“John Would Be Alive”: John Lennon’s Producer on the Massive Guilt He Felt Over the Musician’s Death, Which Lennon Seemed to Predict

Grief isn’t always conducive to logical thinking, which is why so many people mourning a loved one can start ruminating over “what ifs” and “should haves” in a well-intentioned but unproductive attempt to rationalize their loss. Jack Douglas, the producer who was working with John Lennon at the time of his death in early December 1980, is certainly no exception.

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Years later, Douglas still struggles with guilt over the rockstar’s death, wrestling with the same “what if I had done this” or “I should have done that” statements that so often plague the mind of a grieving friend. During a 2025 appearance on the Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan podcast, Douglas reflected on what makes Lennon’s death so difficult, even 45 years later.

Douglas and Lennon lived within walking distance of one another in New York City, so they would often leave the recording studio together. On the night of December 8, 1980, the night Mark David Chapman would kill Lennon outside of his apartment at the Dakota, Douglas had opted to stay behind in the studio. He would have had no way of knowing the tragedy that was to come, but that didn’t stop him from imagining an alternate scene.

“I would have been in the car, I would have seen the guy, I would have tackled him, John would be alive. That played over and over and over,” Douglas told Corgan. The shock, grief, and guilt Douglas felt were so overwhelming that he stopped leaving his house and spiraled into a pill addiction. “I was out of control,” he said.

Jack Douglas Said John Lennon Seemed to Predict His Death

Eventually, as life always does after even the greatest losses, things became somewhat normal again. Rock ‘n’ roll, though forever changed by John Lennon’s death, continued to push forward. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, continued to raise her young son, Julian, in their Dakota apartment. Jack Douglas went to rehab and has been sober for over three decades. And with all that passing time, there inevitably comes clearer hindsight and a sense of healing from these heartbreaking tragedies. This newfound clarity allowed Douglas to see that before Lennon was murdered, the musician seemed to predict his demise.

“He spoke about death every once in a while,” Douglas told People in 2023. “He would say things like, ‘When I die, it’s going to be bigger than Elvis.’ And I’d say, ‘Stop talking like that.’ He insisted on journals being kept for every moment, everything being documented, me placing microphones all over the studio so that everything could be recorded. It felt like he had a feeling something was coming, and he was very intuitive about things. Extremely. Almost supernaturally about things.”

At Ono’s request, Douglas was the one who appeared on television to announce the news of Lennon’s death. He and Lennon’s widow then went to the studio and listened to hours of audio from Lennon’s most recent sessions. “It was talking, his music, anything. We sat there until dawn, just listening to different things that John had done. And that was the only service that there was. It was just Yoko and I.”

Lennon was 40 years old when he died. At the time of this writing, his killer, Mark David Chapman, is still in prison and has been denied every parole request he has made.

Photo by David Redfern/Redferns