“We never thought it would last at all,” he told an interviewer.
Boy, was he wrong. Within months of their arrival, the Beatles had five number-one songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles chart, and soon after, they had 14—an incredible achievement never equaled since. By the time the group disbanded and went their separate ways in 1970, they had produced an unprecedented 30 top singles and 18 albums, which have sold more than 600 million copies worldwide to date.
The band’s music remains as relevant and popular today as it was that cold day in February, when I stood on the tarmac to witness the arrival of the four mop-heads from Liverpool who would trigger a cultural revolution. As their music proclaims, they came to hold our hand—but they ended up capturing the heart and soul of an entire nation.
* * *
Like me, the legions of Beatles fans in America will always remember that special moment when they came to our shores. And they will never forget the moment 16 years later, when the music died—the night John Lennon was murdered. We lost more than a brilliant musician that awful December night in 1980. For many young people who were embraced by his music and love, Lennon’s death meant the loss of part of their childhood.
It was just before 11 p.m. when we learned that Lennon had been shot. My colleague Tim Malloy and I charged out of the news-room, but by the time we arrived at Roosevelt Hospital, Lennon was gone, unable to survive the four bullet wounds to his back and chest. The hospital’s declaration of death came at 11:15. Lennon had turned 40 just weeks earlier. Near collapse, his wife, Yoko Ono, cried hysterically, “It’s not true, it’s not true!”
Less than an hour earlier, Lennon and Ono had returned to their residence at the Dakota, the massive Victorian apartment building on Central Park West, after an arduous day that included a photo shoot with photographer Annie Leibovitz and a lengthy recording session. Instead of driving through the front gate into the private courtyard entrance, Lennon decided to get out of the limo to greet some fans who had gathered in front of the building. Among them was Mark David Chapman, a 25-year-old loner who had earlier gotten Lennon to autograph a copy of his newest album, Double Fantasy. As Lennon chatted with fans, some of whom had waited all day to catch a glimpse of their idol, Chapman pulled a .38-caliber revolver from his black trench coat and shouted, “Mr. Lennon.” Lennon had barely turned when Chapman fired five shots at him, four of which tore through the musician’s body.
Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, where doctors worked feverishly in an effort to save him. They pumped his heart over and over, but to no avail—and the man who had once said, “I really thought love would save us all” was pronounced dead. One man’s hatred and paranoia had betrayed his prophecy.
Handcuffed in the rear of a police car, Chapman reportedly told the arresting officers, “Sorry I ruined your night.”
Shock gave way to universal numbness as fans gathered by the thousands in front of the Dakota. They stood and stared at the building where the most famous Beatle had lived, and cried openly.
One man, tears streaming down his cheeks, turned to my microphone to declare, “I don’t know why someone would kill such a beautiful person.”
A young woman told me, “He’s a part of my childhood,” and a middle-aged man, choked with emotion, said, “He helped us find ourselves.”
Mourners placed flowers everywhere. There were bouquets, a rose here and there, and carnations, along with personal notes expressing love and sadness. It was as though a member of every-one’s family had died. The fans gathered at the Dakota sang individually, and together in groups; “All you need is love” became their anthem, filtering constantly through the air.
For days, people kept vigil in front of the famed building where Lennon had lived and died. It seemed so surreal, so unreal, that the inspiration behind the Beatles was actually gone. On the Sunday following his murder, more than 50,000 people, young and old, staged a memorial tribute to him, in what was to become the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park. Some perched themselves on the limbs of trees. They carried candles and flowers—and they sang. The music of the Beatles, much of which Lennon had composed, resonated across the fields on the cold December afternoon. It was all so moving; and as I reported on the emotional memorial, my mind flashed back to that special day 16 years earlier, when I stood at Kennedy Airport reporting on the arrival of the Beatles in America.
We can all only imagine what might have been, had that gun misfired on December 8, 1980. John Lennon would have written more iconic music, and we would be celebrating his birthday each year instead of mourning the anniversary of his death. His killer remains in prison to this day, his multiple appeals for parole denied.
Each day, visitors return to Strawberry Fields in Central Park, where there is now a beautiful mosaic of the word “IMAGINE.” They stand in reverence and sing Lennon’s songs of love and peace, which remain as relevant today as they were the day he wrote them. “Imagine all the people/Living life in peace”—these are such poignant lyrics, the words of a dreamer who is gone, and whose dream is yet to be realized.
* * *
More than half a century after they became a household name, the Beatles’ star still shines brightly. Ringo Starr and now-Sir Paul McCartney, the only surviving members of the group, are sought after constantly for concerts and public appearances. I was there for one of them, the night McCartney dazzled 15,000 fans crammed into Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. For me it was like a time warp, flashing back to younger days when we were carefree and innocent, and found pure escape in the music of those four lovable lads from Liverpool. McCartney was playing solo this time, performing non-stop for fans who wouldn’t let him leave the stage.
“So you want more?” he asked, a glint in his eye. To the roaring approval of the crowd, he responded with a simple, “Okay,” delivering such Beatles classics as “Yesterday” and “Lovely Rita,” along with some songs he had never performed on any previous tour.
