John Lennon Said He Didn’t ‘Waste Any Time’ Worrying About Someone Killing Him
In 1980, John Lennon died after Mark David Chapman shot him outside his apartment building, the Dakota, in New York City. Lennon had received a number of death threats during his life, and there were points in his career where they seemed credible. Still, he said he didn’t worry about his safety.
John Lennon said he didn’t worry about an assassination attempt
In 1976, Lennon’s friend Elliot Mintz visited him after the funeral of his friend, Sal Mineo. Mineo died after a mugger stabbed him in a seemingly random act of violence. As a major star, Lennon seemed more at risk than the average person, and Mineo asked him if he ever worried about his safety.
“If it could happen to anybody or everybody, why would I waste any time worrying about it happening to me?” Lennon asked Mintz, as he recalled in his book We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me (via People).
He thought that if someone wanted to hurt him, they would do it. It wouldn’t matter how much time he spent worrying about it.
“All me life I’ve had guys around me who were supposed to be protecting me,” he told Mintz. “When the group toured, there were hundreds of police around us. But if they want to get you, they’re gonna get you. Look at all the people that Kennedy had around him. I don’t need bodyguards. I don’t want them. I’m just a rock ’n’ roll singer.”
John Lennon spoke often about his death
While Lennon said he didn’t worry about death, he often mentioned it in passing.
“He spoke about death every once in a while,” Double Fantasy producer Jack Douglas told People, noting, “He would say things like, ‘I might be gone soon.’ He would say, ‘When I die, it’s going to be bigger than Elvis.’ And I’d say, ‘Stop talking like that.’”
Douglas believed Lennon spent much of his time preparing for his death, even if he didn’t explicitly say this.
“He insisted on journals being kept for every moment, everything being documented, me placing microphones all over the studio so that everything could be recorded,” he said. “It felt like he had a feeling something was coming, and he was very intuitive about things. Extremely. Almost supernaturally about things.”
His first wife said he was more worried about his safety than he let on
When Lennon died, his first wife, Cynthia, immediately began to think of a warning he received from a psychic.
“[F]or the past fourteen years John had lived with the fear that he would be shot,” she wrote in her book John. “In 1966, he’d received a letter from a psychic, warning that he would be shot while he was in the States.”
Cynthia said this warning became a major point of concern for Lennon. He worried often about someone trying to kill him.
“When he got home in one piece, we were both relieved,” Cynthia explained. “But the psychic’s warning remained in his mind and from then on it seemed that he was looking over his shoulder, waiting for the gunman to appear. He often used to say, ‘I’ll be shot one day.’ Now, unbelievably, tragically, he had been.”
