Taken from:
Liverpool Echo
Section:
News
“Fans, tearful, angry and most of all stunned, breathed in the words of peace, the messages of hope as a tonic against a crazed day in which their world had been turned upside down.”
The night all Liverpool sang its lament
A requiem for John Lennon played throughout Liverpool’s pubs and clubs last night. The music was his own. The ex-Beatle, whose life was stopped by an assassin’s bullets, livid on again through the songs that were the mark of his genius.
Fans, tearful, angry and most of all stunned, breathed in the words of peace, the messages of hope as a tonic against a crazed day in which their world had been turned upside down.
A whole city was in mourning. No one could feel they were intruding on private grief, it was a very personal loss to them all. Just like a death in the family, fans gathered round each other to give support, but normally voluble Scousers were silent and withdrawn. In many city centre pubs it was the sound of John Lennon’s new single – Just Like Starting Over – that over and over again filled the emptiness then felt.
Sobbing fans
800 young fans gathered in Rotters discotheque to hear the new wave band XTC stand in silence for a minute to pay their last respects to Lennon. The only sound was that of sobbing fans.
It was very eerie,” said D.J. Stevie Allan. “We played Beatle numbers and John Lennon records throughout the evening but people wouldn’t dance. They wanted to listen, to let it wash over them. Everybody was shocked by his death and there was just this terrible feeling of sadness.”
Many were too young to have ever known the Beatles in their heyday: “I loved that man,” they said, although all they share is a Liverpool that has changed since his day and his music.
Even though Lennon was killed half a world away, in death as in life he brought importance and attention to Liverpool.
Gloomsville
The curiosity-seekers, among them film crews from all over the country, came to the Grapes in Mathew Street to recapture some of the faces of his past. Bob Wooler, ex-DJ of the Cavern Club, was holding court in the pub where Lennon who thought himself as the court jester of the youth movement, once ruled. “It is gloomsville here tonight,” said Bob, “everybody feels so stunned.”
Old Cavernites packed the pub to recapture the atmosphere of the pub where they first met the four Liverpool lads who were to take the world by storm. “Nothing worse could have happened,” said Jason Cheng. “I was crying my eyes out and my five-year-old son, kept asking what was wrong. How do you explain to a kid what the death of one of the Beatles means?
“When I saw John in here I had longer hair than him, right down to my shoulders and he always said: ‘Hey up missus, Grow your hair for peace’. I’ll never cut my hair short now. I heard about his murder from a friend who was mugged and beaten up himself last night but he was more upset by Lennon’s death than what happened to him.”
A shrine at the Cavern
A rebel, it was the time that John was chucked out of the Crack pub in Toxteth for swearing that regulars remembered last night. The table where the Liverpool art college student scratched his name has long since been lifted by souvenir-hungry fans.
In the darkness of the She discotheque the whole evening was given to playing Beatle records. “I knew wherever I went that they would play Lennon’s music,” said 23-years-old Kim Scanlon, “I couldn’t have stayed at home tonight. I somehow feel closer to him again listening to his music.”
The only sign of grief-stricken fans who during the day had turned the site of the Cavern where Beatlemania was born into a shrine was the word ‘Lennon’ sprayed over a wall, with a flower and a peace symbol by it.
In the cold night air of Mathew Street it brought home the chill of what had happened in America.
Consolation
I am the one they love to hate,” said the Beatle whose music rocked the city and the whole world to its roots. But how could anyone dislike the lovable nut who went around putting his head in a paper bag like a very sick airline passenger.
You may not remember me John, but you opened wide the private dream of a lazy child when you took to your bed for seven days and suggested other people should.
Fantastic, It didn’t bother me that it was supposed to be a protest for peace – bed was just a peaceful place. The revolution never came, just a phone call asking why I wasn’t at school. I don’t suppose you remember either the rumour that you were coming to live in the next street to us in Heswall, but it was as though the man in the moon was going to land.
You were a rebel with a cause – peace – and you deserved better than a violent death. The one consolation is that your cause will live on wherever your music is played.
