The Imagine Peace Tower (Icelandic: Friðarsúlan, meaning “the peace column”) is a memorial to John Lennon from his widow, Yoko Ono, on Viðey Island in Faxaflói Bay near Reykjavík, Iceland. [Wikimedia Commons.]
Queer, Sultry Summer
It was a sweltering December day in Melbourne, in 1980. I was eighteen, working in the centre of the city as a salesperson at Hartford’s The Jewellers, now long gone. Hartford’s stood in Exhibition Street opposite the Southern Cross Hotel, a former well-known landmark that has also been absent from Melbourne’s CBD for many years. At that stage of its existence, the Southern Cross looked passé and tawdry, both from outside and in the reception area and cocktail bar one entered at street level, where the carpets and modular lounge settings were faded, and the lighting soft and sparse. Walking around this bottom floor felt like one was journeying through a musty, anachronistic underworld.
I’d left uni in the middle of the year, and had no idea what I was doing with my life.
As I travelled in the tram down Bourke Street to Spencer Street Station, at the end of the retail day, I looked out the window, disillusioned. The skies, threatening all afternoon, had turned black. Heavy blobs of rain splashed on the footpath, then it bucketed. My job at the jewellers was becoming a millstone around my neck. It didn’t help that a couple of days previously we’d had a robbery. This shook me.
The robbery occurred late in the afternoon. What the police later referred to as ‘an experienced gang of thieves’ entered our shop. Amid the general busyness – we staff were repeatedly locking and unlocking glass display counters in the process of showing the ‘customers’ various items – two of our most expensive pieces were stolen from under our noses, large diamond rings worth many thousands of dollars each. With my fellow staff members, Julie, a bright-eyed, blonde sixteen-year-old, and Sue, the mid-twenties, world-wearied, brunette store manager, I’d spent extended periods in past days at Victoria Police’s Russell Street headquarters, poring through books containing black-and-white mugshots of decades of crims. It was depressing, studying the seemingly endless pages of faces smacked about by their unfortunate lives. I recall feeling guilty that my negligence had allowed the robbery to occur. Looking back, though, this wasn’t the case at all; but at that time I was down on myself and felt responsible, unnecessarily, for many things.
Then I saw something that left me stunned.
For a moment, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The tram picked up speed as it hustled downhill, when I noticed a wire-framed headline outside a newsagent: a late afternoon edition of the Melbourne Herald cried out JOHN LENNON SHOT DEAD.
This is the kind of news that takes a while to sink in – and an even longer time to absorb properly. The Beatles, in particular Lennon and McCartney, were heroes of mine, just about the only people I’d ever elevated to this level. Learning of John’s death was as bad as if I’d suddenly discovered that a member of my immediate family had passed away.
I can only imagine how fazed I was as I boarded the train at Spencer Street, travelled to Geelong, fifty miles distant, then walked to where I lived in Austin Street, Newtown, a leafy suburb close to the city’s centre. My family home wasn’t a cheery place at the time, as my parents had recently separated. I was probably lucky if anyone was there when I walked in, but at some point soon after Lennon’s murder, my mother was sure to have engaged me in animated conversation about it. She was always closely tuned into the dramatic events of the world around her – a kind of human seismograph – and seemed to enjoy the disturbance these occurrences created.
Perhaps a small salve to the pain I felt after hearing of Lennon’s death was that I was in a band, and we were doing OK, performing in pubs and getting regular gigs. I had vague music dreams for the future; it was also a creative outlet for my writing, as we were playing an increasing number of our own songs. That said, this didn’t make up for the more general emptiness I felt aside from Lennon’s passing, which was basically another kick in the teeth I didn’t need.
. . .
About a week after Lennon’s murder, I left my job at the jewellers. My fellow staff members and the voluble store owner with the extravagant moustache, wild black hair and thick Hungarian accent didn’t put up any protest when I announced I was going.
I suppose I was busy enough for the rest of the year, as the band in which I played, The Ramblers, had a bunch of Christmas season gigs – a few at our regular haunt, the Valley Inn Hotel in South Geelong, near the Barwon River; one supporting Men At Work at the city’s iconic live music venue, the seedy Eureka Hotel; and another on New Year’s Eve at the St Leonard’s Hotel on the Bellarine Peninsula, co-featured with a group called The Exotics. I think this St Leonard’s gig was the most enjoyable one I ever played with the band. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was a combination of the picturesque coastal location, the sea air, the rapport we felt with the Exotics – a friendly bunch of guys and fine musicians – and the jugs of beer and heaped plates of small pastries that the publican brought out for us at the end of the night. I recall my nervousness as I drove dark, winding coastal backroads home to avoid the police, who would have been on patrol early on New Year’s Day, and have a memory of climbing in my bedroom window (I’d lost my house key) about three a.m.
