ABSTRACT
It is possible that Mark Chapman committed the first amusical assassination. Although many musicians have been murdered before, “John Lennon was the first in America to be murdered purely because he was a famous musician, the rationale for the killing being ‘predicated on somebody’s art’”. Mark Chapman’s assassination of Lennon was, by his own admission, an act of pure self-promotion indifferent to the prospect of material reward. Daniel Schwartz perceives a similar structure in the case of Chapman. He notes that Chapman’s personality disorder was based around a confusion of identities in relation to images of Lennon. Lennon is only ever an image for Chapman. After receiving Lennon’s autograph on the day of his death, Chapman is taken by how “nice” and “kind”, “courteous and polite” Lennon is to him.
