EXTRA: Imagine it was just a dream

The death of John Lennon on this date 34 years ago still has a touch of unreality in my mind, emphasized by the fact that when it happened, my initial reaction was to think it was all just a dream.

I recall being back in high school at the time that Lennon died at age 40 by a deranged fan, of sorts, who shot him outside the luxury apartment in New York City where he lived with wife Yoko Ono.

WHAT I RECALL was getting home from school that day feeling particularly sluggish, to the point where I laid down on the bed and wound up drifting off to sleep.

Later in the evening, I woke up briefly and saw a television set turned to the news, where the announcer told that Lennon had been shot just an hour earlier.

I was feeling so groggy that I quickly drifted off to sleep again – this time for the night. I woke up again the next morning. In my mind, I thought I had dreamed that the news was reporting Lennon’s death.

So when I started telling other people about my “dream,” they quickly corrected me to let me know that at least part of my night was reality.

WHICH MAKES ME wonder at times what kind of “career” Lennon would have had if he had lived through the ‘80s and beyond?

His “Double Fantasy” album sold well, but we have to admit that most of the people who bought it only did so because of his death – he was shot three weeks after it was released.

Would he have come up with anything on his own that would top his 1971 hit “Imagine?” We can only imagine what would have come about from the man who gave us such songs as a Beatle as “I’m A Loser” and “Nowhere Man.”

It’s just too bad that I can’t wake up from my “dream” of several decades and find out that it wasn’t reality at all. At the very least, maybe it would have spared us "Wham" or "Oingo Boingo."

  -30-