call his office number to break the news that John Lennon was probably shot.

The orderly leaves.

A hospital security man returns and tells Weiss that no one on the staff can make phone calls on behalf of the inmates and returns his business card.

He too does not answer Weiss's question: "But is that John Lennon?".

As confused as Weiss is, he cannot fail to see what continues to pass before his eyes.

And this time what he sees is a woman with Asian features, in a fur coat crying desperately.

He can't be sure it's Yoko Ono, but the puzzle begins to have many pieces in the right place.

Weiss gets up from his stretcher and goes in search of a coin-operated phone.

Another security man tries to stop him, but a policeman tells him to let him go.

The evening does not need further complications.

Weiss finally manages to call the editorial office.

On the other side of the phone is Neil Goldstein who confirms that he has received the news of a shooting at the Dakota and that he has already sent a crew.

Everything coincides.

Weiss reenters and returns to his stretcher.

From a glass window overlooking the room where John was taken he sees what happens inside.

Doctors are attempting an extreme resuscitation operation, with an open heart massage.

Someone notices the indiscreet observer and Weiss, on his stretcher, is transferred to an adjacent room.

At that moment the radio of Roosvelt Hospital for a truly incredible case begins to broadcast All My Loving, the first song played by the Beatles on 9 February 1964 at their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in front of an audience of 73 million and 700 thousand viewers. on the occasion of the first American tour of the four: "Close your eyes and I'll kiss you, tomorrow I'll miss you ..." Close your eyes and I'll kiss you, just like this morning in front of Annie Leibovitz's Polaroid, just like on cover of Double Fantasy.

No more than a minute and a half goes by and Weiss hears a woman's voice scream "No, no, oh no."

Through the door she sees Yoko Ono pass hugging Devid Geffen, the owner of Geffen Record, the label with which Lennon have released Double Fantasy.

Yoko had just received the news that at 11.15 pm the doctors had abandoned any attempt to revive John who had been declared "dead on arrival".

Shortly after Weiss is joined by the doctor who had taken charge of him at his entrance.

He immediately asks her: “Is he dead?

Was it Lennon? "

The doctor tells him he can't answer and that there will be a press conference in 40 minutes anyway.

The time Yoko asked to reach Sean at the Dakota and prevent him from hearing the news on television.

But this Weiss doesn't know.

He leaves the room and rushes to the phone to break the news.

He is immediately connected to a radio of the ABC network, to which Channel 7 belongs, which is broadcasting live and gives an interview on the fly.

The news is simultaneously communicated to the president of ABC News, Roone Arledge who decides to have it broadcast immediately on TV. At that moment ABC is broadcasting live Monday Night, the Monday night game of the NFL American football championship.

On the pitch are the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots.

Commentators Frank Gifford and Howard Cosell.

It is played in Miami, the game started at 21.00 and the regular time is about to end.

The score is 13-13;

New England blocks the clock with a timeout 3 seconds from the end and sends kicker John Smith who will attempt a 20-yard kick that could be worth the match.

Frank Gifford comments live: “John Smith is on the pitch, but now we don't care what is happening on the pitch.

Howard, you have to say what we learned ”and he passes the word to Cosell, who Lennon had also interviewed him, on a Monday night, six years earlier.

“Yes, we have to say that.

Recall that this is just a football game, no matter who wins and who loses.

An indescribable tragedy has occurred, confirmed by our ABC News colleagues in New York: John Lennon, in front of his New York home, probably the most famous of all the Beatles, was shot twice in the back, transported to Roosvelt Hospital he was declared dead on arrival ”.

It is 11.40pm on December 8 in New York as in Miami.

Smith's kick will be blocked by the Dolphins defense.

The match will go to extra time and the final result will be 16-13 for Miami.