Lennon Painting

I was painting it under the awning of the apartment across the street and sometimes in the lobby.  A doctor in that building passed by me painting on many occasions and expressed a vague interest in possibly buying it.

Most nights, after painting I would hang out with Jose until he got off work, then dropped him off at his home in the Bronx on the way back to New Jersey. 

One day, near the end of November, while joking around with Jose and another doorman named Joseph Many, I was doing sketches and caricatures of them.  Jose mentioned to me that John Lennon was having a beer at a bar down the street and suggested I go over to meet him and say hello, if I wanted to.  I ran down the street and saw him, said hello and shook his hand and left.  Later that week, I finished the painting.  

In the first few days of December both the paintings were dry enough to bring to Jose so he could proceed to show them around.  As he suggested earlier that I show them to John Lennon, he called up to the Lennon apartment and asked that they be brought up for presentation, their assistant came down and took the paintings up. 

A few days later I was feeling desperate for money so I asked Jose to check up on the status to see if there was any interest from the Lennon household.  This time a different person came down than the one that had brought them up.  He was holding the paintings.  His face was flushed; he was looking obviously stressed and angry.  For no apparent reason he began to hysterically yell at me in front of everyone in the lobby, shouting at the top on his lungs that if I ever brought this “morbid shit” up there again he’ll throw it in the trash where it belongs, etc, etc.  Jose was dumbfounded.  After the guy went back upstairs he told me not to worry, but I quickly left with the paintings. 

I took the paintings across the street to the doctor to see if he wanted them since he expressed some interest earlier, he didn’t.  I remembered Bob Monahan, found his number and called to see if he was interested in purchasing them.  He said he might be and wanted to see them.  So I rushed them to the east side to show him, he offered to buy them in a couple of days.  So I went back home and photographed the paintings, since it looked like they might possibly sell and put them in my trunk to bring back to the city.  I hung around the Dakotas doing some sketches and studies.  I felt I needed a change of venue and scenery, so around two days later I started on a new painting at the Plaza Hotel, but I suddenly felt ill, like a flu coming on, so early in the evening I decided to go back home.  

 Normally, the routine was that nearly every night for the past month, after painting, I waited around for a few hours to hang out with Jose and talk, until he got off work around 11 or 12 or so.  He was stationed in the guard booth facing the street and I was always facing him and the carriage entrance from the sidewalk, most of the time leaning on my portable easel.  After he was off work I drove him to the Bronx to his home, then I went on home to Patterson. But that night, at around 8 PM, I passed by the Dakotas on the way to New Jersey from the Plaza and told Jose that I wasn’t feeling very well and couldn’t hang around to drive him that night – that was the first time in nearly a month that the routine changed.

On the way home, at Doreen’s previous suggestion, I stopped off at The Garden State Mall to buy the book Time and Again. 

When I arrived at my grandfather’s house, I tried to relax with my book.  I ate some supper and turned on the TV and saw the news flash that John Lennon had been shot only a few minutes earlier. 

I quickly drove back to the Dakotas and saw the crowds that amassed there.  I managed to ask one of the policemen if Jose the doorman was hurt, I was told he wasn’t but he was at the hospital with Lennon.  I saw the pools of blood in the carriage entrance where Lennon was shot as he made his way to the lobby.  One of the people there gave me a description of the event as it transpired; Lennon exited the limousine which was parked on the right of the carriage entrance, as he walked inside the gunman came from the left and shot him in the back, Yoko was behind him toward the street.

The two paintings were still in the trunk of my car which was parked around the corner. I had a sick feeling that everything people saw in the painting strangely add up. 

At the scene, I recognized a reporter from NBC, Jane Hanson as she was speaking in front of a camera.  When she finished with her broadcast I approached her and mentioned that I had done these two paintings, of which one of them was depicting John Lennon and Yoko and the other was a dark winter scene.  I told her that I left the paintings only days before with Lennon and what transpired from Lennon’s assistant and what other people said; that this painting had a dark morbid tone.  I brought her to my car parked right nearby and discreetly showed her the paintings.  If I remember correctly, I think she also thought that the painting seemed to have symbolism with the female figure looking at the hearse-like carriage and said it could be a premonition.  I asked if I could give her the undeveloped film with the pictures that I just took of the paintings for development, as proof these paintings were done before the incident.  She gave me the name of someone at NBC to bring them to.  I stressed this was not for publicity but that I just wanted to document the “coincidence” and this moment.  She agreed. 

After she left, I called Doreen from a phone booth down the street.  She was very surprised to hear from me because she thought I was the person that shot Lennon since she knew I was hanging out there for the past month. 

The next day I dropped off the film at the NBC offices and called Bob Monahan.  He purchased the two paintings.  A few days later on Dec 11th, I went back to NBC to pick up my film, but for some reason the film was blank and destroyed.