Tread carefully around emotional Beatles fans – the release of “Now and Then,” which uses extracted vocals from a demo John Lennon recorded in his home in the late 1970s, has us “gently weeping.”
Lennon, a lauded musician and peace activist, died 43 years ago.
Former bandmates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr reunited to complete the track, which also features the late George Harrison who recorded guitar and vocal parts before he died in 2001.
As we remember the “Imagine” singer, here’s a look back at his final days.
Mark David Chapman shot and killed Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980, as he and his wife Yoko Ono were returning to their New York City apartment. Chapman, 25 at the time, was a former security guard and YMCA employee from Hawaii.
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Chapman is currently serving 20-years-to-life at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Hudson Valley, New York. The board denied him parole for a 12th time in 2022.
“I am not going to blame anything else or anybody else for bringing me there,” Chapman told the board in 2022. “I knew what I was doing, and I knew it was evil. I knew it was wrong, but I wanted the fame so much that I was willing to give everything and take a human life.
