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Authors Note: This is a revised and expanded version of the story that first appeared on Like The Dew December 8, 2009. Most of the newer content starts with the section entitled “Taken Away.”

The 4th quarter. It’s as critical for retailers as it is for a basketball team. The game’s on the line and some three-pointers are needed. The three-pointer equivalent for retailers is a plastic-happy customer. ‘Tis the season to run up lots of debt. The plastic allows the stores to sell their goods at a torrid pace in the last few weeks of the year. At least people working in the stores hope so. Otherwise they may not be working in the first quarter. The months after the 4th quarter are usually sluggish anyway. If the retailers sell a lot when people want to buy, they can likely hang on during the slow months.

In December of 1980 I had a very good job with a national record retailer. My job was to handle the advertising for the stores east of Illinois and south of Pennsylvania. The stores in that region were in growing, mostly Sunbelt, cities. In the 4th quarter we’d sell a lot of records. We’d get those three-pointers. The record companies would subsidize our advertising as we promoted and sold their records. When everything went as planned, all were happy.

Double Fantasy, John Lennon’s first new album in more than 5 years, was keeping many of us happy. Critical reaction, perhaps due to the album’s co-billing of Yoko Ono, was mixed, but most fans were pleased. The album’s first single, “(Just Like) Starting Over,” received significant airplay. It had an infectious, rock and roll feel; it brought to mind old songs by Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, both early heroes of Lennon’s. The song was a celebration. John Lennon made the idea of starting over sound enticing.

The Lennon/Ono collaboration was a hit. Some were disappointed that Lennon’s hard edge was not evident, but he was still a great singer and still crafted engaging melodies. Double Fantasy, along with other albums, such as Bruce Springsteen’s The River, was doing well in our stores. Certainly the 4th quarter would put us in the “Win” column.

So with only 16 shopping days left until Christmas, we felt good about things. We could breathe easier for a few weeks. It was time to celebrate. In town with his own plastic card was one of our company’s VP’s. He liked a fine dinner and he liked company at dinnertime as well. What else could we do?  The three of us in management gladly accepted his invitation to dinner at Atlanta’s preeminent steakhouse, Bone’s.

The usual talk about business took place at the table. There were some record labels hurting. A lot of merging and consolidation had taken place. My company knew much about the struggles of the record labels. We were partly responsible, given the millions of dollars we owed them. A label that needed a shot in the arm was RCA. Our VP made a crass remark, wondering if RCA wished they could dig up Elvis Presley and then have him die again. We groaned and then recalled the crazy few weeks after Presley’s death in August ’77. People came into our stores ready to buy anything by Elvis. His great records sold out first. Then his lesser material. Even the forgettable soundtrack albums were snapped up. The pressing plants went into overtime. RCA had tragically lost its greatest star but the financial windfall eased the company’s pain. After all, Presley had not scored a number one single (Billboard charts) since 1969. He was their legendary performer but no longer crucial to their bottom line. At that time, they depended on Dolly Parton, John Denver and Hall and Oates to bring in the big bucks.

A lot of us in the business so admired Presley that it hurt to see him gone. Yes, much of his recent work had been lackluster but he was still The King. He left behind a lot of great music. We kept that in mind and hoped not to see such a monumental passing for a few years at least.

After dinner we returned to our VP’s hotel, thinking we might see the last few minutes of  Monday Night Football. The TV was turned on but the game had just ended. The local TV news anchor came on with something about John Lennon being shot outside his home in New York. The words sped by us. Then the newsman said, “Lennon did not make it.” That’s when the news took hold. A real punch in the gut.

Before we started to comment on Lennon’s greatness, as a Beatle, solo artist, activist for peace, etc, our VP quickly collected himself and started talking to me. He said I needed to be up early the next morning, on the phone to the managers at my stores. It was my duty to remind them of how important (the VP’s word) it was to get as much Lennon stock in the stores as possible. We knew the drill. We remembered August ’77 very well. We also thought how ironic the VP had crudely reminded us of it a few hours earlier.

The next morning, quite distraught, I called my managers but did not relay the instructions. They were on top of it anyway. They understood their jobs. Instead we just talked of the loss we felt. Many of us had our jobs because of how inspired we were seeing Lennon and the other Beatles on those cold winter nights nearly 17 years before on Ed Sullivan. We spent hours that day discussing John Lennon’s profound impact.

