In Baltimore and around the world, Beatles? fans today are remembering the anniversary of musician John Lennon?s death.
“It was the worst day of my life,” said Mark Lapidos, of Westwood, N.J., who organizes festivals for Beatles fans, including many from Maryland.
“It was so sudden. It was something you never thought could happen: Someone being killed because they?re a musician. Beatles fans never really get over it.”
Many fans will be traveling today to New York City to visit Strawberry Fields in Central Park to commemorate Lennon?s death.
“There will be thousands of people there remembering John,” Lapidos said.
Baltimore resident Stuart Zolotorow, who as a teenager spent years gathering signatures in Lennon?s support after the musician faced deportation in the early 1970s, said he won?t be able to make it to New York this year. But he said he plans to listen to the new “Love” album, a remix of Beatles songs, in Baltimore to remember Lennon.
“I?m just going to take some time to listen to the album and enjoy the songs,” Zolotorow said.
Beatles? fans are also taking up Yoko Ono?s recent call to make the anniversary of the death of her husband to become a day of worldwide healing.
“Every year, let?s make Dec. 8th the day to ask for forgiveness from those who suffered the insufferable,” Ono wrote in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times.
Lennon was gunned down on Dec. 8, 1980. The shooter, Mark David Chapman, remains in New York?s Attica state prison.
“It?s an ideal,” Lapidos said of Ono?s message. “It?s saying what John would have said: ?You may say I?m a dreamer, but I?m not the only one.? I?m 100 percent behind it.”
