Instant Karma

PROLOGUE

NBC'S "THE SOURCE"

5:20 AM EASTERN TIME

DECEMBER 9th, 1980

("Boys Don't Cry" fades out.)

TED BROWN: It is 5:20 AM in New York, this is Ted Brown. 

MARIANNE WILLIS: And this is Marianne Willis.

TED BROWN: I have the incredibly sad task to inform you this morning that Beatle Paul McCartney is dead. He has been killed. It has just been confirmed by all the wire services that twenty minutes ago, at 10 AM GMT, he was attacked and fatally wounded outside AIR Recording Studios in London. According to police he'd been on his way to a meeting with George Martin at the studio to discuss plans for an upcoming album, and (faltering) I don't know what else to say at the moment. 

("NBC Hotline Bulletin" jingle plays.)

BETH TAYLOR: This is an NBC News Hotline Report. This is Beth Taylor. Former Beatle Paul McCartney was attacked and killed this morning at 10 AM GMT outside producer George Martin's AIR studios in London. With a special report, David Shores of Radio 1 Newsbeat at the NBC.

DAVID SHORES: Police at the scene of the Hampstead recording studio, which was by producer George Martin of the Beatles, say McCartney was stabbed and fatally wounded by an unknown assailant. According to a witness who'd watched McCartney arrive on the premises, the assaliant had approached him for an autograph, and when the singer obliged he was stabbed several times in the chest. Martin, who told police he'd planned to meet McCartney and members of the band Wings that day to record an album, was close by and called an ambulance. McCartney was transported to the nearest emergency centre, however, when correspondents Michael Hawthorn and Julie Mohin spoke to the doctors who tried to save McCartney, they said he was "dead upon arrival" and that "despite several attempts at resuscitation and transfusions," there was nothing [they] could do."

BETH TAYLOR: This is Beth Taylor. This has been an NBC News Hotline Report. 

("NBC Hotline Bulletin" jingle plays.)

TED BROWN: And this is Ted Brown at the Source. Police say at the moment that they have an assailant in custody, a white male whose identity has not been disclosed. A witness who was on the scene described to new correspondents how the assailant had walked up and down the sidewalk outside the studio for over two hours, as if waiting for McCartney to appear. She, the witness, a resident of the neighborhood who was on her morning walk, had heard McCartney yell McCartney and rushed across the street to see what had happened. The assailant had fled and McCartney had fallen by the studio's doorway, where George Martin and several others, including had emerged to try and help. The group's attempts to help McCartney were unsuccessful, said the witness, and she described how McCartney had been, quote, "trying to tell them something," but couldn't speak through the blood in his mouth. (A pause.) 

MARIANNE WILLIS: The Source will stay on this story throughout the day, and... for now, we won't continue our scheduled punk and new wave show in order to remember Paul McCartney's incredible contributions to pop music and his songs that have touched our hearts for so many years now. 

TED BROWN: Decades.

MARIANNE WILLIS: Yes, for some of us, decades. This is "All My Loving." 

TED BROWN: Paul wrote "All My Loving?" 

MARIANNE WILLIS: Yes, and here it is now.

("All My Loving" begins.)