Liverpool Remembers John Lennon - 25th Anniversary of his death

Can it really be 25 years since John Lennon was shot? It seems like it was only yesterday to me. I can still remember the shock back in December 1980 when my Step-Dad called me to tell me the news. There`s a lot of special events going on in Liverpool in rememberance of John over the next few days. There`s a feature on Granada news as I speak and its so sad to think that he wa shot down in his prime.
Prayers are being said in Matthew Street today and hundreds of balloons are being released over the Albert Dock, with messages from fans all over the world. Children from a school for the deaf will also be miming songs by John Lennon. Finally, a civic ceremony will be held in Liverpool Parish church for people who actually knew John - they will give their individual memorys of John and celebrate his life. Wish I could be there.

Exerts from the Liverpool Echo

Tribute day starts in Mathew Street
Dec 8 2005
Daily Post


FANS will mark the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death today with vigils and concerts across the globe.
In his home city, tributes will be led by the Liverpool Beatles Appreciation Society, in a short ceremony in Mathew Street, at 11am.
The Dean of the Metropolitan Cathedral, Monsignor Peter Cookson, and Canon Hawley from the Anglican Cathedral will offer prayers for peace.
They will create two "shrines " where fans can come together to lay flowers and cards, one at the Lennon statue in Mathew Street and a smaller one at the Beatles Monument in the nearby Cavern Designer Shopping Centre.
At noooon, hundreds of white balloons trailing cards bearing messages from the public to John Lennon will be released from the Brittania Courtyard outside the The Beatles Story, at the Albert Dock.
Later Knotty Ash School for the Deaf will perform their own renditions of Beatles numbers in Sign Language, at Clayton Square from 1pm until 2pm.
There will be a special hour-long service at Liverpool parish church, Our Lady & St Nicholas' opposite the Pier Head, from 5pm when pupils from John Lennon's former schools, Dovedale juniors and Calderstones, will lay flowers.
Speakers will include Bill Harry, founder of the 'Mersey Beat' newspaper,, and broadcaster and Beatles expert Spencer Leigh. Former Quarryman Colin Hanton will also attend.
Broughton Hall High School pupil, Michelle Strahan, 15, will perform Beautiful Boy as a solo, followed by the Notre Dame Catholic College choir, singing All You Need is Love, In My Life and Happy Christmas/War is Over.

The service will conclude with prayer and blessing by the Rector of Liverpool, The Reverend Steven Brookes and there will be a Book of Commemoration.
Liverpool's Lord Mayor Cllr Alan Dean, who described Lennon's contribution to music as "immense" will introduce the civic service.
The focus will return to Clayton Square from 5.30pm with live music by local musicians Steve Roberts and Santa Carla.
Then at 6.30pm there will be a screening of rare documentary footage - courtesy of digital radio station BBC 6 Music - featuring videos, interviews, performance and even John's poetry, under the banner of 'Lennon Remembered'.
The anniversary will also mark the start of a special light show celebrating his life. Until December 14, there will be a nightly projection of Lennon images onto George's Dock Building, between 4.30pm and 11pm.



I wanted to kill him so I could finally be somebody
Dec 8 2005
Liverpool Echo

Chief feature writer Paddy Shennan reports on tonight's controversial Channel 4 documentary: I Killed John Lennon.
THEY want to take us down again - into the warped mind of fame-hungry assassin Mark Chapman, the man who cold-bloodedly murdered John Lennon 25 years ago today.
Way back in January, 1993, American investigative reporter Jack Jones was plugging his new book: Let Me Take You Down Inside The Mind Of Mark David Chapman, The Man Who Shot John Lennon, which was published by Virgin Books.
He had corresponded with and visited Chapman and, after gaining his trust in 1990, he spent nine months recording over 100 hours of interviews.
Jones told the ECHO in 1993 that his book was an effort to try and understand the murder: "I think that people can learn from studying specimens like him (Chapman) - like they can from bacteria in test tubes.

But nearly 13 years on, we're still being asked to focus on one strain of particularly unpleasant bacteria - the original nowhere man, Mark David Chapman, now aged 50 and continuing to rot in Attica prison, New York state. He was denied parole for a third time last year.
The taped interviews featuring the droning Texan drawl of the self-obsessed killer are old news. No wonder Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, believes there is nothing new to learn from Chapman who, when Jones's book came out, was interviewed by the veteran CNN chat show host Larry King.
After learning of tonight's Channel 4 documentary, and a similar programme on NBC in the States, Yoko said: "I think that it's horrible for Channel 4 to do this . . . Myself, John's family and so many fans will be hurt by the showing of such a programme."
The two books which, through no fault of their authors, put Lennon within Chapman's distorted sight are also highlighted - J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye and One Day At A Time, Anthony Fawcett's book on the former Beatle.
Chapman, who is serving a 20 years to life sentence after pleading guilty to second degree murder, identified himself with Salinger's anti-hero Holden Caulfield, who, as narrator John Simm told us, spent two days in New York "mocking the hypocrisy of the adult world".
Chapman then read the Fawcett book, later telling Jones: "There was a successful man, who kind of had the world on a chain and there I was - not even a link in that chain, and something in me just broke."
Lennon was a somebody. Chapman was a nobody. He knew it and he was sick of it. It was time, in his deranged world, to get mad and even.
He adds: "I remember just seeing what I perceived to be the phoniness of Lennon in the Fawcett book versus the Lennon I had known and practically worshipped as a Beatle - and seeing these terrible inconsistencies, and I remember saying in my mind 'What if I killed him?'
"I remember thinking 'Perhaps my identity could be found in the killing of John Lennon'."
Enter the Devil. Allegedly. Chapman claims: "I had sessions trying to invoke the Devil's assistance, probably three or four times calling out to the Devil 'Give me the opportunity to kill John Lennon'."
He had, at this time, two parts to his personality, according to Jack Jones - an evil child and a phony adult.
And Chapman says: "The child was praying to the Devil and the adult was praying to the Lord 'God help me. Save me, God, from this!' But the child was saying 'No, no no. Help me, help me, Devil, help me. Give me the power and strength to do this.'"
The child, via Chapman, apparently continued: "'I want to be important. I want to be somebody. Nobody ever let me be anybody. I couldn't be anybody. I failed at everything. Please, I want this. I want this so bad'!"
In his self-serving account, Chapman said he was operating "under total compulsion" and was like "a runaway train - nothing could have stopped me."
Clinical psychologist Dr Susan Young wasn't impressed by Chapman's performances, saying: "There's no sense of any consideration of anybody else's feelings. There's no remorse, no guilt. All that's there are pages and pages and pages of justification for his actions."
While Chapman expert Jack Jones, himself, points out in the documentary: "Throughout this entire tragedy, there was one person in control of everything and that was Mark Chapman."
But on that fateful night outside the Dakota building, the cool, calm and collected killer - cool, calm and collected enough to adopt a combat stance before killing his former hero - again claimed he was not alone. A child and an adult were said to be vying for space in his sick head.
Chapman says: The adult wanted to go home, the child was 'No, no, no. I want to kill him. I want to kill him'."
But it was Mark David Chapman - and nobody else - who killed John Lennon.
Forget the child and the Devil, because there's only one guilty voice you will hear on tonight's documentary - his.
Let's just hope it won't be heard again on the 30th anniversary of Lennon's death. Or the 35th. Or the 40th. And so on and so on.
* I Killed John Lennon, 10pm tonight on Channel 4.