The Beatles -- Strawberry Fields Forever

 

I distinctly remember where I was forty years ago when I learned about the assassination of John Lennon on December 8th 1980. Of course, there was no SNS or Internet back then, so I actually didn't learn about the tragic death for several hours after he'd been shot in New York City at around 5 pm on the 8th and then later died in hospital at around 11 pm that night. 

As I said, I remember quite well where I was and that was just ambling into the living room in my pajamas after getting out of bed on the morning of December 9th and my mother told me as I was approaching the table for breakfast, "John Lennon is dead". With a combination of sunrise stupor and truly not realizing the import of the statement since I wasn't a humongous Beatles fan, I kinda went "Wut?" She repeated the sentence again and at the time, though I knew about the Fab Four and some of their songs (one of my earliest memories was watching "Yellow Submarine" on CBS years previously), I hadn't been totally cognizant of who the members were, although the name John Lennon did register somewhat in my head. But then, I realized that the Toronto radio station CKEY, which was our go-to station at the time, was playing a lot of Beatles songs that day from our pink SONY.

I don't remember the television news coverage but I do have a memory of one newspaper front page with a photo of a devastated Yoko Ono, almost looking like she was about to collapse. And there were the vigils near The Dakota apartments where Lennon and Ono had resided.

Did I become a diehard Beatles fan or even a Lennon fan because of what had happened? No, not really. At most, I can say that I am a casual fan of the Beatles and I like some of what Lennon had created. "Imagine" is actually not my favourite song by him. If I were to pick one, it would be either "Starting Over" or "Nobody Told Me". However, after he died, I became much more aware of what the Beatles meant to people all around the planet and I even decided to listen to part of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" during my lunch break at junior high school one day. Eventually, I started appreciating songs back in their early days and even during their later, more psychedelic years as the 1980s progressed .

I've been hearing the news that Ringo Starr has been asking radio stations to play "Strawberry Fields Forever" at least once today in commemoration of Lennon's passing. I'm obviously not a radio station but I've known about the song for years and to be perfectly honest, it's the first time that I've heard the February 1967 song by Lennon in its entirety for the first time in a very long time. Basically, the opening verses of "Strawberry Fields Forever" have stuck in my head, but listening to the whole thing and watching the video as shown at the top of the article, this must have been a real mind-bender for folks who first heard this in the late 1960s. For me, of course, instead of this being a Reminiscings of Youth article, it's much more of a Barely Reminiscing of Toddlerhood article, but even hearing just "Strawberry Fields Together" with all of the very unconventional progressions of the song in general, the usage of the horns and strings, the feelings of innocence and darkness within its four-minutes-and-change, and that way-out outro, I can believe it when fans and music critics alike state that McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr really impacted the way pop music was created and presented.

So, when "Strawberry Fields Forever" made its debut in February 1967, what was also coming out in Japan? I could only find two songs that have already been covered in KKP.

1. Hiroshi Mizuhara -- Kimi Koso Waga Inochi (君こそわが命)

2. Ken Takakura -- Kiri no Hatoba（霧の波止場）

And here is John Lennon's "Nobody Told Me".