Keith Elliot Greenberg - "December 8, 1980: The Day John Lennon Died"

On December 8, 1980, I was ten. Though I vaguely remember hearing about John Lennon’s murder, I didn’t know much about the Beatles so the event meant little to me. But as anyone who loves music has to eventually, I realized about twenty years too late that the Beatles were it, that they were where music I had been listening to my whole life sprouted from; and like any born-again, I became a rabid fan. I now have all their albums and the Anthology, and I count them as the most important band ever, hands down. The only bit of Beatle fandom I haven’t partaken of is the predilection to pick a favorite Beatle. With ‘Yesterday, ‘Dear Prudence’, and ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ as my three favorite songs, how can I choose?

So as we approached the thirtieth anniversary of John Lennon’s murder with all the documentaries and specials and magazine articles to remind us of the that day, I now had a chance to sort of re-live the experience, to grieve someone who means more to me now than he did when he died. And it was with great interest that I began Keith Elliot Greenberg’s new book about that day thirty years ago.

This short book begins by showing us Lennon on his last day as he was beginning to turn his life around. In 1980 he was jumping back into the music business after a five year sabbatical. His new single ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ was near the top of the charts. He’d dedicated his life to his family - his five year-old son Sean and wife Yoko - and was making overtures to repair the damage he inflicted on his older son, Julian, then seventeen. Greenberg’s opening approach immediately appealed to me more than if he had flaunted the Lennon of peace and love and revolution. We got shades of this grown-up Lennon at the end of the movie Imagine, when ‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)’ played over home movies of Lennon with his son, scenes that become utterly heartbreaking once we remember he will die, that he would never see Sean “come of age”. Greenberg also mentions the poignancy of that song given Lennon’s murder, and it completes a good set-up for what is to come. He’s given us a character we care about, whether we know John Lennon already or not.

Unfortunately he gets it almost completely wrong from there. Rather than give us a book about the day with historical background sprinkled in to give us context, he gives us a history of the Beatles with elements of the day dusted over. This book is primarily background and secondarily about the event. Now, I understand background was necessary. He rightly gives us a rundown on Lennon’s troubles from childhood, through the Beatles and post-Beatles period. (Important for the redemption story.) He rightly gives us background on the murderer, Mark David Chapman. (Which, BTW, Greenberg does a good job with. He adeptly shows us the man’s instability, how his mind could switch quickly between lucid and mad. By the end, I almost saw him as a sympathetic figure too, which is no small feat.) But do we really need to know about Brian Epstein’s family history, for example? No. But that’s what we get. I suppose if you didn’t know much about the Beatles, this would all be well and good: you’d get a miniature portrait of the Beatles along with a book about Lennon’s murder—a two-for-one deal. But I can’t imagine many people buying the book who don’t already know the basics of the band’s history. Was Greenberg trying to show off his Beatle knowledge or just trying to inject enough filler to make this a full-length book? Probably a little of both, I imagine.

Greenberg also brings in additional characters as a device to broaden the book and make it feel like more of a story. We meet a reporter, a DJ, a city councilwoman - even Mayor Ed Koch. All these players, I suppose, were meant to eventually coalesce around the murder, which isn’t a bad idea, but unfortunately they never do. There’s such a long gap between references to certain people that we forget who they are when they reappear. And once we get to the shootings, all but one or two of these bit players are distractions. When Greenberg is writing about that day - about the photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz, his last interview, his last recording session, the shooting - the book is mesmerizing. It’s such a compelling event, it practically tells itself. All Greenberg had to do was get out of the way. But he seemed intent on getting in the way. He bounces around so much chronologically that sometimes it was hard to keep up with where we were in the story. This is especially the case when he discusses Chapman’s two trips to New York. Sometimes it was hard to know if he was talking about the October trip or the December trip. Greenberg undermines himself by pulling away from the actual events or background relevant to those events.

There are other issues. Greenberg moves around between an omniscient POV and that of an investigative journalist. Most of the time it wasn’t a hindrance, but it could sometimes be distracting. The worst example is the scene of Yoko at the hospital after John has died. Greenberg goes into Yoko’s mind to tell us that she’s worrying about Sean at home, but then a few sentences later quotes her from an interview. This scene was especially discordant because of where it came in the book: John had just died and it was an intense and engrossing spot. Greenberg didn’t need to get in the way.

But narrative decisions are one thing. In a non-fiction book though, factual accuracy is everything, and I found one inaccuracy too big to overlook. Greenberg states on page 164 that when the police drove Lennon to the hospital in their squad car after the shooting: “No one was in the back seat with John Lennon.” Yet not a few hours before earlier, I saw an interview with one of the police officers who accompanied Lennon to Roosevelt Hospital in which he stated that Lennon died in his arms in the back seat. Of course, the former-cop could’ve been lying, but I tend to doubt it. And even if he had, who would Greenberg’s source be to the contrary? The other cop? In the interview, he sat right next to his partner. So are we to believe these men are conspiring? Doubtful. This rather glaring inaccuracy naturally gave me pause as to the validity of other facts in book.

For all this though, the book is still worthwhile. Though I wish the project had ended up in abler hands, a book about the shooting was long overdue. And there is some astute writing here. Greenberg nicely weaves in the other Beatles on the day and in the fearful aftermath. He correctly ties Lennon’s murder to a change in celebrity and their relationships with fans. (And murders still to come.)

And ultimately, the heart of the story - the story of a man’s redemption that came either too late or just in time, depending on your worldview - is strong enough to bleed through even the worst artistic choices. Despite all the problems with this book, after reading it I think John is my new favorite Beatle. If nothing else, Greenberg helped me figure that out.