The first few days after Lennon died were days we just worked our way through. During that time his songs ruled the airwaves. People came in large numbers to our stores to buy his music. The solo recordings. The Beatles’ albums. Yet there wasn’t the frenzy we witnessed after Presley’s death. In ’77 a lot of people who rarely came into record stores sought and bought all things Elvis. Fans of The Beatles, younger than the Presley customers, were often at the stores anyway. They’d continue to seek out Lennon’s music in the years ahead. The calmer response in that regard was assuring but it provoked a summation: we’d always have his music, but we’d always miss the guy. He was the joyful provocateur who delighted and challenged us.

Paul Simon’s ’83 recording, “The Late Great Johnny Ace,” recalls the dark mood of 12-08-80 and the days that followed. The music is sad and alluring. Simon’s story is a coming of age tale. He sings of a young boy’s sadness over the death of R&B singer Johnny Ace. The boy had never been “such a Johnny Ace fan” but he “felt bad all the same. Absorbing the grief felt by others, the boy orders a picture of Johnny Ace. Exhibiting a boy’s sense of wonder common for 1954, Simon sings of how the picture “came all the way from Texas.”

In the song’s bridge, Simon picks up the story after 10 years had passed. The young man is in London. Great cultural shifts are taking place. It was the year of The Beatles. It was the year of the Stones. A year after J.F.K. The young man has become familiar with the cycles in life that lift and dampen spirits.

The last verse sets the scene sweetly and sadly. It’s late at night during the holiday season. One can visualize “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” playing on some radio as Simon’s character, still a young man, is walking past the storefronts in New York. There, a stranger approaches him. The stranger asks if he knows John Lennon had died. Shaken by the news, he and the stranger go into a bar and “stayed to close the place.” Through the hours, it’s likely the two men talked about John Lennon and related subjects, all the while putting coins in the jukebox. And as each song played, memories of years gone by seemed as fresh as yesterday.

Paul Simon’s song closes with a one minute coda written by Philip Glass. Featuring strings, clarinet and flute, the coda is stark and beautiful; it captures the sense of loss described in the song and by those of us with vivid memories of that December night. Our thoughts the next several days and nights were dominated by the great loss. One of those nights my friend Bob Woodland and I met up at Manuel’s Tavern. Naturally, John Lennon was the subject of the evening. In that beloved watering hole, Bob touched on a greatness of Lennon that went beyond the music. Recognizing Lennon’s spirit and courage, Bob said, “What I really admired was that John made peace his cause, even though his stand brought him trouble. Here was a tough guy who had made his own way in the world but embraced and spoke out for peace and non-violence.” Yes, there are lots of reasons why we miss John Lennon.

Taken Away . . . David Bowie misses John Lennon. As with millions of others, he felt the emptiness brought on by Lennon’s death, saying, “A whole piece of my life seemed to have been taken away; a whole reason for being a singer and a songwriter seemed to be removed from me.” A friend and collaborator was gone.

In September ’75, Bowie secured his first U.S. number one single, “Fame,” which he co-wrote with John Lennon and guitarist Carlos Alomar. Lennon also provided rhythm guitar and background vocals on the pervasive hit. In fact, for more than a year, beginning in the late summer of ’74, Lennon himself pervaded the airwaves and charts with his own recordings while contributing to those of his friends. He produced Harry Nilsson’s Pussycats album, a work that,  in true Lennon style, enticed and perplexed its listeners. Lennon biographer Tim Riley made a spot-on accessment of Pussycats, saying it was “neither a failure, nor aa triumph, with just enough swagger to keep you interested and exactly zero production pretensions.” The album also had zero chance of matching the chart success Nilsson had attained three years earlier. Hard living (with Lennon assisting there too) and a ruptured vocal cord had taken a toll on Nilsson’s lovely voice. As Riley noted, Pussycats stiffed, making it seem Lennon’s career was in limbo, with “greatness frozen in place, stuck between purpose and viability.” Still, Nilsson and Lennon pulled off an intriguing work, one that’s reflective of what Lennon called his “Lost Weekend,” lasting the better part of a year when he lived, separated from Yoko Ono, in Los Angeles.

