On this day in 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed in New York for saying The Beatles were “bigger than Jesus.”
John Lennon was murdered outside his New York residence on December 8, 1980. The legendary singer-songwriter, and guitarist for The Beatles, was shot by Mark David Chapman, who spent months planning the crime.
As per 9NEWS, the motive behind Chapman’s murder was the fact that he was “angered by Lennon’s lifestyle and by a comment the musician had made in the 1960s that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.”
Following his arrest, Chapman pleaded guilty and has been in prison ever since. Reflecting on the legend’s death, his bandmate Paul McCartney told Howard Stern about their final conversation during an interview in 2021: “I ring John – and I was making bread and got quite good at it – so when I heard John was doing it [baking], it was great.”
Yep, you read that right. Lennon and McCartney’s last-ever convo was about making bread. He continued, “we could just talk about something so ordinary. There’s no threat or anything. It was just two guys talking about: ‘Well, I don’t know. Do you leave it [the bread] overnight or what do you do?’ And someone says: ‘Yeah, I leave it overnight in a hot cupboard’ and you’d just be chatting.”
McCartney concluded, “It was really nice and I was so glad that we got back to that relationship that we’d always had when we were kids…we’d lived in each other’s pockets for so long that it was great to get back to that.”
Four decades on from his passing, John Lennon is still as iconic as ever. His lingering musical and cultural impact is felt worldwide, with fans and stars alike continuing to honour his memory.
