Just as people of a certain generation will never forget where they were on yesterday’s date in 1941, and those of another generation will always remember where they were on November 22, 1963, I will forever recall vividly where I was 29 years ago tonight. Ronald Reagan had been elected President about a month earlier, defeating Jimmy Carter in a landslide, thanks, in large part, to the fact that something like 70 Americans were into their 13th month as hostages in Iran, and the Soviets seemed to be poised to invade Poland. It was a Monday night, and I was a college junior in my dorm room at SUNY Oswego. A couple of my friends were down in the lounge watching Monday Night Football, but it was a crappy game between the Patriots and the Dolphins that I wasn’t much interested in. So, instead, I was in bed with the lights out, taking a little toke, and listening to the radio – WCMF from Rochester, which was a really good station back in those days. The DJ broke in at some point with the news that John Lennon had been shot in New York City, and a few minutes later – just before 11:00 PM – he had to choke back tears as he announced that John had died of gunshot wounds. Stunned, I walked down to the lounge and told the people watching the game that John Lennon had been shot to death. A few moments later, Howard Cosell announced it to the football-watching world, and I went back to my room to listen to a constant stream of Lennon songs that would continue over the next few days.

I don’t think I can adequately express how I felt (how we all felt). Everything about it really sucked. It would have sucked if he’d died in a car accident or a plane crash or even a heroin overdose, but that somebody who wrote songs about peace had been murdered so young and so violently was stunning. I mean, who didn’t love John Lennon (Nixon, Hoover, Haleman and Erlichman)? And after taking a few years off to be a dad, here he was back again, having just released Double Fantasy, which, if you ignored the Yoko tracks, had some great music on it, and he was already in the rehearsal stage for his next album – Milk and Honey. Suddenly he was gone. Some deranged asshole had done what Nixon never could – silence John Lennon’s voice forever.

If there is a God and God lets shit like this happen, then God’s a dick.

But time marches on, and now it’s almost 30 years later. We never did manage to give peace a chance, did we?