Customer Reviews

Memories of John Lennon

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

"Memories of John Lennon" should have been a new, exciting narrative of John Lennon's life with Yoko Ono -- chocked full of new insights and details, BUT IT'S NOT. There is not one scrap of biographical information in this book.

Instead, the book is bland collection of generic praise for Lennon from various musicians and other celebrities (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are glaringly absent). The majority of the entries, many from celebrities such as Bono and Carly Simon, follow a predictable pattern in which the contributor notes Lennon's sharp wit, remembers a small personal kindness and sadly suggests that we could sure use a man like him today. Some have never even met the man, like Nils Lofgren. Some of the recollections have been cut-and-pasted from old interviews, like Elton John's, giving the book a trashy, opportunistic feel. I was dismayed to see Elliot Mintz was included in this book because of his cruel criticism of May Pang - or perhaps that's why he IS included.

A lot of the praise for Lennon is devoted his solo hit "Imagine." I agree that "Imagine" was a great song, but Lennon wrote others, didn't he? I assume that Beatles' masterpieces like "A Day in the Life," "I Am the Walrus," "Nowhere Man" and others were deemed off-limits for some reason.

I admit that I am a Lennon memorabilia collector and I put this book on my wish list before it was even published. Let me give some advice to other collectors out there... This one isn't worth the money -- wait for it to land in the inevitable bargain bin!

Memories Of John Lennon, "edited" and introduced by Yoko Ono. I put that word in quotes because I'm skeptical that this book was edited at all.

A real editor might have reminded contributor and onetime activist Tariq Ali that "Revolution" was a single, not an album.

Ali also writes of the day Lennon died:

"I think the tribute [John] would have loved was the spontaneous grief in Moscow as kids rushed to the Lenin hills and sang "Back in the U.S.S.R."

Yes, if I were John Lennon, I'd love it if people grieved for me by singing a Paul McCartney song, too.

Ali shares pride-of-place for ignorance with of all people, Ray Charles, who makes a similar mistake about "Yesterday."

The book as a whole overflows with gushing, largely unearned sentiment. If it was just another one of those things it would be bad enough but it's also absolute psychic head for Yoko.

Person after person: Yoko was the love of John's life; as an artist, Yoko was 30 years ahead of her time; the only possible reason one can be critical of Yoko is if one is racist or sexist or probably both.

I'm not saying some of it isn't true. I'm not one of those people who thinks Yoko was the devil (it's just that she couldn't sing). I'm saying it's unseemly for someone to include all that stuff about themselves in a book.

When they're not scubbing clean The Perfect Story of John and Yoko, the contributors are rewriting their own personal history as well. Or staking their claims to their own part of The Lennon Story.

Jann Wenner tells (again) the story of putting Lennon on the cover of the first Rolling Stone and conducting his lengthy interview with John. What he omits is that Lennon was furious with Wenner when the interview was published as a book against his express wishes.

Donovan's piece turns out to be about how, as he remembers it, he taught Lennon to finger-pick...and suggested the design for "The White Album."

It gets two stars because there are one or two nice things. But for the most part this is more of the revionist, there-is-nothing-nasty-in-John's-life deification of the man that has forced me to the following position:

Never trust anyone who says their favorite John Lennon song is "Imagine." They're drippy people.

I bought this book with happy anticipation. It seemed like a good idea: a collection of essays by different people, remembering John, published 25 years after his untimely death. I had seen a similar collection of statements many years ago, soon after John died, and that one was moving. But I overlooked one important thing: this book was edited by Yoko Ono.

Why the 2 star rating? The book itself is good quality and has a few nice pictures. And some of the essays are nice such as the ones by Mick Jagger and Elliot Mintz. However too much of the material is of poor quality for different reasons.

The book smacks of one of Yoko's popularist art projects. It appears as if she invited a bunch of people, some who never met John and who probably know little about him, to send in an essay so they can get their name in print. An essay by Alicia Keyes is nice, but she didn't know the man. How could she have a memory of John? As a result, several essays repeat the same unimaginative theme: we liked John because he wrote Imagine. We never met him but we like the song because he sang about brotherhood and peace.

Other essays are so short as to be meaningless. Some contributors sent in amateur drawings or poetry. This may be fine for an elementary school project where a teacher tells her 7 year old students "write a poem or do a drawing about John Lennon" but, to me, this is not worthy of a hardcovered book obstensibly published to honor John Lennon.

