The limousine hired to take John Lennon and Yoko Ono back to their home at the Dakota Building on New York’s Upper West Side was late.
The former Beatle and his wife had been at the Record Plant studio mixing a track for most of the evening.
The couple were going out to eat but John wanted to say goodnight to his five-year-old son Sean first.
It was December 8, 1980, and the night-time winter mist was moving in from the lake in Central Park.
Dropped off in front of the Dakota on West 72nd Street at around 10.45pm, Yoko climbed out first and made her way towards the gaslights outside the main entrance.
John followed, holding a stack of cassettes. When he got to the entrance four hollow-point bullets fired from a .38 revolver ripped through his body from behind.
“I’m shot! I’m shot!”, he said. He was declared dead at Roosevelt Hospital just before 11.15pm.
The world stopped.
It is no exaggeration to say that the sudden and brutal death was more shocking than that of Elvis Presley.
What Lennon came to represent through his music – intolerance of injustice and belief in peace – helped define the post-war world.
In a parallel universe, John Lennon would be turning 80 today.
“I see no reason why he wouldn’t still be here,” says Kenneth Womack, the author of John Lennon 1980: The Last Days In The Life.
The Beatles scholar adds: “The year he died, he had cleaned up his act.
“He was baking bread in the huge ‘superkitchen’ in the Dakota, he had learned to sail and was loving that connection with his Liverpool seafaring roots, he was a devoted father and husband and, contrary to popular opinion at the time, probably due to his lack of musical output, he was not some kind of recluse.”
The two adjacent apartments the Lennons owned in the Dakota were a refuge from the madness of being two of the most famous people in the world, but John loved New York.
He had his hair cut at Viz-a-Viz a block away, ate and drank at The Tavern on the Green (occasionally in disguise) and a nearby optometrist kept him in his iconic glasses.
Life was good, up to a point.
His old writing partner and occasional bete noire, Paul McCartney, had been a constant chart-topping presence with Wings during the 1970s. Towards the end of the decade George Harrison was back on form with the release of his eponymous LP. Ringo was, as ever, doing his thing.
But in 1980 Lennon’s life was changing, claims Womack.
He says: “The start of a new decade was definitely symbolic for him. He felt optimistic and ready to recapture his muse.”
A new album, Double Fantasy followed and in October 1980 his first single for five years, (Just Like) Starting Over, was released.
The album was not critically well-received, but following Lennon’s murder it became a huge hit all over the world and won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The singles followed.
“Who knows where he would have gone with his music next,” wonders Womack. “He was listening to a lot of reggae and ska.
“He loved The Pretenders, The Selecter, The Specials and Madness.
“I think he would definitely have moved with the times whilst keeping his original influences close to him, much like McCartney has done.”
And would The Beatles eventually have got back together?
“I imagine they would,” he says. “I’m also sure they would have played Live Aid – and stolen the show.”
Politically, it was rumoured Lennon was voicing support for right-wing Republican Ronald Reagan at the 1980 US Presidential election but Womack says: “If he even hinted at that he would have been winding someone up and if he’d even thought about it I think the way that administration handled the AIDS crisis, with New York as the epicentre, would have changed his mind.
“He was very supportive of gay rights and same-sex marriage.”
Philip Norman, author of John Lennon: The Life and SHOUT! The Beatles In Their Generation, agrees with him.
He says: “He’d always have been John, the incorrigible rebel.”
Womack adds: “I’d like to think that he would be leading protests about the kind of things that are going on today such as the attacks on the constitution.”
Would he have been singing protest songs at the Republican convention?
“Maybe but more likely via the internet,” Womack reckons.
“I think in a lot of ways he would have been like David Bowie, very moved by the internet. He would be an influencer in that way… he’d be right there on Twitter giving Trump hell.”
“He loved gadgets,” confirms Norman. “He would have been into all that but I always thought and still do think that his speaking voice would have been just as sort of prized as his singing voice. Whenever John did any sort of narration it was completely charming.”
Womack adds that the “miniature stories” Lennon recorded would have been ideal for a podcast.
Of how Lennon would have lived, Womack adds: “He had one fantasy about going to live on the coast somewhere in England and waiting for Sean’s postcards.”
Norman adds: “Yoko didn’t expect they were going to stay together all that time. Perhaps he didn’t, he might very well have parted from Yoko, it was a very unusual relationship.”
But whatever else might have happened, Norman is sure of one dream Lennon would have fulfilled.
He says: “I do know that he was planning to come back and sail up the Mersey on the QE2.”
What better way for a Beatle to celebrate his 80th birthday?