Being John Lennon : a restless life

Being John Lennon A restless life

Ray Connolly, 1940-

Book - 2018

"An intimate yet unsparing biography of one of the greatest and most mythologized musicians of the twentieth century. What was it like to be John Lennon? What was it like to be the castoff child, the clown at school, and the middle-class suburban boy who pretended to be a working-class hero? How did it feel to have one of the most recognizable singing voices in the world, but to dislike it so much he always wanted to disguise it? Being John Lennon is not about the whitewashed Prince of Peace of Imagine legend--because that was only a small part of him. The John Lennon depicted in these pages is a much more kaleidoscopic figure, sometimes almost a collision of different characters. But above everything, Lennon had attitude--his impudent... style somehow personifying the aspirations of his generation to question authority. He could, and would, say the unsayable. Though there were more glamorous rock stars in rock history, even within the Beatles, it was John Lennon's attitude which caught, and then defined, his era in the most memorable way."--Dust jacket.

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Subjects
Lennon, John, > 1940-1980.
Beatles.
Rock musicians > Biography.
Rock musicians > England > Biography.
Biographies.
Genres
Biographies
Published
New York : Pegasus Books 2018.
Language
English
Main Author
Ray Connolly, 1940- (author)
Edition
First Pegasus books hardcover edition
Physical Description
xvi, 448 pages, 16 unnumbered leaves of plates : illlustrations, portraits ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 413-414), discography (pages 410-412), and index.
ISBN
9781643130538
  • Author's Note
  • Foreword
  • 1. 'I forgot about my father'
  • 2. 'I was aggressive'
  • 3. 'The sort of gang I led'
  • 4. 'I must be a genius'
  • 5. 'Nobody was fighting'
  • 6. 'The way I looked'
  • 7. 'What's so sad about the past'
  • 8. 'Paul looked about ten'
  • 9. 'The copper came to the door'
  • 10. 'The underlying chip on my shoulder'
  • 11. 'It was terrible'
  • 12. 'I ruined his life!'
  • 13. 'This guy who had a drum kit'
  • 14. 'I grew up in Hamburg'
  • 15. 'Women should be obscene and not heard'
  • 16. 'Is this what I want to do?'
  • 17. 'You'd call them groupies now'
  • 18. 'I wasn't too keen on reaching twenty-one'
  • 19. 'We were in a daydream'
  • 20. 'I was the closest to Brian'
  • 21. 'I looked up to Stu'
  • 22. 'Cyn's having a baby'
  • 23. 'I had to do the talking'
  • 24. 'We sang for twelve hours'
  • 25. 'The holiday was planned'
  • 26. 'I play a guitar, too ...'
  • 27. 'This isn't show business'
  • 28. 'We just walked through it'
  • 29. 'A Hard Day's Night'
  • 30. 'A rock and roll musician'
  • 31. 'We were like Kings of the Jungle'
  • 32. 'Once you plug in and the noise starts'
  • 33. 'Nowhere Man'
  • 34. 'We're more popular than Jesus'
  • 35. 'It's like we're four freaks being wheeled out'
  • 36. 'Our lives had been threatened'
  • 37. 'An imaginary nail'
  • 38. 'Strawberry Fields Forever'
  • 39. 'Mick Jagger wears a codpiece'
  • 40. 'I was scared'
  • 41. 'I am the egg man'
  • 42. 'Flying on a magic carpet'
  • 43. 'I think I'm Jesus Christ'
  • 44. 'Someone as barmy as I am'
  • 45. 'Get your drums out'
  • 46. 'You're not worth any more'
  • 47. 'My prick on an album'
  • 48. 'We hope we passed the audition'
  • 49. 'It was Yoko that changed me'
  • 50. 'I'm leaving the Beatles'
  • 51. 'A crutch for the world's social lepers'
  • 52. 'Free means free'
  • 53. 'I might just as well have been a comedian'
  • 54. 'The radicalism was phoney'
  • 55. 'Imagine' is anti-religious
  • 56. 'New York is at my speed'
  • 57. 'Don't fuck with my ears'
  • 58. 'To finish off ... we thought we'd do a number'
  • 59. 'If I began writing with Paul again'
  • 60. 'I've battled all the monsters'
  • 61. 'A second chance'
  • 62. 'Wanting to make music'
  • 63. 'Playing guitar and singing'
  • 64. 'I don't believe in dead heroes'
  • Afterword
  • After John died what happened to ...
  • John Lennon's best recordings
  • Bibliography
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Picture credits
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

Veteran English writer and journalist Connolly (Being Elvis, 2016) has written a fat, entertaining biography of the restless soul who was John Lennon. Instead of uncovering anything terribly new or revealing, he has done an excellent job of illuminating all the phases of Lennon's complicated life and career: his middle-class childhood in suburban Liverpool, meeting Paul, the heyday of Beatlemania, the breakup of the Fab Four, and the solo years leading up to his tragic death. Throughout, Connolly captures all aspects of Lennon, who was, like most of us, a mass of contradictions. Each chapter begins with a Lennon quote that sets the stage for what follows: on leadership ( When the dirty work came, I had to be the leader ); his reactions to Beatlemania ( This isn't show business. It's something else ); his image ( The radicalism was phony, really, because it was out of guilt ); and, most poignantly perhaps, his years as a househusband in New York ( I'm blessed with a second chance ). A welcome new perspective on an endlessly influential and compelling artist.--June Sawyers Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this dramatic, insightful biography of John Lennon, Connolly argues that the musician was "a labyrinth of contradictions." The Lennon remembered by British music journalist Connolly (Being Elvis) is part rocker and part eager-to-impress wannabe avant-garde artist. Connolly details Lennon's working-class childhood in 1950s Liverpool, depicting Lennon as a low-degree hell-raiser; he then quickly moves on to the formation of the Beatles and Lennon's role as a bossy and misanthropic brooder. The band honed their aggressive, crowd-pleasing sound in Hamburg in 1960 before they were introduced to an ambitious young manager named Brian Epstein and polished producer George Martin, who turned the Beatles into the superstar group that stormed the world in 1963. Over the next seven years, Lennon's fruitful songwriting rivalry with Paul McCartney grew more tense, as did his relations with the other band members. The narrative digs into interpersonal drama as Connolly describes the band's collapse in the face of drugs, big egos, Lennon's increasing intransigence, and Lennon's relationship with Yoko Ono ("I've finally found someone as barmy as I am," Lennon told a friend). Connolly's history is a colorful and balanced portrait of an immensely creative artist. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Review by Library Journal Review

Longtime British music journalist Connolly tries to unravel the complicated personality of John Lennon. The author tracks Lennon's unstable childhood, the formation of the Beatles, Lennon's shotgun marriage to Cynthia Powell, and the birth of his son Julian. The book also covers the pressures of Beatlemania, John's relationships with manager Brian Epstein and second wife Yoko Ono, a debauched 18 months during the Seventies (the Lost Weekend), his retirement from rock and roll after the birth of his son Sean, and Lennon's murder in 1980. Having interviewed the Beatles and their coterie since the Sixties, Connolly contributes several new nuggets about the complex rock icon, whom he describes as sometimes caring but verbally abusive, insecure but supremely confident, striving for both working-class credibility and sophistication, lonely at the center of international attention, self-revelatory but untruthful, and a leader who delegated difficult tasks to others. Writing in a breezy style, the author adds to the already substantial Lennon literature, which includes Ray Coleman's John Winston Lennon and Philip Norman's John Lennon. VERDICT An intriguing option for those unfamiliar with the highly imaginative but self-destructive Beatle.-David P. Szatmary, formerly with the Univ. of -Washington, Seattle © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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