Another Lennon studio partner, however, climbed the charts with ease. When Elton John recorded a version of the Beatles” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” there was Lennon providing reggae-flavored guitar licks. John’s rendition made it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in early ’75, less than two months after “Whatever Gets You Thru The Night,” with Elton John on piano and harmony vocals, became Lennon’s first number one single in America since the break-up of the Beatles.

The hits kept coming. Walls and Bridges, the Lennon album featuring ”Whatever Gets You Thru The Night,” made it to number one on the Billboard charts in mid November ’74, and a month later yielded a second hit single, “#9 Dream.” In February of the next year, Lennon released his much-anticipated oldies album, Rock ‘n’ Roll, which peaked at number 6 on the U.S. charts. Rock ‘n’ Roll proved a thoughtful and inspired accomplishment with Lennon paying homage to the material that fueled his artistic development. He sang with love and gusto, especially on “Stand By Me,” which would be Lennon’s last hit single for the next five and a half years. So to speak, Lennon unplugged, devoting his time and energy to his and Yoko’s newborn son, Sean.

Serving as Sean’s godfather was Elton John, an honor bestowed him due to his close friendship with John Lennon. The two guys hit it off big-time on their first meeting. In the November 21, 1974 issue of Rolling Stone, John told Ben Fong-Torres that Lennon was “so easy to get on with.” John was great company for Lennon during the separation from Ono and proved very supportive of the estranged couple when they began to reconcile.

A significant step in the Lennon-Ono reconciliation took place after the Thanksgiving ’74 Elton John concert at Madison Square Garden. As a pay-off for “Whatever Gets You Thru The Night” hitting the top of the charts, Lennon performed three songs with John that evening. Talk about thrilling a crowd. There was Elton John, perhaps at the peak of his career, providing the assembled in New York with a dynamic show, and then two thirds into the concert, have his legendary friend join him for the most famous walk-on in rock and roll history. After the concert, Ono greeted Lennon backstage. They happily talked and, obviously, kept talking. Not too long after, reunited with Ono, Lennon told the world, “Our separation was a failure.”

Lennon was nervous about taking the New York stage that Thanksgiving evening. Bernie Taupin, Elton John’s lyricist, remembers Lennon saying, “I’m not going on unless you go on with me.” That was fine with Taupin, who recalls, “I just went a little way with him, then he sort of hugged me and I said, “You’re on your own.”

I’ve Been Calling Oh ’Hey Hey Johnny’ . . . A little more than six years later, Bernie Taupin was dealing with a different type of evening for John Lennon – and the world at large – in New York City. Lennon’s death hit Taupin hard, and true to his calling, he had to write about it. The day after Lennon’s murder, Taupin shut out the tumult. As millions coped with their grief by listening to the Beatles’ music or following the wall to wall televised coverage of Lennon’s death, Taupin, the door shut behind him, gathered his thoughts and crafted a remarkable tribute to his friend.

Taupin presented Lennon as a gardener “who cared a lot, who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop.” He then reflected on the patch of green his friend-as-gardener labored upon, where “nothing grows no more.” His friend is no longer around to grow flowers from the cracks of the pavement. His friend is gone. Taupin surveys the impact of a heavy loss while referring to humble and compassionate attributes.

Taupin’s words, coupled with Elton John’s music, comes across vividly in “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny).” Recorded in early ’82, the song features a commanding yet understated performance by John. It still ranks as one of his career-best, even when considering the wealth of material he compiled throughout much of the ’70s. John and Taupin bring to mind Lennon’s own plea in the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence,” with calls to the departed Johnny to “come out to play.” With Prudence, the choice was hers to stay inside. Johnny, as the sad futility expressed in the Taupin-John composition makes clear, had the choice made for him. The pleas continued as he knocked on his friend’s door.

And I’ve been knocking but no one answers

And I’ve been knocking most all the day

 “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)” doesn’t have the power of Paul Simon’s “The Late Great Johnny Ace,” but that hardly diminishes the Taupin-John effort. “The Late Great Johnny Ace” reflects on a protagonist’s life from boyhood to near middle-age, all the while appraising  much of what the Western world experienced, all the way to how the evening of December 8, 1980 felt as the bad news was absorbed. “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)” is ultimately a personal remembrance of that evening, but one shared and understood by millions.

 

Recommended reading: Lennon: The Man, The Myth, The Music – The Definitive Life by Tim Riley, as well as John Lennon , The Life by Philip Norman and Lennon by Ray Coleman.