John Lennon by Philip Norman
November 28th, 2008Title: John Lennon
Author: Philip Norman
Publisher: Ecco (2008)
I love the Beatles. I have read approximately 10,000 books about the Beatles…I can’t get enough. In fact, one of the first books I reviewed for Letters on Pages was a biography of Paul McCartney. So when I recently saw a new biography of John Lennon I HAD to read it. This is the 4th book about John Lennon’s life that I have read…and easily the best. The biography by Cynthia Lennon (his ex-wife) was OK, but obviously not unbiased. The biography by Albert Goldman was almost offensively bad and pretty unfair. This one was by far the best as it was written neutrally…just stating what happened without much personal commentary.
John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman is a VERY detailed look at Lennon’s entire life (and even a bit on his parents and grandparents), coming in at 864 pages. I can imagine this would be pretty daunting if you weren’t a big Lennon/Beatles fan…but it didn’t seem too bad for me. Plus there were pictures in the middle…and I LOVE pictures!
Most everyone who cares to know already knows the John Lennon story. There really weren’t very many surprises in this book, but there was more detail. The most interesting parts for me were the Beatle years. I can’t get enough stories about them and their music. I could read and listen to them all day long. Not being alive at the time they were playing music I never was able to experience them first hand, but they always seemed to be so happy-go-lucky and clean cut. The books I have read about them dispute that though. They were pretty wild behind the scenes, and Lennon was the wildest of them all. The stories are pretty rough and certainly don’t paint Lennon in the best light all of the time…but I’m OK with that. I want to read the truth, not some watered down fan book.
It is always odd to have a person who you admire (like Lennon or McCartney) end up to be a total creep. He was viciously mean to pretty much everyone around him. He bailed on his wife and son…not that he was much of a husband or father. He had affairs for pretty much his entire first marriage (and some of his second). I guess over time I have learned to just admire his songwriting abilities and not who he was.
Naturally when Yoko Ono came into his life I felt a shiver go down my spine because I think she is probably evil. I can’t prove it, but it’s probably true. When the author wanted to write this book, he went to Ono and asked for interviews, access and an endorsement, which she agreed to if she could read the manuscript to check for accuracy and whatever else. One of his goals in this book was to portray Ono in a better light than she has been portrayed…pretty much everywhere else. He sent her a manuscript and she amazingly refused to endorse it as she thought it was too mean to John. As as it ends up, she is still evil even today!
One aspect of the book I really thought was interesting was near the end of his life when he realized he needed to settle down and act like a (relatively) normal person. It seems like he finally found happiness and changed his personality around. Unfortunately he was soon murdered on the steps of his apartment building in New York City.
This book was great and read very quickly, even though it was huge. I HIGHLY recommend it to any fan of the Beatles. You won’t be disappointed!
Rating: 5 out of 5
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November 28th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
good review..you make it sound very interesting even though i ,too,thought everything ever known about the beatles was already written. I like your statement that “I have learned to just admire his songwriting abilities and not who he was.” I agree totally.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I don’t think of Yoko Ono as being evil…I think of her as being a sort of non entity. And, contrary to the popular myths, I doubt that she is the one who “broke up” the Beatles. I think John did it.
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