I marveled as my eyes scanned the crowd, seeing the once-reckless teens now baby boomers in their sixties, many paunchy and gray, mouthing lyrics and waving their arms to the sound of McCartney’s music. Fans held up signs with messages like “All You Need Is Paul.” I caught myself swaying with the crowd, my arms locked in my wife’s to the left and a friend’s to the right as McCartney led us through the melodic strains of “Hey Jude.” We were thousands of strangers standing under one roof, bonded for an evening as one, and McCartney’s concert was a rejuvenation of our youth, if only for a few hours.
McCartney, now in his 70s, showed boundless energy as he waltzed across the huge stage for two and a half hours without a break, his voice never faltering. Projected on jumbo screens, the musical genius alternated between guitar and piano, dedicating songs to his current and former wives. Throughout the concert he had the audience in the palm of his hand, and he seemed to love it as much as we did. When the show ended McCartney left the stage to the deafening roar of a grateful audience stomping their feet—then returned once more for a final reprise of his ever-popular “Yesterday.”
It is the yesterdays that we cling to; and it is memories of concerts like this one and the many that came before it, uniting and reuniting us with these beloved musicians, that will remain with us and future generations through the many tomorrows.
17
MARCHING WITH MARTIN LUTHER KING, IN LIFE AND DEATH
Keeping in step with Dr. Martin Luther King during march through Mississippi, June 1966 and observing an emotional moment in Memphis funeral home in April 1968.
There are few figures in American history iconic enough to have endured the test of time and woven themselves permanently into the very fabric of America’s consciousness. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of those figures. As a young reporter, I covered part of his journey as he traversed the highways and streets of the South, effectively using non-violence as a weapon against hatred and injustice. And years later, I was there when thousands mourned the death of Dr. King�
�a victim of the violence he tried to eradicate.
At just over five-and-a-half feet, Dr. King turned out to be much shorter than I had envisioned, when we shook hands that warm June day in 1966 in Hernando, Mississippi. A stocky man with broad shoulders and skin the color of burnished mahogany, he was there to continue the March Against Fear after its organizer, James Meredith, the man who broke the color barrier at the University of Mississippi, was shot and wounded by a white gunman.
What Dr. King lacked in physical height, he exhibited in the stature of his character. As he interacted with his fellow marchers, I saw a powerful personality who knew how to electrify and inspire others. He was a master wordsmith who articulated his message clearly and strikingly, as was evidenced by his response to a question I asked about the Meredith shooting. “It is indicative of the fact that we still live in a morally inclement climate, filled with torrents of hatred and jostling winds of violence,” he said, adding, “and I think many levels of our society must take responsibility for this.”
As other leaders of the civil rights movement gathered—including James Farmer from the Congress of Racial Equality and Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—I looked for a telephone to file a report for the Mutual Broadcasting System. I finally found a telephone booth, only to discover that the receiver had been cut from the phone. Several other locations had undergone similar acts of vandalism; authorities believed it was the work of the Ku Klux Klan, in a coordinated effort to prevent reporters from getting their stories out. It was clear that reporters were not welcome here; the hostility was palpable in other ways as well. The locals didn’t like that we were showing ugly images of them to the world, and responded with rage and threats to reporters.
Determined to get my report out, I drove to a nearby junkyard and engaged the owner with a poor imitation of a Southern accent. “Mornin’,” I drawled, telling him that I was a local reporter and asking to use his phone. It worked, and the bigoted geezer sat down next to me to listen in. Wary of arousing his suspicions, I soon had my colleagues on the other end of the line in New York thinking that I had lost my mind as I used language entirely uncharacteristic of me. (Yes, I used the “N” word several times.) It worked. When I asked the old fellow if he would retrieve something from my car for me, he complied without hesitation, giving me a moment of privacy to explain myself to my editors and record my exclusive about the KKK’s interference.
As a young reporter, I was experiencing my first foray into the Deep South. It was a place of contradictions—most strikingly the overwhelming beauty and serenity of the red clay country contrasted with the ugly behavior of the rednecks out to stir trouble and try to deny the Negroes—as even politely they were called back then—the right to march through their state. Toward evening I would witness groups of these hatemongers in pickup trucks, circling like locusts menacingly around the campsite where the marchers were bedded down for the night. The locals didn’t like how we reporters were portraying them in the media, and I could feel the hostility everywhere. “May I ask you a question?” I remember asking one man, who promptly gritted his teeth and barked, “No, ya can’t—now git out of my face!”
Fortunately, there were other exchanges less fraught with tension. For the first few days of the assignment, I was based out of a Holiday Inn Junior in Sardis, Mississippi, where I met a little angel named Donna Nead. Donna, the daughter of the hotel manager, was an inquisitive, smart and very impressionable eight-year-old. She approached me one morning during breakfast, while I was writing notes and listening to my tape recorder, and asked if I was a reporter and what I was doing there. When she learned I was from New York, she told me she had never met a Yankee, and looked at me curiously. On further conversation, she revealed that she always thought that Yankees had horns! I was delighted to change her impression, and for years afterward we remained pen pals.
