Imagine a Different December 8

Jon Wiener in the Nation:

It was thirty years ago today: December 8, 1980, on what would turn out to be the last day of John Lennon's life, he did an interview promoting his new album, Double Fantasy. He talked about the sixties: "The thing the sixties did was show us the possibility and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility."

SNIP

And he spoke about "the opening up of the sixties." "Maybe in the sixties we were naïve and like children and later everyone went back to their rooms and said, 'We didn't get a wonderful world of flowers and peace.... The world is a nasty horrible place because it didn't give us everything we cried for.' Right? Crying for it wasn't enough."

Lennon also talked about his song "Power to the People," which had been released in 1971, nine years earlier. "In retrospect," he said, "if I were trying to say the same thing again, I would say the people have the power. I don't mean the power of the gun. They have the power to make and create the society they want."

The RKO interview was his last. When he finished it, he did a photo shoot at the Dakota with Annie Liebowitz for Rolling Stone, then headed off to the Record Plant with Yoko to work on her song "Walking on Thin Ice." At 10:30 pm their limo took them back to the Dakota and dropped them off at the curb. That's when he was killed.