"In 1971, I wrote something about John and Yoko that they liked a lot, and to show their appreciation they invited me and my girlfriend Dominique to John's 31st birthday party--in Syracuse, where a Yoko Ono retrospective had been mounted. I've never been one to hobnob with the stars, but who could resist John Lennon? He'd always been my own personal Beatle, and probably yours. He was the one who could have been a friend of ours, the one we might have known in school or on the scene--the bohemian, the artist, the intellectual. " Robert Christgau's Voice obituary of John Lennon is something you should read today.