It was an indelible TV moment, much like Walter Cronkite\u2019s trembly, on-the-verge-of-tears announcement<\/a> in 1963 that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. Lennon, the world soon learned<\/a>, had been shot four times in the back as he and wife Yoko Ono were walking into the Dakota<\/a>, the historic<\/a> Manhattan co-op where the couple lived with their 5-year-old son, Sean. (The killer, Mark David Chapman<\/a>, is still in prison.)<\/p>\n Get Starting Point<\/p>\n A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.<\/p>\n News of Lennon\u2019s murder was met with an avalanche of grief. In the days that followed, there was an anguished candlelight vigil in Los Angeles; a wordless tribute on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial<\/a>; a gathering in Central Park attended by 225,000 mourners; and a six-hour celebration of Lennon\u2019s life (including a 10-minute moment of silence<\/a>) in the Beatles\u2019 hometown of Liverpool.<\/p>\n Sales of Lennon and Ono\u2019s just-released album, \u201cDouble Fantasy<\/a>,\u201d immediately soared (in spite of mostly lukewarm<\/a> reviews<\/a>), as did interest in the Beatles\u2019 catalog, and radio stations across the United States, and up and down the dial, scrapped program schedules and played the Beatles <\/a>and Lennon<\/a> around the clock.<\/p>\n \u201cI immediately put on WBCN and started recording cassettes,\u201d says Cha-Chi Loprete, a longtime Boston DJ who was just a 23-year-old listener the night Lennon was shot. \u201cMy apartment at the time was a complete Beatles museum \u2014 Beatles memorabilia everywhere. <\/p>\n \u201cI was devastated,\u201d says Loprete, who got hired at WBCN the next year and has hosted a Beatles show on Boston radio since 1983. (The current incarnation, \u201cBreakfast with the Beatles<\/a>,\u201d can be heard on Saturday mornings on WUMB<\/a>.) \u201cThat night was one of the worst moments of my life, and I still remember it vividly.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time of Lennon\u2019s death \u2014 he\u2019d turned 40 that fall \u2014 the Beatles had been broken up for a decade and, while not irrelevant, the band was certainly out of fashion, especially among younger music fans. David Quantick, an English critic and comedy writer who\u2019s written extensively about the Beatles<\/a> (including a play<\/a> about Lennon), recalls being ridiculed for enjoying the Fab Four.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was at school, round about 1978, I had friends who would mock me,\u201d Quantick says. \u201cIt was the age of punk and new wave, and liking the Beatles was like liking Fred Astaire.\u201d<\/p>\n David Hepworth, a veteran British music writer and podcaster<\/a>, said the outpouring of emotion that followed Lennon\u2019s death had very little to do with Lennon himself. <\/p>\n \u201cRock stars are fantasy friends you acquire at the age of 12 and, in some cases, they\u2019re still there in your 70s,\u201d says Hepworth, who, at 75, is old enough to remember when John, Paul, George, and Ringo were a real-life rock \u2019n\u2019 roll band<\/a>, not a myth or distant memory. \u201cYou meet many people today who say it was only when John Lennon died that they realized he\u2019d been in a group with that bloke from Wings<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n In the 45 years since that chaotic night outside the Dakota, the popularity of the Beatles has waxed and waned. But since the release in 2021 of \u201cThe Beatles: Get Back<\/a>,\u201d Peter Jackson\u2019s acclaimed eight-hour docuseries, there\u2019s been, it seems, an unquenchable appetite for all things Beatles<\/a>. Lately, that has included the newly updated nine-hour Beatles documentary \u201cAnthology<\/a>\u201d (available on Disney+); the stellar \u201cOne to One: John & Yoko<\/a>\u201d documentary (on HBO Max), focused on the 18 months the couple spent living in a basement apartment in the West Village; and whatever it is you call director Sam Mendes\u2019s current project<\/a>: four separate Beatles biopics to be released in theaters in April 2028.<\/p>\n For some, though, like Jude Southerland Kessler, the fascination with the Beatles \u2014 and Lennon, in particular \u2014 has never ebbed. Kessler, who lives in Louisiana, is to John Lennon what Robert Caro<\/a> is to Lyndon Johnson. She\u2019s spent the past 40 years researching and writing what, eventually, will be a 10-volume narrative of Lennon\u2019s life<\/a>. She\u2019d hoped to get the job done in nine volumes \u2014 a nod to \u201cnumber 9, number 9…\u201d from the Beatles song \u201cRevolution 9<\/a>\u201d \u2014 but the fifth book, covering the band\u2019s whereabouts in 1965, ran to 1,600 pages. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen I got to page 800 and the boys were only in August, I knew I was going to have to break it up,\u201d Kessler says. \u201cIt\u2019s really a landmark year for them.\u201d<\/p>\n On the 45th anniversary of Lennon\u2019s death, Kessler said she has no plans. But she did the night he was shot. An English teacher at the time, Kessler was at home getting ready to see her husband, a Navy officer who was due to return the next day from a long deployment overseas. <\/p>\n \u201cI had a brand new dress laid out on the bed. I cleaned the house and had fresh flowers,\u201d she says. \u201cThen a friend of mine called and said, \u2018I need you to sit down.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com<\/a>. Follow him @MarkAShanahan<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Howard](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/P632V64SJREFNAVCTZW4HO6AU4.jpg\")
Howard Cosell in 1975.ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/I77WOTAYTVF5DI7TWXQ5LBSM6U.jpg\")
A woman weeps in front of the Dakota Apartments the morning after a gunman shot and killed John Lennon in New York City, Dec. 9, 1980.Stan Grossfeld\/Globe Staff<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/S76V6ODORMI6NGI6DZMBH7GU6E.jpg\")
A file handout photo released by the New York State Department of Correctional Services dated July 28, 2010, at Attica Prison shows Mark David Chapman, who was convicted of murdering John Lennon outside Lennon’s Manhattan apartment on Dec. 8, 1980. NYSDOCS<\/p>\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/OBQKBUFHE4I6RAOLA4BXWMMOGA.jpg\")
In this April 18, 1972 file photo, John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, leave a US Immigration hearing in New York City. AP\/file<\/p>\n