Product Description

The result of six years of research and some 1,200 interviews, this book takes fans deep into Lennon's secretive world, from his traumatic childhood to his Beatles days to his hidden life with Yoko Ono. While the Lennon of legend enjoyed a gifted and inspired life, the private Lennon lived in torment, poisoning himself with drugs and self-hatred. The Lives of John Lennon exposed for the first time all of his various lives, from idealist to cynic, from ascetic to junkie. It is a lasting tribute to his brilliant achievements and a revelation of the price he paid for them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #536280 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 720 pages

Review
"Compulsively readable." -- Time

"This book remains superior to anything written about Lennon in some 500 books on the Beatles." -- Victor Bockris, author of Keith Richards and Warhol

Review

About the Author
Albert Goldman wrote the bestsellers Ladies and Gentlemen-Lenny Bruce! and Elvis. He died in 1994.

Customer Reviews

Ignore Yoko's self-serving warnings and give this book a chance.
For many years I refused to read this book because I did not want to blot or tarnish, with content that had been repeatedly described as putrid, hostile, slanderous, character-damaging dreck, my image of John Lennon. After finding a hardcover in mint condition for only five bucks, however, I couldn't resist, and I'm glad I buckled. First off, like me, anyone wanting to read the book probably loves John so much that nothing anyone could ever say about him would really sully or ruin their affection for the man. Secondly, I realized quickly why Yoko Ono had so fervently condemned this book as I reached the second half. Overall, Goldman says nothing horribly negative about John (yes, he's described as neurotic and slightly crazy, but didn't we always know that about John, and wasn't that part of his appeal?) The person Goldman painstakingly describes as evil is Yoko. She comes across as satanic in nature, and while I was initially hesitant to accept this harsh assessment of her, too many other books, such as Pete Shotton's and Tony Bramwell's, paint a similar portrait for Goldman to be completely wrong. For instance, Goldman is the only writer to reveal that no record exists of the phone calls Yoko Ono famously and dramatically claims to have made to Paul and Mimi the night John died. An abundance of facts of this nature are to be found in the book.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and I recommend you read it. The experience made me realize that my love for John is impenetrable, and if yours is too, then I recommend you check this book out. Ask yourself, who is the person who has done the most campaigning to destroy this book? The answer is the woman about whom Goldman does a good deal to expose.

(As a final asterisk, I meant to only give this a four star review, but I edited the review so many times that I ultimately hit the wrong button)

Mix of fact and fiction; not very useful
I just tried to use Albert Goldman's "The Lives of John Lennon" to find a fact about John Lennon. I heard Lennon's "Rock'n'Roll" album, and thought it was oretty good, overall, so I wondered who'd played on it. I checked Goldman's book. After all, in a 719 page biography of a musician you should be able to find information about his music, like who played on his albums.

But Goldman only mentioned Jesse Ed Davis, on guitar. I flipped backwards and forwards trying to find another smidgen of musical fact. Instead I found this: "Perhaps the most revealing moment in John's relationship with Jagger had come on their joint appearance on the Rock'n'Roll Circus, when a stoned John, playing a TV interviewer, had done a satiric turn with Mick as pop star, that concluded with John slipping his hand inside Mick's shirt and feeling him up."

That's funny, I thought. I'd just played the DVD of "Rock and Roll Circus", and I never noticed that. So I played the Lennon sequence again. The hand in shirt thing still didn't happen. Seems Goldman had an agenda (claiming Lennon was gay), so he made it up. When Goldman wrote, "Rock'n'Roll Circus" was hard to find; he probably didn't expect that marketing and technology would one day make it easy for people to check little things like that.

I'm no longer confident in claims made by Goldman that stand unsupported by other biographers. Did Lennon take a metric ton of heroin, and make an absolute tool of himself during "The Lost Weekend"? Yep, I believe that, because other biographers confirm it. But did Lennon (for example) kill a man in Hamburg, or go to bed with Brian Epstein, or do a voodoo trip to the Caribbean? Did Yoko arrange for Paul's drug bust in Japan? Nah. Get away with you, Mr Goldman. Only Goldman tells me so, and he offers only malicious hearsay, sometimes filled out by his own imagination, not evidence.

