The Last Song John Lennon Probably Heard

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More than 20 years after John Lennon’s assassination, most people could still remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. New York City TV producer Alan Weiss is no exception.

On December 8, 1980, he was on his motorcycle and driving across Central Park when a taxi hit him. He was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, and what happened next was imprinted in his memory.

“I don’t remember the time scheme as well as I used to know it,” he told NewsTimes in a 2014 interview. “Outside the time — the quotes, the order, I remember crystal clear.”

He was in the hallway being attended by a doctor when he heard someone announce that they had a gunshot victim on the way.

“And there are two police officers, carrying a man,” he recalled. “They’re literally standing right by my bed, over my head. And one cop says to the other, ‘Can you believe it, John Lennon?'”

Then, he saw Yoko Ono crying and being led by a police officer. After Weiss was brought to his room, he asked his doctor about the shooting incident.

“I asked her, ‘If someone was brought in with gunshots to the chest, is it a safe assumption that if the person was still alive, that you would still need to be in attendance?’” he said. “She said, ‘Yes.’ So that was a confirmation.”

Weiss then heard a Muzak version of The Beatles’ song “All My Loving.”

“The piped music in the hospital began playing,” Weiss revealed to The Guardian in 2010. “And as it finished, I heard someone screaming.”

Weiss called it “an unshakable memory.”