As we walked south along Highway 51—the tar, molten from the hot afternoon sun, clutching at my feet—I kept pace with Dr. King, keeping my microphone pointed at him to pick up his words. He kept up a stream of speech; he was motivational, inspirational, hopeful. As we passed a cotton field in Senatobia, he waved into the distance, exclaiming, “Come on, children, come on!” I watched in amazement as small dark figures emerged from afar: first 10, then 20 and more, coming from behind the tree line to join the march.
The interaction among the civil rights leaders themselves was something to observe. Each had a distinctly different approach and style. Dr. King eloquently preached his message of non-violence—the unwavering principle of his leadership—and uncompromising demand for justice.
“We don’t want some of our rights, not token handouts,” I remember him declaring. “We want all of our rights.” Alongside him, with fire in his voice, the radical Stokely Carmichael spoke to the incipient Black Power movement.
“The way we’re going to stop black people from being shoved out is when we get black sheriffs,” he bellowed. “What we need is Black Power!”
James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality and one of the most articulate civil-rights leaders I’ve ever met, intoned, “We’re tired of people telling us we have to go someplace else for our rights.”
The vanguard of marchers grew in number as they made their way ever so slowly along the 220-mile journey to Jackson, sweltering under the oppressive June heat. The chant of “We Shall Overcome” echoed through the hills and valleys, as agitated locals honked their horns and shouted obscenities.
“All they want is attention,” one gawker insisted. Another shouted, “Tell them to go home.” One man told me he believed Dr. King was “in this for the money.”
Already overpowered by the heat, I found myself consumed with emotion when I saw hundreds of marchers clustered in the shade under a giant pin oak tree. They were standing over the body of a 58-year-old sharecropper who, against the will of his family, had joined the march to speak out for freedom. Armistead Phipps had a heart condition, and the first day out, he collapsed and died in the 94-degree heat. In death, Phipps’s sacrifice gained him the recognition he never had in life, as King and the other leaders of the Civil Rights movement recited the 23rd Psalm and sang Negro spirituals.
During a break in the march, I dashed into a motel along Highway 51 to phone in a report. On my way out I chatted with a couple of employees, who voiced their disdain over “the n*ggers trespassing through our town.” I grabbed a couple of Cokes from the vending machine, and joined Dr. King where he sat on a dirt mound just off the highway. I offered him one of the drinks, looking around at the glares of dagger hostility directed at me by the folks at the motel across the road. Dr. King and I chatted pleasantly for a few minutes. I asked him why he was doing this, why was he putting his life on the line. (By that time he had already withstood several attempts on his life, including being stabbed with a letter opener.) His answer was short and to the point.
“For the children,” he said, his voice trailing off as he repeated, “for the children.” He was optimistic but grounded in the difficult realities of the movement; while he felt that great strides had been made, he saw clearly the long road still ahead. He expressed concern about “Negroes losing motivation,” because so many aspects of their lives consistently made them feel as though they didn’t count. To him, the civil rights movement was an issue of self-worth among blacks, as well as tolerance among whites. That evening, I would hear him speak directly in answer to this feeling, proclaiming to the gathering of marchers, “I came to Mississippi to tell you that you are somebody.”
* * *
22 months later, Dr. King came to Memphis, Tennessee, to support sanitation workers looking to unionize. His visit was cut short, and once again I would come face-to-face with him—this time as he lay in an open casket at the R.S. Lewis and Sons Funeral Home. He had been murdered the day before on April 4th, 1968, by lone assassin James Earl Ray.
Riots were already rocking cities across the nation as my plane mad
e its final approach to Memphis. Suddenly we felt a severe jolt, and my first thought was that we had been hit by something fired from below. It was also the first impression of my neighbor in the next seat, veteran CBS reporter Ike Pappas, who had seen his share of violence during his coverage of the Vietnam War. He bolted from a deep sleep, fear emanating from his eyes, and together we were relieved to hear the captain’s announcement that it had been nothing more than bad turbulence. It seemed a fitting introduction to the political turmoil to come.
There was a chill in the air as daylight filtered through the early-morning clouds outside the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King had been shot hours earlier as he stood on the balcony of his second-floor room. It was the dawning of one of the darkest days in American history, and for me, it was surreal to stand there, looking at stone-faced police officers overseeing an active crime scene against the backdrop of disbelieving mourners gathered in the parking lot, their eyes swollen from tears. A young Jesse Jackson first emerged that day, as the self-declared spokesman for the King family. He spoke of the civil rights leader’s greatness, and the impact of his loss. Jackson was with King when he was shot, and claimed, “I cradled him in my arms.”
As I interviewed people who had been close to Dr. King, I learned that King might have prophesied his own death. In a speech delivered the night before his murder, he spoke at a Mason temple about threats that had been made on his life. My notes are fading now, but his words remain indelibly clear.
“We’ve got some difficult days ahead,” he said, “but it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. I’m happy tonight,” he concluded. “I’m not worried about anything.” 24 hours later, Dr. Martin Luther King was dead at the age of 39.
As I Saw It Page 10
