The new Yoko Ono biography, appropriately titled Yoko: A Biography, recounts the first words the multi-hyphenate artist reportedly said when she learned that her husband, Beatle John Lennon, had died.
“It’s not true. You’re lying. It can’t be. I don’t believe you.”
Author David Sheff sets the scene at the Roosevelt Hospital on West 59th Street, where Lennon was rushed after being shot four times, including twice in the back, just outside of the Dakota building, his home with Ono and their young son, Sean, in New York City. (Lennon was also father to son Julian, from a previous marriage).
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Ono, who had been married to Lennon for 11 years up to that point (Dec. 8, 1980), “pleaded” with the doctor to tell her Lennon was OK, Sheff writes, but he could not.
Through tears, Ono asked the staff to delay announcing Lennon’s death so that she could tell Sean what happened before he saw it on the news. When she got home, the boy was already asleep.
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Lennon was pronounced dead just after 11 p.m.
“At the time, televisions in millions of American homes were tuned to ABC’s Monday Night Football,” Sheff writes in the book, out Tuesday, March 25. “Announcer Howard Cosell‘s voice was familiar to sports fans, who’d grown up with him covering the careers of Muhammad Ali, Joe Namath, and other sports stars, but he had never spoken as solemnly. ‘An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City — John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City — the most famous, perhaps, of all the Beatles — shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival.”
By dawn, thousands of people had gathered outside of the Dakota.
“Many cried as they sang along,” Sheff writes, “and their voices wafted up to the seventh floor, where, in her and John’s bedroom, Yoko couldn’t escape the voices singing ‘She Loves You,’ ‘In My Life’ and ‘Strawberry Field Forever.’ … Yoko was haunted by John’s voice and words.”
Yoko: A Biography is out Tuesday, March 25.
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