The Lives of John Lennon

click here for more details, find new or used items	Albert Goldman New from £16.97 Used from £2.44 Pages: 719 (Hardcover) ISBN: 0688047211 Pub: William Morrow & Co Pub date: 1988-09 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 353310

Reader Reviews:

Oh Please! (3/4 people found this helpful)

To all the reviewers on this page: come off it, guys. Goldman's book is sensation-hunting tabloidism at its worst with the authors low opinion of the subject thrown in for good measure every chance he gets and you know it. On top of that, Goldman was a poor writer. The whole thing reads like a bad detective novel ("like a Zen Arrow flying through the night", give me a break!). True, at the time of it's publication in 1988, it was pretty much the only book available that couldn't have been retitled "St. Lennon-the faultless one", but that situation has been rectified many times over. If you want to know what John Lennon was like, the closest you will get is probably the interview books, such as Last Interview by David Sheff. Or McCartney and Barry Miles' Many Years From Now. There are so many good Lennon-books out there. Don't bother with this poorly written filth.

JOHN LENNON THE VICTIM (3/3 people found this helpful)

I am a Lennon fan. So much so, that at the time of this books publication, I refused to read it on the grounds that Albert Goldman trashed the great man's reputation. 26 years after his murder and as a middle-aged man myself, still trying to make sense of Lennon's life and what he meant to me, and that of generations of fans, I realised that I had to read this and other such works to obtain a truly rounded picture of the great Beatle. What you have to put into context is that this book is the summation of over 1000 contributions.
Everyone has his or her own unique take on an event. How many times have you shared an experience, even with close friends and yet you find that each of you has a different recollection of the event?
The fact that Cynthia Lennon refused to be interviewed for this book only means that she had vested interest in publishing her own work. Had she collaborated with this book, it would surely have diluted her own sales.
Goldman makes some quite stunning revelations; He claims that Lennon was uncontrollably violent, rages that climaxed in near murder, and yet one such victim speaks of gross exaggeration; that Lennon was so uncoordinated that he could barely drive nor play the guitar well, a claim I put down more to the drink and drug abuse, rather than a physical affliction. Goldman also makes some blatant mistakes notably referring to The Magical Mystery tour movie as Sgt Pepper's lonely-hearts club band, to name but one.
Goldman doesn't really discuss the music in great depth, nor does he appear to try to understand Lennon.
By reading this and other works, you are able to get a better perspective, which enables you to make your own conclusion. Mine was very different to how I started out, the man that I thought of as a likeable, self assured and loving individual as portrayed by the Dakota PR machine, turned out reclusive, self loathing, drug imbibing, often cruel and indifferent of the feelings of those that loved him most.
Like most people rocketed to fame, Lennon found few people he could really trust, behaved childishly and sometimes an outrageous drunken thug. He could be completely out of touch with reality (the gaff in the "Imagine" video where John sings of "No possessions" whilst being surrounded by opulent wealth is one such example) and he wasn't really the "working class hero" that he set himself up to be. But that aside, John was immensely talented, intelligent and above all he entertained, and I for one loved the music. Yoko Ono completely exploited and used that talent to her own ends, even using his death to bolster sales of her record and "Career". Yoko comes off the worse in all this and rightfully so. You can't help thinking that if only John had stayed with May Pang, maybe he would still be alive and making music. Maybe the ex-Beatles may have been reconciled...imagine...
Upon finishing this book, I truly felt that John Lennon was very much the victim.
Goldman doesn't make enough of Lennon's talent, and it's not a feel-good book,
If you want that, read Ray Coleman's offering, but in doing so, you'll only get one side of the coin. The true value of this book was to re-acquaint me with the genius that was John Lennon, the greatest Rock star ever.

'Beware. This book may be fatal to your blind faith" (7/8 people found this helpful)

I'm quoting one of the reviews on the back of this book and it is a warning to some of the sort of Beatles fans who frequent fan clubs and Web forums. I know this from bitter previous experience of trying to start a debate on this and getting utterly cold-shouldered because the book trashed the reputation of 'our John'. I would tend to agree with the other reviewers in this section. It is a highly interesting and provocative read and is certainly in line with many other books that have subsequently been published. Of course, it is impossible for someone born in 1975 to have an inkling of whether any of this is true, i was 5 when he died,you can only go on gut feelings and other things you've read or heard.

