JOHN LENNON ... share your favorite videos & pics! (and memories where you were Dec 8 1980)

[Bonobo]

73. 1980 really was the year everything changed.

We had moved from Long Island to the Chicago suburb of Skokie that year. I was 14. My world turned upside-down in so many ways.

The town on L.I. was a pretty blue-collar town populated mostly by Italian-Americans and it was rather anti-semitic. Skokie, on the other hand, was filled with Jews. But that year, the Nazis marched there...

I was used to long-haired teenagers with Zeppelin shirts and patched jeans in the style of the 70's. It seemed that I was launched into another world because when I got to Skokie, I was in a world of poofed out hair for girls and mullets or short hair for boys. Instead of jean jackets, they were wearing Members Only jackets and instead of Led Zeppelin, it was the Pet Shop Boys and Flocks of Seagulls.

And instead of Jimmy Carter, it was Ronald Reagan. Yes, the world changed. My 3 older brothers and sisters were gone to college and the house was empty. I was 14 and just turning to my own exploration of the music I had grown up hearing my older siblings blast from their speakers. Queen, Zeppelin, Bowie, Zappa, Tull and yes, John Lennon.

Double Fantasy had come out and I took the opportunity to go deeply into the old albums my brother Adam left. Plastic Ono Band and all that great Lennon. I loved it. Absolutely loved it. Listening to Isolation when I felt so Isolated. "Daddy don't goooooo!" when I felt the pain of my own dad leaving. I really connected to it.

And then, one cold December day, I came downstairs and my mother told me the news. Nothing had ever hit me so hard. It was so senseless. I couldn't understand. It was a splash of cold water in the face. So this was the world that was awaiting me as I entered the world of adults.

14 years old and the world had really changed.