Every year, on December 8th, fans and pop culture enthusiasts alike gather in Central Park’s Strawberry Fields (what amounts to a not very impressive patch with a mosaic that spells out IMAGINE in the center of its circle) to honor the immortal John Lennon. Made immortal on this date in history as a result of being gunned down by Mark David Chapman. But before that fateful winter day in 1980, Lennon was an unabashed lover of New York City–one of the many famous people not from there that would become an honorary citizen as a result of such enthusiasm (see: that photo of Lennon in a New York City tank top or that photo of Lennon throwing up a peace sign in front of the Statue of Liberty). Moving there (or at least trying to) in August of 1971, Lennon was quick to fall into the vortex and vernacular of the radical left with his beloved, Yoko Ono. Of course, she apparently wasn’t beloved enough for Lennon to bother keeping it in his pants at a party they attended together at hypocrite Jerry Rubin’s (a counterculture poster boy and activist who later became a successful stockbroker and businessman in the 80s). It was there that Lennon got drunk and had sex with another party guest, inspiring Yoko to write “Death of Samantha.”
So began 1973 with Lennon spiraling into his illustrious “lost weekend” a.k.a. about two years spent in L.A. with his Asian paramour, May Pang, but mostly wreaking havoc at the Troubadour with Harry Nilsson. When he came back to New York with his tail between his legs at the end of 1974, it was only a matter of time before he wormed his way back into Yoko’s heart. For Lennon, like New York, was the toxic yet intoxicating being she couldn’t seem to give up. Yet, at the very least, he offered his household services once their son, Sean, was born in ‘75–on John’s own birthday, October 9th. This came after a tumultuous period of being on the constant radar of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) thanks to Richard Nixon’s paranoia about the cannabis-smoking freedom fighter. In the wake of Nixon’s resignation post-Watergate scandal, however, it appeared Lennon was in the clear regarding his frequent threats of deportation, finally granted a green card in ‘76, the year Carter won the presidency.
Back in ‘71 though, Lennon’s U.S. life was just starting to get terrible, right around the time he performed at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His association with the leftist insurgency Nixon was sure was out to get him made him public enemy number one to Nixon’s lackeys at the FBI, as well as his main stooges, John Mitchell, John Ehrlichman and Bob Haldeman. In the 2006 documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon, Gore Vidal is one of the interview subjects commenting on how terrified the government was of Lennon and his clout with the youth, Vidal positioning it as them thinking, “What is this dirty foreigner doing over here with his songs criticizing us and our war? Patriotism, as we know, is the last refuge of a scoundrel. We’re talking about real scoundrels like Nixon.” Nixon who was well-informed on Lennon’s activities by J. Edgar Hoover’s version of what the FBI ought to be doing to protect the nation’s interests.
As Lennon grew more attached to New York as his “spiritual home”–like so many naive enough to believe that the city stands for anything other than what pop culture brainwashing has falsely imbued it with–he simultaneously grew more paranoid. Aware of wire taps and a suspicious number of “maintenance men” needing to go into the basement of his building. It all smacked of surveillance (let us not forget Nixon’s fondness for it, especially with The Plumbers)–and someone who wanted Lennon to know he was being surveyed.
They didn’t want his kind in the U.S. Not just because he touted a message of peace, love and understanding, but because he was a foreigner biting the hand that was feeding him. Relishing the spotlight and making money from U.S. sales while spitting in its face at the same time. The capitalist regime does not take kindly to this. And the capitalist regime is at its most manifest in New York, a city as dichotomous as Lennon. For on the one hand, it seems to promote the artists’ lifestyle with its “openness” and its supposed “anything goes” philosophy, complete with the long meaningless emblem that is the Statue of Liberty. On the other, it is the hub of financial greed. Which aspect of it is the truer version of itself?
For Lennon’s assassin, he found the latter to be his mark’s realer persona, seeing the Beatle as a hypocrite for preaching his message pulled from the spectrum of radical leftism when he was living like a fat cat in the Dakota, one of New York’s most elite buildings on the Upper West Side. And it’s true, Lennon, particularly after becoming a dad for the second time, did relish the elements of materialist Western society–as most embodied on steroids in New York–that were in conflict with the side of life he flirted with as a “peacenik.”
Despite having at last become a naturalized citizen of a country that epitomized everything he spoke out about with regard to discrimination and injustice (apparently always seeking acceptance from those who rejected him as both his mother and father did), his fight to stay in New York would be his downfall. For honestly, would Mark David Chapman have bothered to schlep all the way to London to take out Lennon? It seems unlikely. He might have found a closer substitute mark to unleash his aggression on. And Lennon might have lived long enough to do the more sound celebrity thing and move around from one house or massive apartment in a major city to another like a glamorous gypsy. Alas, his devotion to a city that attracts crazies and cocksuckers of the highest caliber for the sake of believing that New York gives a shit about anything but inflicting pain was to be his complete and total annihilation.
