Give Peace a Chance

Photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono by Annie Leibovitz, taken on Dec. 8 1980, for cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. John insisted on having Yoko in the photo, the final recorded while he was alive. 

December 8, 1980 we had been living in our recently-purchased home on Walk Circle for four months. Just enough time to feel comfortable and at home. Barbara had moved in with us — Molly, Vanessa and me. We had fallen in love with Barbara, who had been our neighbor across the street.

She and I were in our tiny, outmoded kitchen with a purplish red linoleum floor, laughing about its ugliness, when Molly, 11, burst in from the front room where background noise of Monday night football played on the TV, highlighted intermittently by the loquacious Howard Cossell.

"John Lennon died!" said Molly . "You knew him, didn't you, Dad?"

Everyone knew John Lennon, the eldest and most out-spoken member of the Beatles.

The tenor of the evening changed as we gathered to listen to the shocking news.

John was dead at 40, shot by a disturbed fan. More than a founding member with Paul McCartney of the Beatles, John had stepped out as a peace activist while challenging conventional religious beliefs, throwing himself into Primal Therapy articulating his personal journey through art and music. He had left the Beatles. Some blamed his new girlfriend-cum-wife Yoko Ono. The couple had broken up and got back together and recently released a new LP, Double Fantasy, that celebrated their new son, Sean, and their newfound domestic life. He sounded happy again.

Barbara and I had adopted the "starting over" theme, from the album's most popular song (Just Like) Starting Over, since we were starting new as a family living together. My single-fatherhood was over. I had a partner and the girls had a mother.

Double Fantasy was mostly panned by the music critics, who viewed the music as flat and uninspired. Domestic bliss didn't say much to a wider world. I disagreed. I found the songs -- (Just Like) Starting Over and Watching the Wheels -- soothing, heartfelt and contemplative.

His death reminded me of the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert "Bobby" Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King, figureheads of a more inclusive, peaceful world. 

I wrote a piece expressing these feelings for the weekly newspaper, The Santa Cruz News, under publisher Lee May, for which I was editor. I dropped a hard copy (original typed story) into the mail addressed to Rolling Stone Magazine. The very first issue of Rolling Stone featured a front page interview with John Lennon, written by the magazine's founder Jan Wenner.

The holiday season was upon us. The following Saturday at the weekly Santa Cruz Flea Market at Soquel Drive In, then a popular gathering place for the local population, when the clock struck 12-noon a voice over the PA system asked those present to observe a few moments of silence. John's song Imagine was played. 

Imagine all the people living life in peace... It's easy if you try… 

It was fitting. You could feel the hopefulness in the air, see it on the faces, sense that another life had been stolen, traded for a better world.

On a January evening, with a nip of cold in the air, and the post-holiday slump cooling our spirits, our phone rang, the familiar harsh treble of a mid-century modern telephone call.

"Hello."

"Is this Kevin Samson?"

"Yes." He must have looked me up in the phone book. Remember those?

"This is Gary Shapiro at Cymbaline Records. I really like what you wrote in Rolling Stone."

I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Come down to the store. I want to meet you. I'll give you a copy."

Sure enough, there was a truncated version of what I had written for The News and dropped into the mail without a further thought.

My letter wrapped around a telegram (another relic) that Yoko had sent to Rolling Stone.

The contents of my letter are expressed above, in the words of a man, today a grandfather, looking back 43 years, not much different than what I wrote then:

"It made me happy to see John happy. It makes me sad to know he's gone. We had better take a long look at ourselves before something like this happens again."

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.

You may say that I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will be as one.