Remembering the stunning news of John Lennon’s murder — 43 years later, it still makes no sense

I have virtually no memory of a world without The Beatles.

That’s a very good thing.

I was 5 when they exploded into the American consciousness with a performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” a massively popular variety program on CBS for more than two decades. Sullivan was a glum, stiff, awkward newspaper columnist who somehow became a major TV star.

“Ladies and gentlemen ... The Beatles!” Sullivan said, and there they were, the Fab Four, in dark suits and with shockingly long hair.

When The Beatles performed “All My Lovin’” on Feb. 9, 1964, the hype and build-up for their debut performance in America turned out to be understated. Yes, these four young men from Liverpool, England, would change the world.

Over the next five years, The Beatles performed nine times on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” counting videos they submitted. It was the top show in the country and they were the biggest band in the world.

That’s how I grew up. The Beatles were everywhere — on TV, on the radio, on the record players of my sisters and cousins and everyone I knew under 25. They starred in funny movies, lent their images to a cartoon show and were in the news constantly.

It wasn’t because of successful management or their charming natures, although they had both. It was because their music was so amazing.

It still is. Listen to “Rubber Soul,” “Revolver” or any album they did. The sheer volume of excellent songs is stunning.

John Lennon (seen above in a public domain photo posted on wikimedia commons) was born 83 years ago, Oct. 9, 1940, the only offspring of a short, doomed marriage between two troubled souls, Julia Stanley and Alf Lennon.

They didn’t stay together long and had little time for their son, inflicting pain he felt all his life. Did it channel his muse? Did the pain of rejection by not one but both parents somehow foster the gusher of talent and creativity that emerged from his Beatle brain?

Perhaps. He sought answers himself, in therapy, with drugs, alcohol and women, and through the songs and art that poured forth from him.

John, Paul, George and Ringo were together less than a decade. John and Paul met as teens and soon added George, their younger friend, to the group. Ringo, the best timekeeper in Liverpool, joined in time for the rocket ride to the “toppermost of the poppermost.”

When The Beatles stopped working together, fans mourned. For the next decade, we all waited, hoped and some even prayed for a reunion. While they battled over money and argued like siblings, they also collaborated at times, and stayed in touch.

Would there have been a reunion? I think so. Documentaries and books reveal the fact that none of them closed the door to it, and all considered it at times. They were Beatles fans, too.

At some point, they may well have found themselves in a studio, recording one more album. A tour, or at least a few shows, were possible. All that delicious speculation ended 40 years ago. It’s uncanny how John Lennon, a man whose life was messy and cluttered, had such tidy brackets for his life — 1940-80.

I would prefer to dwell on the anniversary of his birth or the first American show. Any date — when “Sgt. Pepper” was released, the day “HELP” first hit the theaters, the day John met Yoko Ono — any day rather than Dec. 8, 1980.

It was a Monday night and John and Yoko were returning to their home in the glamorous Dakota in downtown New York when a lousy excuse for a human — there is no need to mention his name, ever — shot and killed John Lennon.

It made absolutely no sense. Earlier that day, Lennon had signed an autograph on “Double Fantasy,” the comeback record he and Yoko had released a few weeks earlier, for the man who would shoot him in the back that night.

Lennon, who had often been angry and difficult, was in a great frame of mind in his final days, according to his friend and producer Jack Douglas.

“During that whole period, he was just so excited to be back and so happy to be with his family and how much he loved Sean and how things with Yoko were pretty good,” Douglas told People magazine for a preview of the new Apple TV+ documentary series, “John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial. “It was a very different John, and that whole period was just lovely.”

But, he said, while Lennon was upbeat and full of jokes most of the time, he was haunted by premonitions of his impending death.

“He spoke about death every once in a while. He would say things like, ‘I might be gone soon.’ He would say, ‘When I die, it’s going to be bigger than Elvis.’ And I’d say, ‘Stop talking like that.’ He insisted on journals being kept for every moment, everything being documented, me placing microphones all over the studio so that everything could be recorded. It felt like he had a feeling something was coming, and he was very intuitive about things. Extremely. Almost supernaturally about things.”

Like millions of fans, I learned about the horror of Lennon’s murder while watching “Monday Night Football.” Monday was production day at The SDSU Collegian, and we worked late into the night.

But a few of us took a break and caught the end of a close game between the Patriots and the Dolphins. Howard Cosell, the voice of ABC Sports, interrupted the play-by-play with a report of “an unspeakable tragedy.”

He said Lennon had been shot and rushed to a hospital — but he was dead.

We were stunned. The world was stunned.

We left the office soon after. I was asked to write a short piece for the paper and although I have always been able to craft together something resembling a story or a column on deadline, I could not do it that time.

We met at my girlfriend’s place, where we played records and listened to the radio, which played Beatles and John Lennon music nonstop. We drank, but could not get drunk. We were just stunned, like millions of other people across the world.

My friends Al and Pat and I met again Tuesday afternoon after the paper was put to bed, and we drank and talked and listened to music, but it didn’t help. I bought every newspaper I could find, but they all carried the same horrible story.

That night, another CBS icon, anchorman Walter Cronkite, reported on the assassination of a legend. We huddled around a TV at The Lantern in downtown Brookings, somehow hoping for better news.

“The death of a man who sang and played the guitar overshadows the news from Poland, Iran and Washington tonight,” Cronkite said to lead off his 5:30 p.m. news broadcast.

That somehow made it official. John was gone.

But his music remained. It’s still played every day, and millions of fans who weren’t born in 1980, much less 1964 or 1940, are listening.

They won’t know a world without The Beatles or John Lennon, either.

Tom Lawrence has written for several newspapers and websites in South Dakota and other states and contributed to The New York Times, NPR, The  Telegraph, The Daily Beast and other media outlets.