One of the music industry’s most heartbreaking deaths occurred at the end of 1980, when John Lennon was murdered outside his building. Alice Cooper recalls how he and multiple musicians began to carry a gun.
Whether a hard rocker like Cooper or a Beatles icon like Lennon, different music genres didn’t stop camaraderie among musicians. Cooper met Lennon in the mid-70s while both were part of the infamous Hollywood Vampires drinking club.
Speaking with Rolling Stone about his Devil on My Shoulder memoir, Cooper recalls the moment he learned Lennon had been assassinated. At around 10:50 p.m., Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, were returning home from a recording session. Close to their home, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon at close range four times in the back.
Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 40 years old. Chapman sat reading The Catcher in the Rye until police arrived to arrest him.
Cooper recalls having been doing coke at the time and struggling with alcohol and drug addiction. He had been with producer Roy Thomas Baker, working on the Flush The Fashion album, when he learned Lennon was shot.
“We were working… in my pool house, so we’re getting high, of course. And all of a sudden it comes on TV. And I’m telling you, it was like a vacuum,” he recalls.
“It was just like, ‘That can’t be right. Why him? Why not somebody political?’ And it wasn’t a political thing. But to this day, it seems unreal. I could understand somebody having a grievance over a politician, but John, ‘Give Peace a Chance’? And then after it all unfolded, you realize it only had to do with an insane fan. But it’s still just hard to digest that.”
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Lennon’s murder not only shook fans around the world, but also the music industry as well. The Beatles icon was ready to return after a five-year hiatus and was working on his new album before he was killed by an obsessed fan. Cooper remembers how Lennon’s death caused him and others to become fearful of being next.
“I know that all of my friends started carrying [guns],” he said.
“I started carrying back then because all of a sudden it was a threat to all of us, even though we don’t put ourselves on the level of John Lennon. It scared a lot of musicians because it was a reality now. David Bowie used to talk about that all the time, and I kept going, Dave, don’t talk about that.’”
Chapman would later admit that he targeted Lennon purely because of his global status. He had other artists on his list, like David Bowie, but chose the Beatles singer. He was given 20 years to life and has been denied parole on several occasions.
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