So let me deal with a few points.

'Our John' trashed his own reputation repeatedly in interviews as he admitted to hitting women and massive LSD use. Ray Coleman's book, good as it was, didn't go into hardly any detail about drugs and seemed to suggest Lennon gave up everything by the mid 70's. So could he suggest why John looked so painfully thin at the end of his life? and why his nostrils were caving in more and more ( a very large clue to cocaine use). I think Goldman does overdo it though as he does on other points. He says Lennon was so weak from drug use by 1978 he could barely hold a guitar and he also suggests the Beatles were taking cocaine/heroin cocktails during Sgt Pepper. He also suggests Lennon was in a trance during Pepper and would snap out of it with an outburst. Where did these ideas come from? And how was Pepper so good and cohesive under these circumstances?

As far as sex goes, Pete Shotton's affectionate book revealed a lot about the Spanish holiday but again Goldman went over the top. On the Bob WOoler episode, Goldman suggests he nearly killed him but i actually asked Wooler himself at the Liverpool convention one year and he told me the incident was overblown. Goldman actually doesn't mention the idea that John and Stu Sutcliffe may have been intimate, which is mentioned in Pauline Sutcliffe's book, but he suggests that John and Epstein were intimate for years. I wonder why Peter Brown didn't mention this in his 'sensational' book, published in 1982?
There are numerous points, i fully suggest reading this book with an open mind and making your own mind up.

Musically of course, we have all the Beatles songs and outtakes to listen to so we can judge the music and on this i believe Goldman is harsh. He criticizes Lennon's guitar playing and uses the Toronto concert in 1969 to judge his performing. Well as a guitarist of 15 years, i can tell you John was a good rhythm guitarist. He wasn't a viruoso guitarist as wasn't George Harrison but he used the guitar effectively to back someone up while he sang. If you see the video of the Toronto concert, Lennon and Clapton both look sick and in the grip of drug addiction (as well as the band having minimal rehearsal)so it's hardly fair to criticize his singing and say his singing had lost its power. why not judge on the 1972 Madison Square Garden concert, he seemed to have got his powerful voice back then. He also slags off 'Imagine' but can so many millions of people who adore that song be wrong?
I could write about numerous other things but if you compare this book and Ray COleman's, i think the truth is in the middle but more to Goldman's side.
Hope this helps

Albert Goldman - The appeal hearing (0/0 people found this helpful)

It is with some irony that this biography of John Lennon, when it was published in 1988, created such unease, it led to death threats to the author and its ritual burning at Beatles conventions. The book's subject, had he still been living may have sympathised. He had provoked similar displays of hatred from Christian groups after his comments to an American journalist in 1966, that the Beatles were now more popular than Jesus Christ.

Such was the hatred for Goldman following its publication that he was virtually excommunicated from the music and publishing world...

Fourteen years on, maybe it is time for a reappraisal of this Satanic Verses of rock biography. Criticisms of the book have been well documented and are not without substance. It is often factually incorrect, the authoratorial tone appears excessively one-sided in his portrayal of both John and Yoko. Sometimes it is not clear if it is supposed to be read as a black comedy (although if it is, it succeeds; some of the passages are hilarious) and it is hard to imagine two living people that are alternatively, so twisted and so Maciavellian as the John and Yoko that are portrayed here.

However, there are many reasons why this book should be read. Unlike, say Ray Coleman s semi-official biography of Lennon, Goldman did not just take what John and Yoko said in public at face value. Nor did he rely on the co-operation and support of those who had a vested in keeping the Lennon image in the saintly realms (partly because he was denied access by those people). Instead, he drew on 1,200 interviews of various friends, helpers, musicians and aids who had known Lennon at certain stages of his life. Most of what is said in the book is attributed to one of these sources.

The book deals with huge chunks of Lennon s life that have otherwise been left uninvestigated (or conveniently ignored, as they deal with the less than godlike side of Lennon and Ono ) by biographers; the attempts to retrieve Kyoko, his meetings with Jerry Rubin, the lost weekend and Yoko s growing infatuation with numerology and acquisition of wealth.

On the music, Goldman is keen to give Lennon his praise where he feels it is due. For example, of Working Class Hero he writes, "What makes the song so radical is not its politics but rather the singer's determination to smash through politics in order to come to grips with the unchanging human condition".

