John Lennon: The Life

John Lennon: The Life
by Philip Norman

John Lennon: The Life
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Book Summary Information

Author: Philip Norman
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-11-01
ISBN: 006075401X
Number of pages: 864
Publisher: Ecco
Product features:

Book Reviews of John Lennon: The Life

Book Review: Mythology and Biography
Summary: 3 Stars

I find that I still cannot resist reading about the Beatles, collectively or individually. It is as if their stories have taken on modern mythic proportions, tales that somehow resonate and seem never to grow old. This latest to the canon, more than any I have seen to date, tackles Lennon's early life with thoroughness. While the book in the main refrains from hero-worship, what rarely is discussed (and perhaps needs to be), is that Lennon was a mean fellow at times. In particular, his conduct toward his first wife was caddish at best. Yet this is glossed over as if we were still reading teen magazines.

Summary of John Lennon: The Life

For more than a quarter century, Philip Norman's internationally bestselling Shout! has been unchallenged as the definitive biography of the Beatles. Now, at last, Norman turns his formidable talent to the Beatle for whom belonging to the world's most beloved pop group was never enough. Drawing on previously untapped sources, and with unprecedented access to all the major characters, here is the comprehensive and most revealing portrait of John Lennon that is ever likely to be published.

This masterly biography takes a fresh and penetrating look at every aspect of Lennon's much-chronicled life, including the songs that have turned him, posthumously, into a near-secular saint. In three years of research, Norman has turned up an extraordinary amount of new information about even the best-known episodes of Lennon folklore-his upbringing by his strict Aunt Mimi; his allegedly wasted school and student days; the evolution of his peerless creative partnership with Paul McCartney; his Beatle-busting love affair with a Japanese performance artist; his forays into painting and literature; his experiments with Transcendental Meditation, primal scream therapy, and drugs. The book's numerous key informants and interviewees include Sir Paul McCartney, Sir George Martin, Sean Lennon-whose moving reminiscence reveals his father as never before-and Yoko Ono, who speaks with sometimes shocking candor about the inner workings of her marriage to John.

Honest and unflinching, as John himself would wish, Norman gives us the whole man in all his endless contradictions-tough and cynical, hilariously funny but also naive, vulnerable and insecure-and reveals how the mother who gave him away as a toddler haunted his mind and his music for the rest of his days.

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