So, yes, the New Year was looking good for The Ramblers. We played another gig at the Valley Inn on January 2. A few days passed. The lead singer – and nominal band leader – Trev, rang me and said he wanted to see me in person. This was a bit strange, as we usually just caught up at rehearsals and gigs. We met at my family home in Newtown, from memory. I can see him sitting on a chair in my bedroom. In a nutshell, he said he wanted his best mate, Clark, in the band, taking my place on bass guitar, and me out – the band needed ‘a change of image’, as he put it. I really didn’t know what to say, though inside it upset me considerably. I didn’t see it coming, but figured, also, that Trev basically ran the band, so the others would simply line up behind him, as he usually did the work organising our bookings and owned most of the PA equipment. These latter points didn’t excuse him for being an arsehole, however, for the backstabbing, underhanded way he got rid of me. For a while, I’d viewed the band like a brotherhood, and now the feeling was one of betrayal. Trev must have been secretly rehearsing his mate for many months for Clark to be able to fill my place so readily.
Trev worked in a local Building Society with Clark. They were tellers who were shoulder to shoulder from Monday to Friday. Clark had come to just about every one of our gigs since we started, something I found a bit weird. In this respect, he’d been like a male groupie, and was also a sly-looking character who I never liked. As for Trev’s ‘change of image’, Clark was a bearded, hairy, Hawaiian shirt wearing dufus, not even remotely a rock ‘n’ roll type. No – Trev simply wanted his mate in, and me out.
Where was loyalty at a time when I particularly needed it? Nowhere.
Summer ended.
I returned to uni, still without a clear focus, and the year of ‘81 drifted…
Read more from Kevin Densley HERE
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About
Kevin Densley is a graduate of both Deakin University and The University of Melbourne. He has taught writing and literature in numerous Victorian universities and TAFES. He is a poet and writer-in-general. His fifth book-length poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws ... I'm Feeling Too Indolent, was published in late 2023 by Ginninderra Press. He is also the co-author of ten play collections for young people, as well as a multi Green Room Award nominated play, Last Chance Gas, published by Currency Press. Other writing includes screenplays for educational films.
A lovely, if somewhat sad reflection KD on what none of us are really prepared for, growing up. A moving take on one of literature’s great themes: the loss of innocence and with that, the beginnings of questioning immortality.
At the time of Lennon’s death, I was working at a wheat bin in Dalwallinu, 3 hours from Perth, out in the wheatbelt. I weighed trucks when they brought wheat (mostly) in to deposit, and then again after they had deposited their grain. One of the farmers, who knew I was a music fan, told me. To say I was shocked and knocked over would be an understatement. I had to leave my post and go phone a friend in Perth who I knew would be devastated. And he was.
Cheers
Thanks for your thoughtful, intelligent comments about my memoir piece, Rick. I appreciate responses such as this a great deal.
The murder of John Lennon remains one of those classic ”Where were you / how did you feel?’ moments for people of a certain age, doesn’t it? Thank you, also, for your personal memories of that tragic day. For me, as I indicate in my piece, Lennon’s passing was like a death in the family
Shades of grey with black and white. Nice work Kev. I learned Lennon had died from Richie Benaud on Channel Nine hosting a WACA one day international.
‘The reason you can hear Beatles music in the background is because …
A fine, poignant piece of writing KD. More please.
Thank you for the response, Barry – loved your evocative opening sentence, in particular. Interesting that for Australians in general, it seems, Lennon’s death is forever linked with summer. Not that long ago, I looked up the daily top temperatures for Melbourne in December 1980, and, boy, didn’t we experience some sweltering weather back then.
And how fitting, in a way, in terms of the time of year, that you heard about Lennon’s death via our longtime ‘voice of summer’, Richie Benaud.
Thanks, DB, for your highly positive comments. I’m trying to do some more writing along these ‘memoir’ lines – as I said in my Almanac promotional blurb for ‘Queer, Sultry Summer’, it is intended to be the opening part of a book-length work.
Sorry to read about the robbery and your Pete Best moment Kev. The day Lennon died I was at my first army posting in Oakey Qld, JTHs home town. It was almost like a 9/11 moment as I had The Beatles as my childhood soundtrack with 3 x siblings from Liverpool. I rang my sister in Melbourne who almost immediately burst into tears. Terrific story mate. Cheers
Thanks KD for this wonderful piece. I wasn’t aware Lennon was dead at the time but wondered why only Beatles music was playing on the radio non-stop late that night – I should have realised something had happened. Next morning was the first day of the school holidays after my 12 month teaching stint at Trinity Grammar School in Kew had ended so it was sleep in time. My wife came running in with The Age that morning with headlines announcing Lennon’s death. It was quite a shock!
I remember sitting up in bed absolutely dumbfounded as I read the news. (I read the news today oh boy!). For the remainder of the dayI remained aimless in disbelief.
