14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not as good as Norman bio, but nice try: 4 1/2 stars actually, October 17, 2011
This review is from: Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life (Hardcover)
This is the umpteenth Beatles/Lennon bio I've read. Is there anything new, given that whoever the latest Beatles biographer is, part of his task is to find several people connected to the story who haven't been interviewed yet? Yes indeed. Multiple examples: Apparently even John's kindergarten kicked him out for being a disruptive bully. Aunt Mimi claims that John read most of the literary classics by age 10; even if she meant `by 15', this would make John an extraordinarily precocious reader by today's standards. And boy, Aunt Mimi could be cruel. Once after a row, when John fled to his mother's house vowing not to return, Mimi had his beloved dog Sally put down on the pretext that there would be no one around anymore to walk Sally. Allan Williams, the Beatles' first quasi-manager and possibly John's first substitute father from outside the extended family, had an oriental wife. Hmmm. Pete Best was dumped mostly because he wasn't mentally quick enough; one `thick' Beatle would have undermined their collective image. Brian Epstein met with Walt Disney to discuss the Beatles performing songs for the upcoming `Jungle Book' movie, but John, mercifully, nixed the idea. When John was dejected and morose circa 1966, he would compensate by going on shopping sprees to fill up his house with stuff he'd mostly never look at again; he would do likewise in the late 1970s for the same reason. Apparently it was John who came up with the title and conceptual drift for `Yesterday', a highly significant contribution. John got Magic Alex to do some of his dirty work for him, especially entrapping Cynthia in a situation amenable to adultery charges, albeit phony ones; as reward John bought Alex a new Mercedes, just as Elvis pampered his `Memphis mafia' cronies. A member of John's `Elephant's Memory' band recalls that during recording session breaks in the early 1970s, John would often spend more than an hour chatting amiably with Paul on the phone. Despite the later PR fantasy that `Double Fantasy' was conceived of as a dialogue between a husband and wife, it wasn't until after all its tracks were recorded that Yoko dropped the bombshell on their co-producer and John that, no, it wasn't going to be John on one side and Yoko on the other, but John and Yoko alternating tracks on both sides so that record buyers would be forced to listen to her songs. Yikes!
Too bad, though, that author Tim Riley allows his sometimes inane aesthetic preferences, usually irrelevant to the story he's telling, to intrude so often and in such an irritating fashion. Example: "How could a producer not hear `That Means a Lot' as anything but masterly?" Now, this is without doubt THE worst Beatles recording I've ever heard, so bad that I cannot bear to listen to again, so nauseating I wish Paul had never written it. Excruciatingly bad, and George Martin deserves an extra knighthood for shelving it. Here is how Riley describes it, for more than a full page, even though it's COMPLETELY out of place in a Lennon biography. It's a "juggernaut." "Strung on a delicious guitar lick that settles gently down into understated rhythmic offbeats, punctuated by Ringo's discreet snare, the groove itself is disarming." It contains "one miraculous arc of feeling across key areas..." "It trumps... `I've Just See a Face'." "[T]he production is thick but detailed, with each individual line carefully etched." "[I]t's an Englishman's version of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, with heft but no fat. Here's what Spector might have sounded like if he had but an ounce of British reserve." AAaaaaaaaggggghhhhhh! Example: In contrast, he dismisses the monster hit `Hello Goodbye' as "piffle" and its flip-side masterpiece `I am the Walrus' as "an oil spill" and "overgrown, with too many targets," "a bad acid trip" in slow motion. Example: He laments, "If only McCartney had let Lennon take a run at the lead vocal of `Oh! Darling." Oh puh-leeze! And I suppose Lennon should have sung `I'm Down' instead, too? More examples: And the beloved and much-covered kids song `Octopus' Garden' is a "clunker"? (Aren't you thankful that Tim Riley was not filling in for George Martin during the recording of `Abbey Road'?) In contrast, he dotes on two of Lennon's most abysmal protest songs: `The Luck of the Irish' is "gorgeous and underrated." Riley is always going on, often erroneously, about how this or that Lennon tune is derived from some other artist's earlier song, such as the verses-melody and cadence in `Give Peace a Chance' being derived from Chuck Berry's `Too Much Monkey Business' (which is ridiculous!) And he lauds `Bring on the Lucie', from the `Mind Games' album, as akin to "a great lost classic" that could have made a "soaring finale" for the film documentary on Lennon's legal battles to stay in the U.S. Not! Well, nice melody actually, but entirely wasted on some of the most abjectly worthless protest lyrics ever written--and I'm a fan of many of Lennon's protest songs.
Good bio on the whole but irritants galore that the Norman bio largely avoided.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
completely absorbing, October 31, 2011
This review is from: Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life (Hardcover)
Tim Riley's exhaustively researched and elegantly written account of Lennon's complex life was both informative and deeply moving. I came away from this book with a deeper understanding of his complicated personality and how it was formed from painful childhood experiences. I found Riley's portraits of Lennon's family, colleagues, lovers and friends to be insightful, nuanced and fair. I enjoyed seeing his life set in its historical context and felt myself immersed again in the turbulent currents of those heady days. Even after reading hundreds of pages I didn't want it to be over, not only because I knew his tragic death was coming, but also because I didn't want this extraordinary adventure ever to end.
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14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Needs an editor, October 20, 2011
This review is from: Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life (Hardcover)
There are moments in Lennon that make you want to read on, mostly in the first half of the book, but these begin to fade as the author indulges himself in intellectualizing the discography. He spends more time analyzing and discussing the playlist, and telling us in a patronizing voice what is good and why (in fact he becomes so Ono-friendly I began to wonder if she had funded the biography through some sort of grant made to his university) that only the nerdiest Lennon fans will be able to read the book without skipping these great chunks of waffle. Was he perhaps paid by the word? It has that sort of, give me 5000 words before Tuesday cram in everything you can think of and people will think I'm smart school essay feel.
Which is why I titled this piece 'Needs an editor.' Perhaps I should say, needs a better editor, for I'm sure he had a whole team of helpers, probably grad students providing the reams of minutiae that clutter the work.
What is worse is the continual translation of English to American that is supposed to make us believe he knows something about living in Liverpool in the 1940s and 50s.
And then there is the underlying war on drugs subtext that tsks as he describes Lennon's 'addictions' (as if the pot and LSD somehow detracted from the music) rather than seeing them in the light of the times and how without them Lennon would have stagnated instead of launching himself toward the stars.
Good try: 69%
... see me after the class.
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