The Last Days of John Lennon

by James Patterson

When Paul is asked in 2019 if he sensed at the time that the rooftop concert would be the group’s last, he says, “No, I don’t think I did; I don’t think any of us did. It was really just the culmination of a lot of writing and rehearsing that we had done up to this point.” But the end never needs an invitation.

With less than a minute to go on the game clock, the tragedy is communicated to the broadcast booth. It’s manned by NFL greats Fran Tarkenton and Frank Gifford—and legendary announcer Howard Cosell. Before Cosell breaks into the game with the tragic announcement, the announcer’s mind flashes to his 1974 Monday Night Football interview with John, when the singer said the rowdiness of an NFL crowd “makes rock concerts look like tea parties.”

“I’m writing this way now because it’s the way I feel,” John tells friend and journalist Ray Connolly when he plays him the album. “I’m not a tough guy. I’ve had a façade of being tough to protect me from whatever was going on as a kid or a teenager or a Beatle. But I’m not like that,” he continues, saying he’s had to learn to stop running so fast. “I have to learn how not to do that, because I don’t want to die when I’m forty.”