Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not for beginners, July 1, 2002
This is the most in-depth of all John Lennon biographies, but I wouldn't recommend it to casual or new fans. Ray Coleman's non-linear analysis of the ex-Beatle's life, constantly flashing back and forward to illustrate an angle or exhaust a topic, can only be appreciated if you're already familiar with the basic story. Since no other good Lennon biographies are currently available ("The Ballad of John and Yoko", by the editors of Rolling Stone, would be a good start, but it's out of print) you can either begin with a Beatles biography (The Beatles' own "Anthology", Phillip Norman's "Shout" or Hunter Davies' "The Beatles") or you can research about John Lennon on the Internet and other sources. THEN, if decide you want to go really deep into the subject, you'll find all you need in Ray Coleman's book. On the other hand, if you're a long-time Lennon fanatic, this book is a must.
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30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Opposite Extreme of Albert Goldman, March 6, 2005
I love John Lennon. I love the Beatles. Heck, I even love Yoko Ono's solo albums. So I should probably agree that this Lennon adoration is the definitive biography...but it isn't.
Like most biographies of celebrities, Lennon's bios fall into two extremes. The most notorious extreme is Albert Goldman (The Lives of John Lennon): mean-spirited, doing whatever he can get away with to tear down the subject even if it means passing off rumors as fact, speculating on the flimsiest of evidence, and using obscuring resources to the point that you're hard-pressed to know what to believe.
But it's just as bad to write something at the opposite extreme, and that's what Ray Coleman does with Lennon. I expect that there's a lot of truth here, particularly when it comes to the Beatles, Lennon's radical period and his fight for U.S. residency. But an awful lot of it is fawning, worshipful John-was-always-right fluff.
Any book that relies so much on Elliott Mintz's testimony as the second half of this book does is going to be badly slanted--bear in mind that Mintz is Yoko's publicist. He's PAID to whitewash and pretty up the stories. And this publicist has always been particularly sycophantic: he's Yoko's puppet. So when he calls May Pang an outright liar, or implies that after the Lost Weekend John and Yoko never had a single marital dispute again, take it with the biggest grain of salt you can find.
But then again, Coleman does a lot of the window dressing himself. Look, anyone who's seriously looked at Lennon knows how capable he was of immature and nasty behavior, and if you're writing a book about him you have to acknowledge that. Instead we get very little story about the "Lost Weekend," which lasted a whole year and a half and is dispatched here in about ten pages. (Peter Brown's The Love You Make is the best account of John's public obnoxiousness at the time.) The closest Coleman comes to giving John human flaws is pointing the finger and saying, "Sure, John did this or that, but it was only because he/she/they picked the fight first!" For example, apparently every time Paul McCartney said something in an interview about John, even something as earnest and understandable as "I wish we could all sit down, just the four of us with no outside interference, and work out our problems," it was apparently a personal attack on John and a deliberate snubbing of Yoko. I'm sure that's how John saw a lot of these things, yes, but Coleman need not take such a "Yes, that's exactly how it happened" approach to all of John's interpretations of every event.
Finally, there's the question of Yoko, who comes off in the book as almost more perfect than John, the absolute soul mate who was wise and good and deeply in love with John. The relationship is pretty much a fairy tale in Lennon; any relationship that was so close for so long HAD to have complications, spats, entanglements, and so forth. Coleman gives us hints that those might have happened, but what were they and why? Just a gloss-over. There has indeed been a lot of negative press about Yoko, and it's true that a lot of it has come from people who knew her and have a clear axe to grind (like Fred Seaman, who Yoko personally fired from the estate in 1981)...I don't believe most of those accounts, but the fact that so many people who knew Yoko had an axe to grind leads me to believe she's not all sunshine and lollipops. But that's what she is in Lennon.
Most people should read Lennon, because it covers the whole forty-year ground and it's very good in some parts. But realize that what you're essentially reading is "The Gospel According to Ray" and that you can't take this kind of posthumous [...] too seriously. While I admit that this is probably the best biography yet written of John Lennon, the "definitive" biography is yet to come.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally a good book about the man much adored and missed., November 28, 1998
Ray Coleman's biography is terrific due to its depth. It gets longs and tedious at times, but many of the details are essential to understand such a complex man as John Lennon. Coleman being a personal friend of John also gives the reader great insight, rather than reading a book by someone who has never been acquainted with him. I believe Coleman portrays Lennon warts and all. He doesn't really shy away with faults of John, and tells about how he roughly treated Cynthia and Julian, describes how he hurt many people in his young days being inconsiderate of cripples and deformed people, and tells about how he did get involved with drugs too heavily and ignored many important things going on around him. Being personaly acquainted with Lennon, Coleman also tells about the intimate, vulnerable side of John rarely revealed during his life. The book gives an accurate representation of John as it shows many sides of such a complex man. I believe this is a true must have for beatles fans and those he want to find the truth about a great man stolen from us by some maniac.
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