Liverpool and New York prepared to honor pop icon John Lennon yesterday with floral and musical tributes and a candle-lit vigil close to where he was shot dead 25 years ago.
In a ceremony in the center of the northern English city where Lennon was born and raised, fans and officials would create a shrine beneath a statue of the legendary Beatle, gunned down in New York by a fan in the presence of his wife Yoko Ono.
Later in the day, the city would hold a memorial service for the man who created some of the best-known tunes in pop and is considered one of the most influential songwriters of all time.
In New York, hundreds of mourners were expected to gather at the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park and light candles at 10:50pm, the time Lennon was shot.
Friends in Liverpool thought of Lennon with fondness, but also felt he distanced himself from them after meeting Ono, the woman who many fans blame for breaking up the Beatles in 1970.
"You couldn't approach John at the end, and looking back it was from the moment ... he met Yoko Ono," said former friend and fellow musician Billy Kinsley, who knew Lennon and Paul McCartney in the 1960s.
His assessment of Lennon and the Beatles as musicians, however, has never changed.
"It really did make a big impression on me seeing the Beatles on that first night at the Cavern, because it just changed my outlook," he said, recalling the night in February 1962.
"I thought `My God, I have just seen the best thing that I could ever see,' and since then it's been downhill because I've never seen anything as good as the Beatles," he said.
In New York, fans were to mark the day by gathering in Central Park to remember the words and music of the former Beatle.
"People go out to the vigil for their own individual reasons, but primarily it's to pay our respects and share our grief collectively," said Tom Leighton, one of the organizers of an ad-hoc Lennon memorial committee.
Ayarton Dos Santos will be at the "Imagine" mosaic, named after one of Lennon's most famous songs, just as he has been nearly every day for the last 13 years to arrange petals, acorns, apples and bagels into a peace sign.
"It's all about peace, love and happiness. It's for brother John," Dos Santos, 41, said.
Yet the man who brought a generation such pleasure also caused pain to those who loved him.
Both his first wife Cynthia and their son Julian recently voiced their sense of rejection when Lennon left them for Ono.
In a statement on his Web site, Julian added: "I have always had very mixed feelings about Dad. He was the father I loved who let me down in so many ways ... it's painful to think that his early death robbed me of the chance for us to know each other better."
Ono's spokesman, Elliot Mintz, said the widow would not make any public comment or appearances to mark the anniversary. In years past, she has traditionally spent the day sitting in the Dakota apartment building -- where she still lives -- and meditating
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