Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A serviceable biography, 14 Oct 2008
I'm not working just now and like one of the other reviewers I read it in three days. I really enjoyed it. I was 12 when Love Me Do came out and my sister and I bought all their albums on the day of release for several years.
I was also around in London in the late sixties so enjoyed reading the detail about that period.
There are several things about this book which really impressed me however. One is the carefully built up and three dimensional portrait of Lennon's childhood, particularly the portraits of his parents and aunt Mimi. They really come alive for me. So does the picture of Lennon as a 'Just William' character. Clearly for almost his whole life he was a relentless rebel, a continual thorn in the flesh to anyone in authority. I found the stuff about his interest in art and writing really interesting too, going back to his art school days and earlier.
The stuff on Hamburg is great too - that was a hard school, and made them as a band. There is of course a lot of detail on all the Beatles and the changing personnel and friendships. Many readers may be more familiar with this than I as I had never read a book about the Beatles before, but it is really good to get the lowdown on Stu Sutcliffe for example.
The nature of the Lennon McCartney relationship, the friendship with Jagger all add to the mix.
I was less interested in the Yoko Ono years as her work doesn't interest me but the book does bring out how Lennon's personality found his life in New York a new vehicle to express himself in a more explicitly radical way.
The section on the breakup with the Beatles seems to have as much to do with Paul's relationship with Linda as with John's with Yoko but armed with this support they both adopted different financial gurus and that was what really did it.
The is a comprehensive and disciplined book. It doesn't answer every question but for me really brought those years back.
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18 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haunting, 21 Oct 2008
In The Word magazine (October issue), Philip Norman suggested, in passing, that his latest book was intended to be a biography of Lennon to set alongside similar volumes devoted to Churchill, Ghandi and Hitler: - an antidote to the flimsy paperback pop-biog formula, and a reflection of the musician's huge place in 20th Century culture. The sheer size of the book (853 pp, not the 448 in Amazon's product details) testifies to this hubristic ambition, and, at over 1/3 million words, the result is a true epic, `half-as-long-again' as the Great American Novel, "Moby-Dick" (213,000 wds)...
Does the size of the book make it an equal to Kershaw's `Hitler', or Jenkins' `Churchill? No. But the lucid quality of the writing does. This book is by far the most literary volume ever written about the phenomenon of late 20th Century pop music, to rank alongside Peter Guralnick's `Elvis' tomes, and Greil Marcus's various studies. A skilled novelist and playwright, Norman shows his hand in the opening lines, neatly sidestepping biographical convention with a novelistic slight-of-hand which telescopes 100 years of history into a bewildering instant. From there, the opening chapter goes on for 18 pages, painting the scene of Lennon's boyhood with a poignancy and skill recalling the lives that make up Joyce's `Dubliners'.
To pick at such a book with eyes for nothing but `new tidbits' of information, and to reject it as such, seems faintly like passing on Broch's `The Death of Virgil', or Bergmann's `Fanny and Alexander', while complaining that they lack any new gossip. A new `fact' (the attraction to McCartney, say, or the identity of the girl in `Norwegian Wood') may be interesting, but it might just as soon appear on an internet blog. This book extends past these, on the other hand, into a subtle beast, resounding with the voices of those who knew Lennon, through Norman's voluminous interviews, and through correspondence (both his own, and some freshly discovered - such as the revealing letters from Mimi to Jane Wirgman).
The whole, it must be said, is certainly the best book by Philip Norman, catapulting him from the Beatles expert who wrote `Shout!,' and from his own novels and plays, into the poet chronicler of the 20th Century's `favourite pop icon'. More importantly, it is also the best book about John Lennon, easily eclipsing the risible Goldman, and surpassing the over-tired Coleman. In its 850 pages, we are offered a grand story that ranges from 1855 to 1980, of an Alice in Wonderland haunted childhood, through to an artistic re-awakening in the stormy waters of the Bermuda Triangle. Only Norman has the eye to see this for what it is: the Great (English) Novel, an epic story that he steers accordingly, drawing out all of the haunting and surprising parallels between three generations of the Lennon family (Alfred, John and Julian), and the distant calling of Yoko Ono (`ocean child') matching Lennon with the tale of her own prophetic ancestors (just check out p. 762)...
Right up to the hideous abruptness of its closing chapters, Norman's story is a rich and unforgettable one, horrible, inevitable, and full of grace. The book ultimately surpasses the intentions with which he supposedly began it: this is not a work to shadow Kershaw, or Jenkins. It begins with the faint shade of James Joyce (a favourite of Lennon's), travels through the prismatic ages of cinema and psychedelia, and ends up with the tragic surrealism of a room full of cats. A masterpiece.
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13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant!, 5 Oct 2008
This has to be the best book about John Lennon ever written. I got hold of it late last week, and even though it's 800+ pages long I finished it in three days. Couldn't put it down.
Some of the best parts are about John's early childhood, his mother, Julia, and his famous Aunt Mimi, who brought him up. No wonder he was such a complicated human being when he had such a difficult childhood, and suffered so many losses early in life.
Philip Norman also reveals John's jealousy of Paul McCartney, and has someohow managed to get Yoko Ono to talk to him about their life together - quite a feat in itself.
Altogether, a great read, and a must-have for any self-respecting Beatles fan.
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