Freeze Frame: The heartbreaking story behind John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Rolling Stone cover
On December 8, 1980, renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz stood over John John and Yoko Ono's bed with a camera.
Leibovitz had been welcomed into the couple's apartment on the Upper West Side and was tasked with snapping a portrait of the Beatles superstar.
The cover photo was supposed to be a solo shot of Lennon, but the rocker had demanded his wife be in the frame.
This photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono was taken hours before his death. Rolling Stone/ Annie Leibovitz
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He told Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner: "If they don't want the two of us, we're not interested."
When she arrived, Leibovitz decided she wanted the pair to be locked in an embrace, but Ono didn't want to be naked.
So instead, a nude Lennon wrapped himself around the fully-clothed Japanese artist and Leibovitz took a Polaroid photo.
"You've captured our relationship exactly," Lennon, 40, told her after he saw the image.
I think that thing Rolling Stone did about John was rather truthful and daring
It would be one of the last known photos of the late Beatles icon.
Just hours later, Lennon was shot dead out the front of that very same apartment by a crazed Beatles fan named Mark David Chapman.
That polaroid would soon become one of the most iconic magazine covers in history.
Rolling Stone magazine featured it as their cover photo on January 22, 1981. It ran with no cover-lines and sold 1.45 million copies.
When the photo was taken, Lennon and Ono were cocooned in a warm embrace of love.
Once it hit the magazine stands a month later, Ono was a widow and Lennon was dead.
Yoko Ono and John Lennon in pictured in 1968. Getty
What was planned to be a nod to Lennon and Ono's iconic romance turned into a memorial issue for the Beatles singer.
Leibovitz later said that image would be remembered as "the photograph of my life".
Inside the issue, every single page was dedicated solely to Lennon's life. It was filled with essays and tributes from the likes of Mick Jagger and Greil Marcus.
And Ono largely credited the Rolling Stone cover as playing a pivotal role in shaping Lennon's legacy.
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"I think that thing Rolling Stone did about John was rather truthful and daring," Ono told Vanity Fair in 2017.
"It was at the edge of whether it's going to be bad for him or good for him. But at the same time, it was good.
"There was no other magazine that did that," she added. "That's one of the reasons John's image survived. The strength of his image was the fact that he had both sides."
John Lennon was shot dead on December 8, 1980. Liverpool Echo
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Lennon was killed around six hours after Leibovitz took that polaroid photo.
Heartbreakingly, Ono told their son Sean about his father's death in the very same moment she showed him Leibovitz's photo.
"I took Sean to the spot where John lay after he was shot," she wrote in the Rolling Stone issue.
"Sean wanted to know why the person shot John if he liked John. I explained that he was probably a confused person
Ono said that Sean told her: "Now Daddy is part of God."
"I guess when you die you become much more bigger because you're part of everything."
As Lennon entered the Dakota apartment complex at 10.50pm that evening, Chapman approached him with a .38 pistol in his hand.
He pointed the gun at Lennon's back and fired five bullets. Lennon died at the scene.
And when a Daily News reporter approached the gunman, who lingered after he killed the Beatles icon, he asked who he was. "Just a fan," Chapman simply replied.
Lennon and Ono in New York, 1980. AP
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After Lennon's death, Leibovitz told Ono she could have the picture back.
Ono, who was lying in bed in the dark in the hours after the shooting, told her: "Annie, just take this picture, just do what you want with it, and go buy yourself a loft or a photo studio or something."
Ono's lawyers attempted to stop the release of the photo, but she intervened. Rolling Stone could use the photo, she said, but only published in the magazine.
The issue, published on January 22, contained a tribute letter to Lennon, written by Jann Wenner.
However, the tribute didn't end there. Inside the seam of two million copies of the magazine was a secret message, hidden in the binding of the pages.
It read, "I love you. I miss you. You're with god. I'll do what I said. 'Yoko, hold on' – I'll make sure, I promise. XXX"
