Tomorrow: Better than today

After posting this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth -- what with my paean to the '80s and "colortinis" -- I got to thinking about the late, great Tom Snyder and his Tomorrow show.

The wasn't anyone the man hadn't interviewed, I don't think. And it was always a late, late show event when he did. Above, we see Snyder with John Lennon on 1975.


AND THEN, with Lennon's producer for Double Fantasy, Jack Douglas. The date: Dec. 9, 1980.

John Lennon had just been murdered the night before.

Douglas said the former Beatle had had a message for people at the dawn of the 1980s.

I think the first single off the album, which was called "Starting Over" -- which we picked while we were doing the album -- was the feeling that he wanted to have for the '80s . . . that we are, in fact, in the '80s, that we are starting over. That it's time to be optimistic about the future. That it's time to write off George Orwell and 1984.

It's time to forget about those things, that in '84, that we can have what we want if we work together and for ourselves.

I MISS an age when we could be so hopeful. Naively hopeful, but hopeful nonetheless.

That was such an improvement over the anger, strife, name calling and hopelessness we wallow in today.

Come back John Lennon.

Come back, Tom Snyder.

We've forgotten how to hope. And we've forgotten how to have a meaningful -- and civil -- conversation. We long to sit back, relax and watch the pictures, now -- hopeful pictures -- as they fly through the air.