Part 2

If the Manson murders woke up the King, a few months later Altamont roused the rest of the rock community. The Grateful Dead, an organizer of the free concert along with the Rolling Stones, refused to play after the Hells Angels’ homicidal mayhem set in. Now the great post-Altamont guns-for-guitars swap began. Jagger and Richards, whom the Angels put a contract out on, started packing heat and security teams. (According to a 2008 BBC documentary, the motorcycle gang hatched a plot to assassinate Jagger in 1969 at his holiday retreat in the Hamptons; attempting an assault by sea, they might have succeeded had their boat not capsized during a storm.) So did Zeppelin, the Who, Dylan, and all the other major acts. The days of “All You Need is Love” had given way to “Let It Bleed” and “Sympathy for the Devil.”

Though Jerry Garcia, a long time friend and champion of the Angels, left the speedway unscathed, plenty of death threats came his way in the next twenty years. By the time he got his last one before an Indiana concert in ’95, he’d become stubborn. Security begged him to cancel the Dead show but he protested, “There’s no way I’m going to let that stop me; hell no. I’ve been getting crackpots all my life.”

Like Elvis, John Lennon got his first death threats early on. They came from drunk German sailors whose girlfriends he scored at the clubs, or from the ones he rolled for Deutsche marks in the back alleys of Hamburg. But he didn’t get his first official notice until ’66 after the Jesus-Beatles comparison. He took the threat pretty much in stride until, soon afterward, a psychic told him he would be shot down during his upcoming U.S. trip.  

“I was totally paranoid the whole time,” he said of the Beatles’ last visit to the states which he dubbed “The Jesus Christ Tour.”  “Everywhere we played I was just waiting for something dreadful to happen.” 

On stage in Memphis, Lennon heard a firecracker go off which he mistook for a gunshot. “My immediate reaction was to check meself to see if I’d been hit,” he recalled. ‘”Fucking hell,’ I thought. ‘At least they haven’t gotten me!” 

Fourteen years later, a demented Beatles fan and avenging reborn Christian, Mark David Chapman, did.