All You Need Is Love - RIP John Lennon

It was 45 years ago today - Monday, December 8, 1980 - when John Lennon was shot and killed. John Lennon’s iconic 1958 Rickenbacker 325 is often on display at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That guitar, which inspired generations of kids to pick up an instrument and learn music, would never be played again. He was murdered with a handgun legally purchased by a law-abiding American citizen.

I remember the next morning vividly. I was walking to the school bus stop on Tuesday when another kid told me the news. I was crushed. I was genuinely stunned. His music - especially "You Can’t Do That" - had already shaped something deep inside me, sparking a lifelong love of sound, rhythm, and the mysterious way vibrations can feel like they reach the soul.

During the summer of 1979, my father taught me how to use the Kenwood white-marble direct-drive turntable in our living room in Ottawa. By the summer of 1980, I was a full-blown Beatles fan. Nothing thrilled me more than dropping that needle and hearing the first crackle before the music hit. In my small seven-year-old world, those moments were pure, unfiltered musical immersion. And there were two 45s I played endlessly: The Beatles You Can’t Do That and The Beach Boys I Can Hear Music.

The raw power of You Can’t Do That didn’t just fill my ears through those oversized Sony headphones I practically lived in - it resonated through me. The vibration, the frequencies, the warmth of it all… it felt like the sound of being human.

Wearing my favourite 1979 Adidas cotton tennis shorts and Birkenstock sandals, I must have been quite a sight: a little kid in a trance, captivated by the backing vocals, the rhythmic guitars, the pounding drums. The song’s almost bossy title -You Can’t Do That - grabbed me from the start and sealed my fate as a lifelong music junkie. That early fascination with rich backing vocals never left me. As I grew older, I found myself drawn to bands like Def Leppard in the hard-rock world and Sloan in the grunge era - again, because of those big, powerful harmonies.

And so, when news of Lennon’s death reached me that cold Tuesday morning, it hit with a force I couldn’t yet fully understand. But I felt it. I knew something extraordinary had been taken from the world.

All you need is love. And on behalf of all of us who still feel the echo of his voice and his vision, let me say: We still miss you, John.