Let Me Take You Down

I am sure everyone heard that October 9th would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday. As many times that I have been in Central Park I have never been to “Strawberry Fields”, the section that has been made into a memorial to Lennon, almost directly across the avenue from the Dakota entrance where he was murdered. I just didn’t want to deal with that bad memory even after nearly thirty years.


But that Saturday was different and I made plans to spend much of the day at the park he loved so much. I thought I would head in the direction of the memorial and just see how close I could get. It was a beautiful sunny day so I was prepared for a crowd.

Around noon I entered the park from the west side at 72nd Street and immediately saw all the vendors set up selling anything with his name or image on it. Just past that was a brass quartet playing Beatles songs and a two man crew interviewing and video recording fans. A little further in the park was the memorial and there was a small crowd around it. I took my time and as someone moved away I inched up until I was only about three rows of people away from the center.

Everyone was singing along with an impromptu group who were playing all variety of instruments from the edge of the circle. By this time the circle was already nearly full of flowers, candles, photos, and apples. The crowd would only part for a muscian to get in or out of the first circle. It was a non-stop singalong with an ever expanding group of fans and musicians. In all I was there for about three hours and I couldn’t tell you how many songs were sung during that period. All Beatles’ songs whether or not they were Lennon ones were played as were lots of his solo songs. It was all unstructured and spontaneous with no one in charge or organizing anything. It made me think of an outdoor church service and nobody needed the hymnal books because they knew all the songs. There was an incredible mix of people, all ages, little kids and teenagers singing along with all the oldsters. Between songs I heard a multitude of languages spoken as well, a modern day Tower of Babel, but with the universal language of the Beatles words and music. While I was there the crowd grew to a couple thousand I would guess.


I had kind of hoped to get close enough to get a photo of the Imagine Memorial mosaic but the inner circle of people just wasn’t showing any sign of budging. So instead I took this picture of the sky directly above the memorial. That seemed appropriate as the church ceiling. As John sang, “…above us only sky…”.

Peace.