lar musicians ever lay dead on a New York sidewalk. This was the city that offered shelter, but al- so inspiration, to almost all of the artists of the 20 th century; the city “whose streets are walked by enough interesting people for an- yone to notice me”, as David Bow- ie once said; the city that was the dream of John Lennon, and where he arrived in 1970 because of Yoko Ono, a then anonymous Jap- anese artist. Newly divorced Yoko had been granted custody of her daughter, Kyoko, but her husband, jazz musician Anthony Cox, then kidnapped the child, fearing that Yoko and Lennon would not prove to be good guardians. Yoko didn’t see her daughter again until 1985, but they remained in New York nevertheless. Although he spent a long time waiting for a green card and had to fight with U.S. bureaucracy, which saw him as a “subversive element”, Lennon had arrived in his “home- town of choice”. By 1973 he had already moved into an apartment on the top floor of one of New York’s most famous buildings: The Dakota, a mighty building on the corner of 72 nd Street and Central Park. The building, is so prestigio- us that the owners have refused to accept the likes of Madonna, Melanie Griffith and Cher as te- nants. Lennon was shot and killed in front of that building. The next day saw an endless river of New Yorkers gather in Central Park to weep, pray and sing his songs. He was feared by the official U.S. state, but his fellow citizens adored him. And they never forgot him. Af- ter his death, they continued to gather in front of the Dakota, un- til it was revealed that Yoko had scattered his ashes in Central Park. Five years after his murder, in ho- nour of his 45 th birthday, the New York City Government redesigned part of the park, where Lennon and Yoko most liked to walk, in the shape of a tear, renaming it “Strawberry Fields”, after the famo- us song written by John. Yoko also dedicated a place for meditation, a circular mosaic with a diameter of 2.5 metres, with the word “imagi- ne” written at its centre. Lennon is alive forever in New York, the city that had the honour of feeling his reciprocated love.
NJUJORK U FOKUSU NEW YORK IN FOCUS
John Lennon was born in Liverpool, but he found love, peace and death in New York. He saw the city for the first time during a 1964 tour with the Beatles, and he remained bewitched by it, waiting to return there one day. - I should have been born in New York, that’s where I belong. Everyone wants to be where some- thing is happening and that’s why I’m here now. I am here in order to inhale this air – these were the words with which Lennon began one of his final interviews. And it was there, on the streets of the city he loved, that he was murdered. It was on 8 th De- cember 1980 that a man named Mark David Chapman had got an autograph from Lennon on- ly to shoot him in the back hours later. He held in his hand a copy of JD Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” and quietly awaited the po- lice, while one of the most popu-
Dakota, zgrada ispred koje je ubijen 8. 12. 1980. The Dakota, the building he was killed in front of on 8 th December 1980
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