It was the first time American TV producer Alan Weiss had set foot on
Scouse soil this week, to pay homage to his heroes, The Beatles.
After a visit to the Albert Dock
and The Beatles
Museum he put John Lennon's
childhood home and the gates at Strawberry Field on his tour timetable.
“Coming here made me realise just how much these four young men
accomplished, coming from basically working class backgrounds to the
heights of super stardom,” says Alan.
“Too often it's easy to view the Beatles as just a great rock band –
if not the greatest rock band, but visiting Liverpool has helped me to
see them as individuals with very personal histories.”
It forged a deeper link for the Fab Four fan who filmed footage for
his teen news programme while he was here. But he already had an unusual
connection to the band or one particular member at least.
The TV newsman witnessed the battle to save Lennon after he was shot
more than three decades ago, having landed in hospital after a motorbike
accident.
He watched on in horror as ‘all hell’ broke loose in the New York
A&E department after a medic announced ‘a gunshot wound’ coming in.
Only when he began to hear snippets of conversation as medics fought
desperately to save the patient’s life did he realise: “It was John
Lennon.”
Alan says: “I was lying on a gurney in a hallway in the emergency room of the Roosevelt Hospital.
“The doctor was looking at me when a man ran through saying they had a ‘gun shot’.”
Alan, then a senior programme producer of WABC-TV’s Channel 7
Eyewitness News, goes on: “I turned my head to see police officers
carrying this person in and the doctor said ‘Alan I have to take care of
this’.
“As I watched through a screen two police officers came to stand
next to my gurney and one says: ‘Jesus, can you believe it, John
Lennon’?”
Alan quizzed the police officers who denied having said anything:
“Eventually a man sweeping the floor was coming close and I gave him my
press card and a 20-dollar bill and asked him to phone the newsroom to
tell them John Lennon may have been shot. But five minutes later a
security guard gave me back my press card saying they couldn’t make the
call.
“No-one was talking to me and I wasn’t sure what I could do, but then
I looked behind me and an Asian woman walked in, crying on the arms of a
police officer... at that point I knew it was John Lennon.”
What followed was Alan’s quest to break one of his biggest – and
most poignant – stories. The 63-year-old knew he had to let his
newsroom, and the world, know what was happening.
Eventually he persuaded a police officer to hand him a hospital phone
and, at 11pm on December 8, 1980, reached the assignment editor who
confirmed a shooting at Lennon’s address. “It seemed like all the pieces
fitted together,” he says.
“I returned to my gurney and watched as they frantically worked on
John Lennon. At one point I could see the doctors massaging his heart
and, in disbelief, the ‘muzak’ that was playing was suddenly ‘All My
Lovin’ by The Beatles.
“A few minutes after the song ended, Yoko Ono came out screaming ‘no, no, no....’.
“When a lady doctor came to look at me I asked if he had died and she
said she couldn’t tell me. So I asked her a question: ‘If a person was
brought in here with a gunshot wound and it had only been 15 minutes,
would you still not be needed if he was still alive?’
“She replied that she would.
“I got up and called the newsroom again.”
Alan remembers: “I felt like I was two people that night. I would
like to say that I was a complete professional, totally in control. I
was trying to memorise all the details, I knew this was incredibly
important.
“But I was a Beatles fan, and I was in mourning. I was stunned and
it was hard to divorce myself from the emotional feelings. He wasn’t a
member of my family, but I felt he was. And I’d have given anything for
it to have not been what it was.”
Alan hobbled into work the next day and the programme on which he
worked covering Lennon’s death actually won the newsman an Emmy award.
Alan now has his own production company which creates Teen Kids News which airs on more than 200 TV stations across America.
He developed it after one of his daughter’s asked a question relating
to a news broadcast she had just watched about Monica Lewinsky and
then-president Bill Clinton, but Alan realised the honest answer was
possibly not for the ears of someone so young.
“She was about eight or nine at the time and I realised that news is
not always child-friendly, but it is important that they are aware of
what is going on around them. So that is how Teen Kids News came about.
“Both my daughters, Nicole, 20, and Lauren, 23, have worked on the programme.”
Teen Kids News provides news programmes, education and entertainment.
So, when he visited the UK this month to collect daughter, Lauren, from
Edinburgh where she has been studying, he recorded an item about where
The Beatles grew up.
“My children know the Beatles because I am a Beatles fan; and that’s
the case with so many people my age whose kids have listened to their
music.
“The Beatles probably wouldn’t be in a young person’s music top 10
but if you ask them if they know them, the answer will be ‘yes’.”
But just in case, Alan is planning to make sure...
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