About a Rock 'n' Roll Name-Dropper

Laurie Kaye is a writer and producer, and 'Confessions of a Rock ’n’ Roll Name-Dropper: My Life Leading Up to John Lennon’s Last Interview' is her long-awaited memoir. In it, we read about Kaye's music-related early life wrapped around that day in December 1980 which Kaye spent with John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the legendary Dakota apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

On December 8, 1980, while working for RKO Radio, twenty-something rock journalist Laurie Kaye co-conducted an interview with her longtime idol, John Lennon. It was to become Lennon's final interview on what tragically turned out to be his last day on the planet.

That evening, John Lennon was gunned down by a man Laurie Kaye had encountered just hours before. Lennon's 25-year-old assassin (whom Kaye refuses to refer to by name) had blocked Kaye's path outside the Dakota, harassing her with questions right after the interview such as, “Did you talk to him?” and “Did you get his autograph?", and in the following years, Laurie Kaye has continued to beat herself up over her failure to recognize that this creep had posed a danger and should have been reported.

As we approach the 45th anniversary of John Lennon's death, Laurie Kaye reflects on how she rose from teen runaway from a dysfunctional family to an expatriate studying Balinese dancing in Indonesia to journalist, writer and producer.  Along the way, she interviewed titans of the music industry including John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Grace Slick, Talking Heads, The Ramones, David Bowie, Mick Jagger (whom she put on hold so that he could listen to her newscast before getting down to business) and many more. 

But it was that December day she shared a loveseat with John Lennon and watched him push his iconic granny glasses down the length of his nose and smile at her in agreement that remains most indelibly etched in her mind, making it, as she says, both the best and worst day of her life.