Thanks, Ian, for your comments, particularly including your personal memories of the day Lennon was killed. The event resonates greatly with so many of us of a certain vintage.
So pleased you liked my piece in general, too. Highly positive responses are always most welcome. Regarding my ‘Pete Best moment’, I like to think I was a better bass guitarist than Pete was a drummer (I’ve listened to some recorded stuff where he is involved), but I can’t deny that in some respects the comparison fits.
Thanks so much, Col, for your laudatory response to my memoir piece and for your own highly resonant recollections of the day when you ‘read the news today oh boy’. Lennon’s death seems to have affected you as much as it did me.
I wasnt referring to the instrument kev just the manner in which you were advised by the band member. I heard Pete Best on a podcast reflecting how cold john and paul were!
Fair enough, Ian. All good! I take your point.
As I was reading this I was thinking that it felt part of something bigger KD. Themes, as RK notes, are artfully introduced.
Very evocative.
I recall being home from uni and sitting around the kitchen table in the middle of the afternoon when we heard the news. I’m not sure how – as we would not have had the radio on unless there was cricket. Which, it seems, there was. So, maybe it was top of the hour newsbreak in the cricket.
I’m with DB – more please.
Events that seem so important as we live them, then fade into the tapestry of life. Life has taught me to be in the “every exit is an entry somewhere” school. But that took time and bitter experience.
Liked the wistful tone. Is life a journey or a meander?
I was 25 and working in the Health Department in Adelaide at the time. Lennon’s death didn’t particularly affect me. Had enjoyed everything up to Walls & Bridges but thought he’d lost his way and become self indulgent. I already thought America a mad place full of crazy people. What did he expect living in New York? (Hypocritical and typically judgemental of me).
But my best fried was a Lennon tragic and distraught. I gave him a lot of music collectables including Lennon/Beatles stuff when I moved to Canberra a year later. We went on to work together again and become life long friends. The ties that bind.
Thank you for your response, JTH. I’m particularly pleased that you wrote that my piece felt like it was part of a larger whole, as that’s what I intend it to be. The piece wasn’t easy to write for various reasons, one of which was that getting the boot from that band so the ‘band leader’ could get his best mate in (after I’d successfully done all the ground work with the other members) has remained a sore point with me ever since. Ernest Hemingway once wrote words to the effect that ‘It’s easy to be a writer. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.’ – these words are highly applicable in the context of ‘Queer, Sultry Summer’.
Thanks, Peter B, for your comments. As usual, I find them sharp and stimulating – so often, as is the case regarding this memoir piece of mine, you provide excellent ‘food for thought’ in your responses to my work. I found the question you posed ‘Is life a journey or a meander?’ particularly apposite – and this question reminded me of some lines from a favourite poet of mine, Philip Larkin, in ‘Dockery and Son’: ‘Life is first boredom, then fear / Whether or not we use it, it goes….’
Like others, I hope this is only the beginning KD.
A uni friend called me at home to ask me how I felt about Lennon’s death. I was all a bit “meh”, having (foolishly) left The Beatles behind, especially Lennon, who hadn’t inspired since their breakup. Yes, I was a dick and it took me a couple of decades before revisited them and appreciated them with 40 year old eyes.
I note that Hartford’s were victims of a similar robbery in 1972.
Thanks, Swish, for your positivity in relation to my piece – bits and pieces of future chapters in my memoir (mainly about the Melbourne part of my young adult life) exist, and I’m so glad now I ‘aired’ this first bit.
Glad you’ve come round in terms of your appreciation of Lennon and the Beatles.
Hartford’s, in retrospect, was in a prime location in terms of being robbed – apparently, according to what I heard, through some of the windows of the upper floors of the Southern Cross Hotel on the other side of Exhibition Street potential thieves could observe the daily routines of the shop quite closely.
Vivid memories of this sad day whilst assessing at the ATO, 350 Collins St, Melbourne.
The following Saturday we attended Elton John’s concert at Festival Hall.
Elton remarked that he should be in New York comforting Yoko. However he would finish his
Concert commitments then fly to New York.
Elton’s Concert ran for three hours.
Thanks for your comments, John. Your mention of the ATO in Collins St reminds me that, for some, my memoir piece can serve as a kind of time capsule evoking memories of central Melbourne in 1980, as well as John Lennon’s death more particularly.
Your inclusion of Elton John in your response makes me think about EJ’s friendship with Lennon, and also the fact that the last time Lennon performed in public was with Elton in New York in 1974.
To be very exact, Lennon’s 1974 performance with Elton was his last LIVE appearance before an audience ( in Madison Square Gardens). In 1975, he recorded a few songs live for TV.
