John Lennon This Week in History

Proof motorcyclists are a force for good music in the world. Only recently did I learn Lennon was an avid motorcycle rider.

(Photo via Selvedge Yard)

This week in 1980, John Lennon was killed. On the night of December 8, 1980, at around 11 p.m., he stepped out of a limousine in front of his West 72nd Street Manhattan apartment. Mark David Chapman, 25, placed the album, that John had autographed for him only hours earlier, onto a planter, then fired five shots from a .38, into John Lennon's back. Lennon died on the way to the hospital. He was 40 years old.

At the time, I was too young to know what was going on but I remembered it was a day a generation seemed to go into shock. John Lennon's life was a work of art and I think that's why he remains inspiring to me and millions of others years after his death. He was a flawed human being, a dreamer, an honest person and a curious traveller who accomplished amazing things, a biker.

We share a birthday, he and I, and now I know we share a passion for the republic of motorcycles.

Here's a clip I recently came across of the real John Lennon and Yoko Ono chain smoking and sharpening his sense of humour on the Dick Cavett Show.

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"You'll never make it. That's what they told me, too. One maths master wrote: He's on his way to failure if he carries on this way." John Lennon

Go ride. Take the road less travelled.