John Lennon, R.I.P.

Over the course of this year, the centenary of William F. Buckley’s birth, we will republish an article by him weekly. This week’s column remembers Lennon’s excesses and mourns what could have been.

My son (age twenty-eight) said to me the day after, “Imagine how you would have felt if Arturo Toscanini had been killed?” He didn’t have to say more, having fingered my own boyhood hero. I can’t clearly remember whether, in the thirties, Toscanini was exactly a cult figure. But he was a formidable presence — charismatic, an acknowledged genius, above all a perfectionist. He also liked Broadway music.