IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE JOHN LENNON

never existed: it isn’t easy, is it? MOJO, for a start, probably wouldn’t be here, not just because we’d have been short of one or two cover stories over the years, but because Lennon and The Beatles changed the way people thought and wrote about music and culture. The Beatles didn’t invent a grown-up discourse about pop, but their very existence made it a necessity. Under their influence, rock’n’roll was revealed as both ubiquitous, and profound; a three-minute thrill, and a subject worthy of lifelong obsession.

This month, MOJO charts the multitude of ways John Lennon changed our world, and remembers how that world changed again in the wake of December 8, 1980. The morning after, I woke up to the news of Lennon’s death with a fever, and spent the day off school, lying in bed listening to Radio 1. I don’t recall much analysis or reflection, or even album tracks, just an unquenchable flow of hits. That evening, as John Harris notes in our cover story, BBC1 screened Help! It was a strange, introverted day, not the sort you’d typically remember 40 years down the line. But of course I do, vividly. What about you?