The Last Day in the Life

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buried, and I hope that's a long, long time." As he spoke those words, Mark David Chapman waited for him out on the street.

Lennon's death was not like Elvis Presley's. Presley seemed at the end, trapped, defeated and hopeless. Lennon could have gone that way too, could have destroyed himself. But he did something harder. He lived. And, for all the fame and finance, that seemed to be what he took the most pride in.

"He beat the rock-'n'-roll life," Steve Van Zandt said the day after Lennon died. "Beat the drugs, beat the fame, beat the damage. He was the only guy who beat it all." That was the victory Mark Chapman took from John Lennon, who had an abundance of what everyone wants and wanted only what so many others have, and take for granted. A home and family. Some still center of love. A life. One minute more.

—By Jay Cocks