American Morning
Losing Lennon: Legend lives on in O.A.R.'s song 'Dakota'
December 8, 1980, a day that will live in infamy for John Lennon fans. As part of a CNN Documentary “Losing Lennon,” we’re talking to people who had a personal connection to the tragic events of that day when Lennon was gunned down by Mark David Chapman.
AM’s John Roberts talks to radio writer Laurie Kaye, who was part of a team that did the last interview with Lennon on the day he died. When she heard about the shooting, she ran over to Roosevelt Hospital, where Lennon was taken, and witnessed Yoko Ono’s reaction. Also, O.A.R. frontman Marc Roberge talks about how Lennon’s death inspired the alternative rock band’s recent song “Dakota.”
Watch the preview here, and be sure to catch the full documentary,” Losing Lennon: Countdown to Murder,” premiering Saturday and Sunday night at 8 ET on CNN.
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Mr. Roberts: In the spring of '83, Prairie Schooner, a small magazine of poetry and prose out of the University of Nebraska, published the following poem. In light of your recent work on the anniversary revisitaton of John Lennon's murder, I thought you might be interested.
Bill Smillie
THERE
We all have places to be but who can
imagine every rendezvous full of breath,
breathing, every game of space revealing
by turns the same motion
the same mass perpetually
disguised. Time's
a wardrobe. This morning
in Traffic Court while I argued the rolling-
stop issue of particular interest to me,
as other little criminals yawned and frowned and
rattled chains only they could see, a 40th
President 3000 miles east suddenly took job,
house and car from number 39 and half the world
around 52 Americans held hostage
444 days by whiskered foreigners
were suddenly flying to freedom, rising
from the nap of Persian desert like balloons
opening day in Yankee Stadium.
There, between the courtroom doors
pushed in and out while I moved
my appendages like a reasonable man
the world shook.
I remember the night.
New Year's Eve. Driving home early,
sober as a choir of judges I approached
the intersection when a voice from the radio
began counting down its top ten picks for hit
events of the nearly and darkly dissolving
year: Fire. Slapshots. Victory. And Death.
At number 2 I braced for traffic, recalling
the night 2 hit the charts.
Headlights blinked 100 yards south of Main be-
tween halves of a Monday
Night Football game, in the center
of an intersection, turning left, signals
flashing, the announcer said, "Ladies and gentlemen,
John Lennon is dead."
Had I rolled my stop?
I said nothing to the judge about
the irreducible uselessness of halftime entertainment.
AS EMPIRES ERODED NEW RIVERS OF HISTORY
my fine was reduced $14
and the sun and moon went round and round.
Bill Smillie