This ‘Lennon’s last performance’ topic is a trickier one than I thought – his last actual live performance was indeed for a TV show in 1975, and in this performance he is live before an audience in a ballroom setting, but not in a paying concert setting like Madison Square Gardens.
Two stories, double heartbreak! We move on.
And a case of “Where were you when….”
I was driving back to Stawell from Marnoo, after a day as a Country Relieving Teacher at that school, when the news of John Lennon’s death came over the radio. An unbelievable sad moment for the world.
Great mini memoir, Kevin.
Thank you, Stan, for your comments and your own personal memories associated with December 8, 1980. Pleased you liked my short memoir, which, as I’ve already indicated, is intended to be part of a much longer work.
Belated thanks for your article Kevin, which I reread and found a number of resonations.
You mention living in Austin St, famous for the laundry.
I was a member of Warrinn house. Each day we would pass Mackie gates, aka JHM
Rolland Memorial gates, about which you wrote a poignant poem.
We drank at the Sawyer’s Arms Tavern, served by Mrs Clatsworthy or her son John.
In October 1974 Greg Shackleton, then a Channel 7 journalist and newsreader, visited our school.
in Newtown. He had enjoyed a stellar career and was destined for big things. I followed his career closely.
Sadly, he was executed as part of the Balibo five. The perpetrators of this callous crime never faced
justice despite a NSW Coroner’s Inquest found they had been deliberately killed. It remains a Great Betrayal.
Thanks Kevin.
I was towards the end of my first year of primary school in December 1980. I have a vague recollection of TV news and my mum – a carrier of the Beatlemania gene – being incredibly sad.
Lovely writing.
Really interesting material – thanks, John. Though I went to St Joseph’s College in Newtown, further up Aphrasia Street (as you’d know), The Geelong College, the Sawyer’s Arms Hotel (including some members of the Clatworthy family) and Newtown in general were very much part of my world when I was a teenager. For a number of years, from Monday to Friday, I walked along Aphrasia Street, past Geelong College, twice a day – to and from St Joey’s. Geelong College has always had beautiful grounds – the main football/cricket oval was so well tended by ground staff that the grass typically looked it had been cut with nail clippers. A bit later, when I was a uni student, I recall tutoring a Geelong College student one evening a week in the Common Room in one of the school’s boarding houses – Matron used to bring me a cup of tea in the middle of the tute and I enjoyed the atmosphere of the place, in which various Honour Boards on the walls had years and names going back to the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Also, yes, you’ve made me think of Geelong Laundry, an interesting anomaly half-way up the otherwise residential Austin Street, on the left-hand side as one ascends the hill towards Prospect Road, which (again as you’d know) runs into the side of Geelong College. To my way of thinking, particularly because of its location near the top of Newtown hill and its fine houses, Prospect Road is, to my way of thinking, one of Geelong’s most beautiful streets.
Thank you, ER, for your recollection of December 8, ’80. Very pleased you enjoyed my piece.
Well recalled and writ KD.
I looked back at the December 1980 calendar and the timing of Lennon’s death to get my bearings straight. We, in the land of OZ, would have ‘heard the news, oh boy’ on the afternoon of the 9th. I was quite numbed by the news and remember giving myself the 10th off work to catch up on the news of the event & to reflect quietly about ‘life & somewhere across the universe.
(Just Like) Starting Over & Watching The Wheels are high up on my list of favourite JL songs ~ I suspect that they would have rated highly regardless of the events on that fateful December 8.
Thanks for sparking the reminisce KD.
Thanks, Karl, for your comments, particularly vis-a-vis the personal impact of Lennon’s death upon you – to the extent that you took a day off work. ‘Watching the Wheels’ is probably the key soundtrack song of the time for me. We all know that Lennon’s death was officially December 8, of course, but I don’t mention the actual date in my memoir piece, most likely because I had the issue of world time zones at the back of my mind in connection to when various parts of the world got the sad news. That said, all our reflections of that time can rightly be seen to centre upon the tragedy of what happened about an hour before midnight in New York on December 8.
Great memoir, KD. I was working my after-school job at a butchers when the news came on the radio. I also learnt of George’s death on the radio, driving to get Saturday’s paper in Port Pirie. I’m unsure if it is apocryphal but Lennon’s assassin had a copy of Catcher in the Rye on him as he believed he was ‘saving’ the former Beatle and this is a central theme of Salinger’s novel.
I look forward to more of your memoir.
Thank you for your comments, Mickey. Highly positive reactions to my 1980/81 memoir piece, such as yours, encourage me to continue to write my planned larger work.
It’s particularly interesting to me that so many of ‘our age’ remember exactly where they were when hearing about Lennon’s death – perhaps only Harold Holt’s disappearance and JFK’s assassination are / have been similar in this context for many Australians.
It’s certainly true, also, that Lennon’s killer had a copy of Salinger’s famous novel with him at the time of the murder.