The strange thing is that, in the U.K. at least, the news and reaction was absolutely unavoidable in a way it wouldn't be now.
Every radio station had a news bulletin, daily newspapers sold in millions not thousands, and there were only three TV channels.
John's material got re-released and so his songs were everywhere, omnipresent in the chart (now no-one listens to it), in record shops (they no longer exist) and on 'Top Of the Pops' (now it too doesn't exist) for about six months afterwards.
Cue to 2014 and, if you wanted to avoid a celebrity's death, you could do so with ease.
I completely, after hearing about it at a bus-stop in Penzance, avoided all the Michael Jackson stuff.
It would have been impossible in 1980.