"Lennon at 70!"

In anticipation of John's 70th birthday, David Kamp of Vanity Fair wrote an imaginative alternate history of the past 30 years that sees John improbably survive Mark David Chapman's attack, and go on to separate from Yoko again; vote for President Ronald Reagan (which causes a riff with Jann Wenner); reunite with the other Beatles and record a badly conceived comeback album called Everest; perform onstage with Paul following 9/11; reconcile with Yoko; and then commit to playing a John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band anniversary concert.

Excerpt:
Twenty-seven years ago, you’d have been hard-pressed to envision a time when Ono would ever again speak to Lennon, much less share a stage with him. Their acrimonious 1983 divorce came amidst a ferocious midlife crisis that saw Lennon womanizing with abandon (most notoriously with Beverly D’Angelo, then still married to an Italian duke) and renouncing their lovey-dovey triptych of “heart play” albums—Double Fantasy, Milk and Honey, and Grow Old with Me—as “a diabetic coma.” Lennon further torpedoed his public image later that year when, upon taking his oath of U.S. citizenship, he announced that he would cast his vote in the ’84 presidential election for Ronald Reagan.

“I think we’re at a point where there’s too much government in everyone’s business and too many people looking for handouts,” he told NBC’s Lloyd Dobyns on the news program Monitor. “My father was a merchant seaman who walked out on the family. He couldn’t be bothered with me until I was a rich Beatle, and then he was suddenly coming ’round all the time, hat in hand. That’s where we’re at with America, you know—people knocking on Uncle Sam’s door, hands outstretched, [doleful voice] ‘Help me, man. Gimme, gimme.’ Ronnie, he understands that it’s time to bloody slam the door.”