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10 More Things You Might Not Know About John Lennon

01/24/2011
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(Gibson) Were he still alive today, John Lennon would be 70 years old, but instead, 30 years ago, he left this earth. On the December day that he was shot dead outside his New York City apartment, curiosity about the Beatle reached a fever pitch that hasn't waned since. Last October, Gibson ran a popular story called "10 Things You Might Not Know About John Lennon" which they're reprising here with more little-known facts. Here are a couple entries:

1. Despite popular opinion, Lennon wasn't born during a WWII bombing raid: "Something that's in all the Beatles books, except for Fab Four FAQ and one or two others, is that [Lennon] was born in the midst of a Liverpool bombing raid in WWII, and that's not true," says Rodriguez. "He was actually born during a period when there wasn't any heavy bombing going on. People like to make the point that he came into the world in a violent way and that was how he ended as well, but that's not strictly true."

10. The last great Lennon mystery is what he was recorded saying the night before he died: Jack Douglas � who produced the final Lennon-Ono album, Double Fantasy � installed a hidden recording device in the studio to capture the natural dialogue that occurred during recording sessions for the album. The night before Lennon died, that device caught Lennon saying something that the public will likely never be privy to. "At first [the recorder] was hidden in secret but when John found about it, he said, 'Oh, I think it's a great idea. [These recording sessions are] historic so why not?'," says Rodriguez. "And the last night of his life they were at the studio working on 'Walking on Thin Ice,' Yoko's track, and Jack Douglas later described it. He said, 'Some very, very strange things were said that night. Some things that I don't want to publicly divulge.' And he wiped the tape clean of that night's chatter. I've questioned him on it myself, and to this day he's taken this total attitude of stonewalling. Nobody has been able to pry out of Jack Douglas' mouth what it was that John Lennon said that shook him that he felt he could not share it with the public." Read the full list here

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