HV101- John Ono Lennon

Hearing Voices from NPR®
101 John Ono Lennon: A Memorial and Celebration
Host: Lynn Neary of NPR
Airs week of: 2010-10-06

“John Ono Lennon” (52:00 mp3):

Born: John Winston Lennon, October 9 1940
Died: John Ono Lennon, December 8 1980

On Saturday, October 9 2010, John Lennon would have turned 70 years old. This is our public-radio party, memorial and celebration:

Our host recalls how the Beatles changed everything, and John lead the charge; an audio essay, sprinked with live performances and 1963-64 Fan-Flub flexi-disk Christmas messages.

Lennon’s life, in own words, from his hundreds of interviews. Accompanied by music, outtakes, antics and poetics — singing, talking, and testifying about peace, family, and art.

Produced at KGLT-Bozeman with mix help from Colter Langan. Archive recordings are courtesy of Yoko Ono, the BBC, the CBC, Chicago’s Museum Of Broadcast Communications, Group W Productions, Rolling Stone Magazine, Apple, Capital, EMI, and Polydor Records.

WONSAPONATIME there was two Ballons called Jock and Yono. They were strictly in love-bound to happen in a million years. They were together man. Unfortunatimetable they both seemed to have previous experience — which kept calling them one way oranother (you know howitis). But they battled on against overwhelming oddites, includo some of there beast friends. Being in love they cloong even more together man — but some of the poisonessmonster of outrated buslodedshithrowers did stick slightly and tey occaasionaly had to resort to the drycleaners. Luckily this did not kill them and they werent banned from the olympic games. They lived hopefully every after, and who could blame them… —Lennon, Skywriting By Word of Mouth

Scanning the radio dial the night Lennon died. The Prof presents more audio of and info on this found-sound recording at WFMU.

Members of the generation jolted by Lennon’s death recall how they heard the news and how deeply this ex-Beatle’s life affected theirs (where were you when you heard?)

Voices: Scott MacNichol, Daniel Callis, Martin Goldsmith, Jane Blume, Mark Weber, Jim Palmer, John Scariano, Bonnie Renfro, Mary Oishi, Rob Raucci, and Emily Zambello. Produced at Cedar Creek Studios and KUNM-Albuquerque. PRX has a half-hour version of “The Day John Lennon Died.”

Fans gather on the 20th anniversary of Lennon’s death, singing together in Central Park.

“Maybe in the sixties we were naive. Everybody said, ‘We didn’t get a wonderful world of just flowers and peace and happy chocolate, and it won’t be just pretty and beautiful all the time.’ Just like babies; everyone went back to their rooms and sulked: ‘We’re just going to play rock and roll and not do anything else, because the world’s a horrible place, because it didn’t give us everything we cried for.’ Right? Crying for it wasn’t enough. The thing the sixties did was show us the possibilities, and the responsibility we all had.” —Lennon, to RKO Radio, December 8 1980

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Wikipedia has great bios and links for John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Bagism fansite has a Lennon Quiz. Complete Lennon lyrics are at Lyrics.info. “Beatlegs” are Beatles Bootlegs (many mp3s available). The Liverpool Lennons have timelines and family trees at Lennons.net. The Beatle Source has hi-fi mp3s of the Beatles Fan Club Christmas Records (1963-1969) — the Internet Beatles Album has the covers.

In WFMU’s blog, The Professor documented John & Yoko week hosting the Mike Douglas Show. WFMU also offers lots more Lennon including mp3s of John Lennon’s 1971 Rolling Stone Interview.

And the FBI, compelled by FOIA, has released hundreds of pages from their Lennon case files. See also US vs John Lennon.

Thanks to my friend, and KSAN DJ, Phil Charles for the Lennon sig and face. John gave it to Phil after both spent a Lost Night in San Fran: