John Lennon's Birthday, Strawberry Fields, Central Park, October 9, 2024

I live just blocks from Strawberry Fields in Central Park. Normally, there’s one guitar player at a time there, strumming and singing for the passing tourists, with slots allocated on a schedule.

But on John Lennon’s birthday, it’s open to everyone, and from 11:00 am to 11:00 pm and after there’s an all-day throng of guitar players, drummers, bassists, and singers commemorating the event. I’ve joined them with my guitar for the past few years. Above is this year’s version of Imagine.

It’s a quintessential New York event, showing the universality of the City and the perennial magic of Lennon and the Beatles — a universality of age and ethnicity, with every continent and every generation represented, from those of us who were there at the beginning in 1964, to teens who know every chord and lyric.

Here’s the first Beatles song I heard that year: I wanna hold your hand.