It has been twenty-five years, and it can still stop your mind.

It had been a good night. John Lennon had just finished making music with his wife, Yoko Ono, that he regarded as some of the best music of his life, and his judgment wasn't off the mark. He had also learned, just a bit earlier, that his and Ono's album Double Fantasy — the first collection with new music from Lennon in five years, following a mysterious sabbatical — had gone gold that day. Now he and Ono were on their way back home from the studio to see their son, Sean, the five-year-old whom Lennon had devoted himself to more than to his career. Their car pulled up to the Manhattan apartment building where they lived, the Dakota, and Lennon got out. It was a balmy night, for December. He moved to the Dakota's entrance, then he heard a voice call his name.

Nothing made sense that night. John Lennon was murdered, shot five times in the back, in the presence of his wife. It was a murder of madness.

A future was gone — Lennon wouldn't make music again, he wouldn't get to kiss his son — but also, the past suddenly made no sense. A story that had started in hope had ended in blood. It was an awful payoff. Lennon had constructed the Beatles — the group that in its time meant everything — and then in his work after he left the band, he had strived for an honesty and an idealism that was unlike anything rock & roll had produced before. In doing so he threatened not just cultural conventions but also unforgiving powers, because he had an unusual command: He had made music that had moved the world. This violent ending ruined the epic.

Nobody ever pushed the possibilities of rock & roll like John Lennon, and nobody in the music's history has really mattered as much. This isn't to say that Lennon was the primary reason for the greatness of the Beatles, though the Beatles are, of course, unimaginable without him. Nor is it to say that after he left that group he necessarily made better albums than the other former Beatles — though he made more interesting and consequential ones, and he took greater risks. And it isn't to say that he led a life of uprightness or sanctity, because — and this is the important one — he didn't. With songs like "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine," Lennon idealized optimism and compassion, but he realized those ideals in himself only fleetingly. He had a notorious, biting temper, he wasn't always fair to the people who loved and trusted him, and he sometimes lashed out viciously at an audience that simply believed in him.

What John Lennon did, above all else, was look after himself. He wanted love and validation, and he wanted those things on his own terms — the only terms he cared about, and after he had become so legendary, the only ones he needed to accept. Fortunately for us all — fortunately for history — Lennon's terms involved high standards. He was prideful enough that he wanted to improve his art, both in and past the Beatles, and he succeeded in that ambition. He was also self-important enough to believe that he could wrestle with the times he lived in and make a difference — and the difference he made was immense. Lennon was looking after himself when he made art and proclaimed hopes that would outlast his being. He was looking after himself when he made a family and nurtured and preserved it as his most meaningful legacy — when he looked into his son Sean's face, and wanted to be worthy of the veneration he saw in that face. He did it when, after all his fuck-ups and all his years of silence, he believed enough in the purpose of what he had to say that he was willing to start over.