Hundreds Sing For Lennon's Birthday
Some 200 people gathered around John Lennon's star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame Monday night to honor the slain Beatle on what would have been his 60th birthday.
The group, which included people of all ages, joined in singing "Happy Birthday" twice, once for Lennon and again for his son Sean whose 25th birthday also was Monday.
As 60 candles flickered around the star, located directly across the street from the landmark Capitol Records building, the group also sang several of Lennon's songs, including Imagine and Give Peace a Chance.
Some munched on birthday cake. Others strummed guitars, while several held up pictures of Lennon or signs with such slogans as Give Peace a Chance and Imagine No Handguns.
"It's time for world leaders and everybody to understand what John Lennon was trying to say," said Jerry Rubin, spokesman for the peace group Alliance For Survival, which has sponsored the event for 20 years.
The organization gathers twice a year to commemorate both the birth and death of Lennon, who was shot to death outside his New York City home on Dec. 8, 1980.
Two solo albums by John Lennon were re-released on Monday.
One of the re-issued albums, Double Fantasy, has three extra songs including Walking on Ice, a track Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono were working on hours before he was gunned down outside his New York apartment 20 years ago.
The album will also feature the previously unreleased song Help Me To Help Myself.
The second album to be released was Lennon's first post-Beatle work, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
Ono supervised the remixing and remastering of the 1970 album which includes the extra tracks Power to the People and Do the Oz.
The first museum dedicated to the murdered music star also opened to the public in Japan on Monday.
On display will be 130 items that belonged to Lennon, including family photos, handwritten lyrics for songs and his trademark wire-rimmed spectacles.
At the official opening last Thursday, Ono said the museum's presence in Japan would have been important to Lennon.
"John had so much love for this country," Ono said. "His son Sean is half-Japanese and we somehow felt we were bridging the gap between East and West."
Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, was denied parole last week. The New York State Board of Parole said his release would "deprecate the seriousness of the crime and serve to undermine respect for the law."