40 years ago today John Lennon was murdered on the streets of New York City. Eckhartz Press author Bobby Skafish was on the air at WXRT when the news broke. He wrote about it in his book We Have Company. Here is that chapter from the book…
Monday, December 8th, 1980, the night John Lennon died, I was on the air at WXRT, doing a 6 to 10 PM show. On Mondays the 9 o’clock hour was always “This Week in Chicago,” a 60 minute heads up on who was coming to Chicago and the surrounding area to play live music.
During the second half of this specialty show an alarm went off on the news wire. There was a tiny room with a permanently opened door that housed a teletype machine or two. When it would signal an alarm due to important news, you could hear it out in the hall, but in the sound-proof air studio a flashing light did the job. John Lennon had been shot in New York City. I went back on the air, and not long after another bulletin came: Lennon was dead. It was right around this time News Director Neil Parker called with corroboration. Not a long time before Johnny Mars would take over at 10.
My dilemma was this: This Week in Chicago, sponsored by Talman Home Federal Savings and Loan, was specific in its mission. Yet, on a December 8th there was much less action on the stages; artists toured Chicago less during cold-weather months. That meant less Springsteen and Queen and more Koko Taylor and Phil ‘n’ the Blanks. This was one of those kinds of weeks in Chicago.
So, although I made the announcement on the air, I couldn’t, in my mind, play Lennon music. I put myself in a box of my own making. There was no phone conversation with program director Norm Winer. In his first movie Pee Wee Herman proclaimed himself a loner and a rebel. At most, I was only half that.
The phone calls from listeners were another matter. People literally cried over the phone, and some gave me a “say it isn’t so” challenge I couldn’t meet.
After I signed off TWIC, Mars took over and worked the Lennon tragedy thoroughly, playing plenty of his music and adding commentary. Mars was acclaimed, I believe in popular free Chicago weekly The Reader, for rising to the occasion.
I sort of disqualified myself from doing something timely and soothing and laudatory – all called for. Considering that this monumental thing cold-cocked me with no time to reflect, only react, while being deep into the regularly scheduled offering, the task of fitting an ocean of thoughts and emotions into a thimble of time was just too overwhelming.
In 1989 midday host Bob Stroud and I jointly interviewed John’s first son, recording artist Julian Lennon, live over the Loop airwaves as he was promoting his third album, Mr. Jordan. I’ll never forget playing Julian’s first single “Valotte” for the first time in 1984, eerily hearing his dad’s voice in his. In person, Julian was a sweet, down-to-earth guy. When we were on, wiseacre me said that his music was great and wondered if he came from “a musical background at all?” Laughs, fortunately, and Julian answered, “Just a little bit.”
Before we went to spots Stroud asked Julian if we could ask him a few famous-dad type questions, and he replied, “You can ask me whatever you want.” Relief! I took the first one upon returning.
Bobby Skafish: “I heard a rumor years ago that when the Live Aid concert took place that you rehearsed with George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr?”
Julian Lennon: “No, not at all. There was a lot of press about it saying ‘are you or aren’t you’ and we never talked about it and never discussed it.’
He also denied ever playing music together with the three living ex-Beatles. So I tried another one, about having heard that he had been waiting for a sign from the afterlife from his father.
JL: “Well, I had always been told…dad said that if there’s any way of getting back to anybody it would be a white feather across the room. And I used to look for it, but if it does happen that would be special, but I’m not going to sit around and wait for it.”
In December of 1995 the unexpected appeared – a Beatles record released 25 years after their break up. “Free as a Bird” started as a John Lennon New York City home demo in 1977. Fifteen years after his assassination Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, aided by co-producer Jeff Lynne of ELO, Travelling Wilburys, and Harrison’s Cloud Nine album fame, added overdubs at Paul’s studio in Sussex, England. To mark the release of new Beatles music, WGN television news sent a cameraman and reporter Randy Salerno (1963-2008) to WXRT’s studio on Belmont Avenue, two blocks west of Cicero. They basically made a piece about me playing “Free as a Bird” over the air, including a short interview by Mr. Salerno.
I remember thinking the late Randy Salerno had every right to pull some sort of rank because he was in TV while I did radio, but nothing could be further from the truth. There was a kindness about the man.
It aired that night on WGN-TV news.