Elsewhere he is sometimes rather too intent on dissecting in order to make a point. Nevertheless he is also often poignantly accurate. Goldman wrote of the pre-video film sequence to Imagine;

"..there is one momentary gaffe when John, seated in his lavish mansion, sings the joy of owning nothing, but as the room grows brighter and brighter, the effect of emergence from the gloom of the present into the light of a utopian future is gracefully conveyed".

By far the most exploratory (and entertaining) work on Lennon, The Lives Of John Lennon is a devils advocate of a book. John was not around to defend himself over its allegations and neither is Goldman here to answer any more of his hate-mail. Before his death he replied to a damning review in the New York Times and its assertion that he had deliberately set out to give Lennon a literary second assignation.

He fiercely condemned this, stressing that when he started he was a Lennon fan but when he started delving, he became appalled by what he was finding.

After Goldman filed his prosecution papers he was soon to be the one to stand on trial in the defence box. Now it is time for the case to be reopened. Let the debate continue.

Albert Goldman - The appeal hearing (20/23 people found this helpful)

It is with some irony that this biography of John Lennon, when it was published in 1988, created such unease, it led to death threats to the author and its ritual burning at Beatles conventions. The book's subject, had he still been living may have sympathised. He provoked similar displays of hatred from Christian groups after he commented to an American journalist in 1966, that the Beatles were now more popular than Jesus Christ.

Such was the hatred for Goldman following its publication that he was virtually excommunicated from the music and publishing world. The case for the prosecution having now been drawn up in detail, the defence (backed by the rock establishment's heavyweights) went into action; McCartney called it a piece of trash (although it s unlikely that he read it). Elliot Mintz (Yoko Ono s Spin Doctor), then produced a rebuttal using evidence (at first convincing) that two of the sources were unreliable as they axes to grind, having fallen out of favour with John and Yoko.

Fourteen years on, maybe it is time for a reappraisal of this Satanic Verses of rock biography. Criticisms of the book have been well documented and are not without substance. It is often factually incorrect, the authoratorial tone appears excessively one-sided in his portrayal of both John and Yoko. Sometimes it is not clear if it is supposed to be read as a black comedy (although if it is, it succeeds; some of the passages are hilarious)and it is hard to imagine two living people that are alternatively, so twisted and so Maciavellian as the John and Yoko that are portrayed here.

However, there are many reasons why this book should be read. Unlike, say Ray Coleman s semi-official biography of Lennon, Goldman did not just take what John and Yoko said in public at face value. Nor did he rely on the co-operation and support of those who had a vested in keeping the Lennon image in the saintly realms (partly because he was denied access by those people). Instead, he drew on 1,200 interviews of various friends, helpers, musicians and aids who had known Lennon at certain stages of his life. Most of what is said in the book is attributed to one of these sources.

The book deals with huge chunks of Lennon s life that have otherwise been left uninvestigated (or conveniently ignored, as they deal with the less than godlike side of Lennon and Ono ) by biographers; the attempts to retrieve Kyoko, his meetings with Jerry Rubin, the lost weekend and Yoko s growing infatuation with numerology and acquisition of wealth.

On the music, Goldman is keen to give Lennon his praise where he feels it is due. For example, of Working Class Hero he writes, "What makes the song so radical is not its politics but rather the singer's determination to smash through politics in order to come to grips with the unchanging human condition".

Elsewhere he is sometimes rather too intent on dissecting in order to make a point. Nevertheless he is also often poignantly accurate as is comments on the Imagine film sequence show;

"..there is one momentary gaffe when John, seated in his lavish mansion, sings the joy of owning nothing, but as the room grows brighter and brighter, the effect of emergence from the gloom of the present into the light of a utopian future is gracefully conveyed".

By far the most exploratory (and entertaining) work on Lennon, The Lives Of John Lennon is a devils advocate of a book. John was not around to defend himself over its allegations and neither is Goldman here to answer any more of his hate-mail. Before his death he replied to a damning review in the New York Times and its assertion that he had deliberately set out to give Lennon a literary second assignation.

He fiercely condemned this, stressing that when he started he was a Lennon fan but when he started delving, he became appalled by what he was finding.

After Goldman filed his prosecution papers he was soon to be the one to stand on trial in the defence box. Now it is time for the case to be reopened. Let the debate continue.

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