Yoko Ono Opens Up About Night Of John Lennon’s Death

LONDON (June 10, 2007) — John Lennon was shot and killed outside his New York City apartment after deciding he wanted to return home to see his son rather than go out for dinner, Yoko Ono said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

“We were returning from the studio, and I said: ‘Should we go and have dinner before we go home?’ and John was saying, ‘No, lets go home because I want to see Sean before he goes to sleep.’ And it was like he wasn’t sure if we would get home before he (Sean) went to sleep and he was concerned about that.”

Ono, 74, the wife of the late Beatle, made the comment on “Desert Island Discs,” the British Broadcasting Corp. radio program that interviews famous people and plays their favorite songs.

She said Lennon uttered no dying words when he was shot and killed by deranged fan Mark Chapman outside their Dakota apartment building in Manhattan on Dec. 8, 1980.

Ono also said that when she became pregnant with Sean shortly after the couple reunited in 1975 following a two-year separation, she let Lennon decide whether she should have the baby or abort it.

“I thought that I should let John decide whether to keep it or not. We’d just got back together and I became pregnant very soon, and I didn’t know if it was the right moment to have a child. I just didn’t want to burden him with something he didn’t want,” Ono said.

The songs Ono played on Sunday’s show included Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” (about Sean); “Liverpool Lou,” which was written by Scaffold, a Liverpool group that included Paul McCartney’s brother, and “Magic,” a song composed by Sean.