Lennon: The Definitive Biography Anniversar: The Definitive Biography - Anniversary Edition: 20th Anniversary Edition [Paperback]

Ray Coleman's book, while full of interesting details, is sadly written from the perspective of a John Lennon fan as opposed to a Beatles fan. He clearly does not have much time for Paul McCartney and so tries to convince the reader that John Lennon WAS the Beatles. Anything that went wrong was all McCartney's idea and he was the only one who was keen to do it, while anything that was a success was all down to John. Coleman uses any number of John Lennon quotes to back his arguments. As many of you will know, John Lennon was very bitter and talked a load of rubbish after the Beatles split up, so if you're looking for quotes of him slagging off Paul, Magical Mystery Tour, Apple etc. it's not difficult to find them. But they often do not reflect what Lennon really thought. For instance, in the song 'How do you Sleep', Lennon says that Yesterday was the only good song McCartney wrote. So you could quite easily write in a book something like: 'John never rated Paul as a songwriter. Indeed, he once said that Yesterday was the only good song that Paul ever wrote'. And while the quote would be true, that was not what John thought. That is a favourite tactic of Coleman's. Elsewhere his bias is obvious in his analysis of Revolver where he only describes the Lennon songs, giving the impression that John was the main contributor (Hello!! Taxman, Eleanor Rigby, Here, There and Everywhere, For No One?!) and his description of the Lennon-McCartney co-write 'A Day in the Life' as a 'Lennon song'. He is keen to point out John's strengths as a person, yet describes without judgement the heartless way in which he dumped Cynthia (he got someone else to tell her he wanted a divorce). That said, it's a fascinating book to read and is certainly good value for money and if you share Coleman's apparent view that John was a genius and Paul a superficial idiot then you will probably find it very enjoyable to read. I'm just fed up with the way that books like this are attempting to re-write the Beatles' history.

As a lifelong Beatles fan, it had taken me years to finally get around to reading Ray Coleman's book about John Lennon. I call it 'a book about John Lennon' because it hardly deserved to be called a biography at all, let alone a 'definitive biography'.

For a start, there's the confused and confusing structure of the book. Coleman constantly presents events out of the order in which they happened, and then re-presents them all over again when the main thrust of his narrative actually reaches that point in Lennon's life; the first chapter of this book flashes forward to depict Lennon at art school, but then several chapters in, there's another chapter which has him at art school all over again; why? I think he was trying to be literary, but his style is so bland and cliché-sodden that the effect is numbingly repetitious.

Then there's the hero-worship of Lennon, which is simultaneously blatant and naive. Coleman doesn't seem to realise just what a complex and in some ways unsympathetic person Lennon seems to have been, even by his (Coleman's) account; for example, he tells us about the rather fatuous Bed-Ins and Bag-Ins, with Lennon being at his most pious and sanctimonious, as if they were evidence of what a saintly guy Lennon was. Coleman clearly didn't have much time for Paul McCartney (although that didn't stop him going on to write a biography of McCartney as well), and he persistently depicts McCartney as a showy, glib, lightweight, insincere popular entertainer, as opposed to Lennon the sincere, honest, deep, tortured artist. He never points out that McCartney was the first to bring avant-garde elements into the Beatles' music, he's unable to accept that McCartney may have felt as deeply as Lennon about his own work, fails to tell us anything about what the two men brought to their creative relationship (you'd think from this book that they never even really liked each other) and his artistic judgment is clearly compromised by his abject devotion to Lennon - nothing else can explain why Coleman might agree that 'Hey Jude' ought have been the B-side to 'Revolution', a no-brainer if ever there was one. He seems to have no sense of the Beatles as a unit, which is odd since a lot of people who met them were struck by the extent to which they were a coherent unit, especially in their early years (cf. George Harrison being asked if he believed in God and answering 'We haven't decided yet'.) Coleman's Beatles are four individuals who happen to be in a band together, of whom John was infinitely the most talented one. If that were the case, then surely his solo work should have been better than the stuff he did with the Beatles; once he didn't have to compromise, he should have started making his finest work. But he didn't. Only a Lennon nut would claim that John's solo stuff is better than his Beatles work, but Coleman cannot see this, or else he has a tin ear.

If you just hate McCartney and uncritically adore everything Lennon did, then that last point won't bother you. What should bother you are the errors of fact. It's been established that the Beatles never smoked a joint in Buckingham Palace when they went to collect their MBEs, a legend that Coleman should have been more sceptical of (they did share a quick cigarette in the toilets).

There are some valuable things in here, chiefly recollections of Lennon by people who'd known him early on (such as his Aunt Mimi and his college friends). Coleman's research may one day be valuable to a biographer interested in reasonable standards of truth and objectivity. But this is the Life of a Saint, not an honest, reliable biography of a very cool, deeply fascinating, extremely complex and sometimes rather spiteful, shallow and silly human being. That book has yet to be written.

As a well informed Beatles fan, I was very disappointed with this book. Rather than being a balanced and objective portrait, it's a completely biased account that often marginalises or completely ignores key characters in Lennon's life. Its pro-Yoko stance prevents a more critical analysis of her impact in The Beatles and Lennon's life. And whilst I am certainly no Ono-Hater, there are plenty of first hand accounts (Tony Bramwell's excellent book for example) that demonstrate her attitude and motives in the early days were often questionable. Elliot Mintz's, (Yoko's official spokesperson) extremely biased opinion is given far too much credence and as a result Lennon's 'Lost Weekend' is completely glossed over in a couple of pages. Many people have talked about the positive impact May Pang had on Lennon's life (from Julian and Cynthia Lennon to engineer Jack Douglas), and it has even been said that Lennon was still in correspondence with her just before he died, but she is barely mentioned in the book (save for a withering put-down from Elliot Mintz, surprise surprise). Any reputable biography should cover a variety of contradictory first-hand opinions so the reader can make up their own mind. This book doesn't. It's sadly hard to get hold of, but the excellent Radio 1 ten-part series from 1990 called 'Lennon: In My Life', remains the most comprehensive and definitive Lennon analysis out there.