Product Description

Out of the hardscrabble port city of Liverpool, England, there emerged a rock n roll group that would become the most celebrated of all time. And the soul of that group was John Lennon, the Smart Beatle, who with his mates changed the way the world looked, partied and lived. From the days in a Hamburg basement club to the Ed Sullivan Show to the movies to the White Album, the music traced a phenomenal trajectory. Along the way came his beloved Yoko and sons Julian and Sean, the breakup of the Fab Four, the fascinating solo albums, and finally, in the end, an assassins bullet. Life was there with John and the Beatles from their first visit to these shores till the final days. This exultant tale is told in vivid photography and words, as John is brought to life in a truly special volume from the editors of Life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #355282 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-05
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 128 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The magazine best known for its pictures gets into the act with a photographic retrospective of Lennon, including shots from a number of photographers dating from the founding Beatle's childhood through Beatlemania and up to the aftermath of his tragic 1980 murder in New York. Captioned with brief, personal remembrances from friends and acquaintances, the photos will likely please fans, despite the work's overall breezy, saccharine presentation. The childhood and adolescent shots of Lennon, both with and without his eventual bandmates, are most engaging, including one shot of a 16-year-old John center stage fronting the Quarry Men on the very day he would engage for the first time a like-minded 15-year-old lad named Paul McCartney. (Oct.)The following is an excerpt from a review of a children's book that ran in the Oct. 3 issue of PW.
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Customer Reviews

Nice compilation
This book has a lot of nice photos i've never seen before. The one i really like is in the first pages, where is a compilation of John Lennon's ID cards. It's great.

Lennon is GOD
This is a nice book of memories of the world's best musical genius of all time.I still miss him. We lost a lot when we lost him.

What was it about John Lennon?
I can't figure it out. What is it about John Lennon that makes his photographs so fascinating, fresh, and appealing all these years after he was killed? Is it because he is the only Beatle that didn't grow old? Is it because he is the image of my generation's youth? Is it because of the music he created that still resonates today? Is it simply because he was so photogenic? Is it because he was an enigma, someone we thought we knew, someone we wanted to know better? Is it all of these things, or some combination?

I don't know; but this book is a haunting joy. It features John alone, with the Quarry Men and Beatles, with his family, in shots there were staged, but often shots that gave us a hint of the real person. The book is composed of the work of several photographers that spent time with John and got to know him. The photos and brief write-ups give some insight into the real person, one that is nicer and more vulnerable than the persona that he fronted. You get a real sense of personal loss that the photographers felt after he was killed by a madman in 1981, a loss that was personal for the rest of us too - for some reason. (Again, what is it about John Lennon?)

Not a bad retrospective.