My scepticism isn't because I think Lennon was a saint. It seems that the real, historical, John Lennon could be a right bastard, angry, violent, including to women, and a mean drunk. It also seems that the historical John Lennon could be funny and kind and thoughtful. He could tell terrible lies, and be awkwardly honest. He was a bit of a mess, in fact, though he tried to sort out his mess. And historical evidence suggests that a lot of people who were close to him loved him. Not fans. Not "staff". Friends and family. Which suggests that there was more to the man than the sum of his faults.

But Goldman doesn't give us this human complexity, but a hatchet job of no more than fair to moderate reliability on matters of fact. The real problem is not so much that his most sensational claims don't stand up. It's more that the whole portrait is out of register. Goldman mainly portrays Lennon not as a bastard but as a dweeb, a pitiful, weak, loser, stupid, gullible, characterless schlemiel. It's not the details, but the basic picture that simply fails to ring true.

It's hard to present yourself as witty, cocky, sharp, sharp-tongued and astute, in interview after interview over many years, also in private with observer after observer, and for 15 or so years solid with three guys who know you better than anyone else, unless wit, cockiness, sharpness, and astuteness are actually a large part of your nature. It's easy to fake stupid, but hard to fake intelligent.

We know too much about what Lennon was like, from other sources, to believe in Goldman's Lennon. Goldman's Lennon is a wet slug, who could never have made any records.

In a sense Goldman's Lennon doesn't make music, since Goldman avoids the topic as much as possible. The single most important thing about Lennon is that he was a musician, but this book is useless on Lennon's music. Goldman doesn't provide the most rudimentary information about its creation. And if a biography of a musician doesn't do that, what's the point of it?

Not that Goldman's musical judgements inspire confidence. Goldman's Lennon was too incapacitated to make music at the time the real Lennon made the superb "Walls and Bridges" album, so Goldman simply dismisses what the record clearly demonstrates. But Goldman reaches true weirdness with his claim that Lennon couldn't play guitar, but faked it all the way through the Beatles and his solo career.

But had Goldman ever listened to a Beatles record, he'd have noticed that there was a good drummer, a brilliant bass player, a limited lead guitar player and an occasionally powerful rhythm guitar player. That last player was Lennon; there were only four of them, for heaven's sake. From the opening chords of "I wanna hold your hand" to the driving riff of "Yer Blues" - on "Rock and Roll Circus" you can watch Lennon playing rock guitar on "Yer Blues", not disgracing himself in company with Eric Clapton and Keith Richard - Lennon could create riffs and drive a band along, as he once described the rhythm guitar player's job. He was also a good acoustic guitar player, on songs like "You've got to hide your love away" and "Working Class Hero".

I guess Goldman had come to so dislike his Lennon that he was prepared to say any old thing about that literary character. With hindsight, it now seems amazing that a book that contained the guitar claim got taken seriously. Goldman stepped out of serious biography and into "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory territory.

So here's this big fat book about Lennon. It was probably useful, in a way and in its day, for debunking the idealised portrait of Lennon the martyred saint. But can you use it as a source of factual information about Lennon's life and music? Basically, no. No, you can't. It's no use, for that.


Laon

Tough but Honest Look at John Lennon
I can understand the anger some of the reviewers have toward this book; I am like them in the sense that I grew up buying and listening to the Beatles' records. So, in a sense, I am disappointed in reading about and finding out just how complex, and yes, how tortured a man John Lennon was.

Is the book bias? Of course! Does that necessarily mean the book is bad? No! From a sheer reading perspective, the book reads very well. I think it is about time some author had the guts to take on Yoko Ono, and show her in the full light and all of her shallowness.

I am only puzzled as to why the author Goldman did not spend more time addressing John Lennon's songs when he was a member of the Beatles. For example, to really show how lazy Lennon had gotten during the making of 'Sgt. Peppers,' Lennon sat around at home and rarely came to the recording studio. Yet even then, as a mark of the man's ability to produce good songs, Lennon was 'inspired' to write the album's "Good Morning" from a television cereal commercial, and "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" from (word-for-word) an advertisement. Yet Goldman fails to even mention this, giving virtually all of the album's credit, except for "A Day In The Life" to Paul.

It would have been a better book had Goldman spent more time on Lennon's song writing, and less time on Lennon's personal failings.