Song #438: "All Those Years Ago"--George Harrison (1981)

After the senseless murder of John Lennon on December 8, 1980, any hopes of a Beatles reunion were gone. Tributes poured in on that late Monday night into Tuesday, with radio correctly doing its job of immediately pivoting back in the days of 24 hour live DJ's, changing formats for a time to all Beatle and Lennon music, taking calls, then holding a salute to the singer the following Sunday.

Around the world, stations went dark for ten minutes in lieu of a funeral for the singer/songwriter. It was truly the end of a magical mystery tour. I did not witness Howard Cosell's famed breaking news announcement of Lennon's death on Monday Night Football, as I had gone to bed, needing to get up and head to eighth grade the next morning. When I woke up, turned on the radio, and heard nothing but the Beatles, it didn't take long to find morning jocks delivering the bad news.

The music for this song was already done before the shooting occurred. Lennon's former band mate then worked the lyrics to become a tribute to his slain colleague. On May 11, 1981, the song was released in the United States. I clearly remember that evening watching then WRC Channel 4 Sports Director George Michael, who was a very successful DJ in the 1960's in New York, start his sportscast discussing how the two Top 40 stations in Washington at the time, Q107 and WPGC, debuted this song at the exact same time earlier in the day.

It went all the way to #2 on the charts, and, yes, Ringo plays drums and Paul can be heard on background vocals.

This is the first of several Harrison solo efforts to reach our countdown, as his music in the late seventies, to me, was just as good as any other effort by band members in the post-Beatle era.