Another problem with this book is the same problem mentioned by critics of the Lennon Broadway show: the Yoko-fication of the Lennon legacy. While many of the essays address John alone or John as a Beatle, I could not help but notice that many of the essays not only discuss John, but practically deify Yoko. We learn from these essays that Yoko was the love of John's life; that she was a talented artist; that her genius wasn't appreciated years ago, but that Yoko was 30 years ahead of her time; that people did not appreciate Yoko because she married a Beatle; that Yoko did NOT break up the Beatles; that Yoko had a tremendous positive influence on John, etc. Did I mention that Yoko was the editor, and thus had a say in which essays were chosen for publication and which were not? It seems obvious that the "deification of Yoko" was a factor in choosing certain essays.

While I enjoyed the contribution by Elliot Mintz, he goes into great detail about The Lost Weekend, and mentions different people John saw and places John visited. But not one mention of May Pang. No, just like in the Lennon Broadway show, May does not and did not exist. Did I mention that Yoko was the editor of this book?

Many different people made contributions to this book, but oddly there is no memory of John essay by Julian, Sean or Yoko herself. One would like to think that John's second wife and sons would have something special to say for this 25th anniversary offering. Not one word.

And just in case you've forgotten who the brilliant editor was of this masterpiece, Yoko is mentioned on the front cover, the back flap, wrote an introduction, and has a full paragraph in the back of the book describing her "accomplishments" as a musician and artist.

My suggestion? If you are a fan of Yoko Ono, you will appreciate this book. If you are a Lennon or Beatle fan, you may wish to take it out of your public libary or buy a second hand copy at a discount, but otherwise, skip it.

Way too many entries contain the phrase, "Well, I never met John, but..." and at least as many (sometimes the same entries!!) say "Yoko, love of his life and John's saviour..." or something like that. (Alica Keyes and her mom each has an entry of that sort.)

Might there not have been, in all the surviving people who actually knew John, maybe one or 2 who didn't deify Yoko? [I have to add at this point that I didn't have any preconceived idea of her. I was given a copy of this book and got my input from that. That inspired me to read more Beatles biographies later.]

This was a project so self-serving, so shameless, that it was really quite funny. It gets three stars for entertainment alone, and I think the production process for this book went something like this:

[Alicia Keyes and Tori Amos are having lunch at a tea shop in Manhatten. They are approached by Yoko Ono and two bodyguards.]

Yoko: Ms. Keyes, Ms. Amos. I'm sure you know me but have been too polite to violate my privacy.

Tori: Huh?
Alicia: YOKO-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Yoko: I am compiling a book of memories of my late husband, John, whose contribution to art was recognizing mine. Would you like to participate?

Tori: But I never met the guy.

Yoko: That is immaterial. This is art; what matters is the impression. Write you impressions of me--I mean him, and you can be in a book.

Alicia: Wow!!

[at the next table, a man and his wife have been eavesdropping.]

Man: I think the way John treated his first wife is appalling, but has some absurdist potential. Can I write about that?

Yoko: [hissing] YOUR input is not necessary, Mr. Woody Allen!

Bianca Jagger [at next table] Guess you don't want mine, either.

Alicia: I can be in a book! I can be in a book!

Don't waste your money-this is the least interesting book I have ever read. The essays are so badly written and many are so self-serving it is offensive (who is that half-wit Julie Gold?). I'm not sure how it's possible to make a boring book about John Lennon but this one succeeds. Too bad, it could have been great.

There is nothing of interest in this book. Read the Amazon and Publishers Weekly reviews - they politely explain how little of the content is either new or tells you anything significant about John Lennon. If you buy it you are only providing more money to a very rich talentless person who has parasited the memory of JL for 25 years.

I think it's all very nice to have all these contributors telling us something of their relationship to John Lennon, occasionally something we didn't know before. But what's missing from this picture?

What's missing makes for a gigantic gap in the record. And it's a gap only Yoko can fill--with a full-length memoir of the years she and John spent together as lovers, as artists, as parents.... If Yoko is disinclined to write this kind of thing, she should simply hire an editor--a "with"--to sit down with her and take her back through the years with hundreds of probing questions.

Yoko was John's main inspiration for those dozen years, longer than for the Beatles years that preceded Yoko. Listen to John's late Beatles and solo output. Absent Yoko there might not be much at all.

A memoir of John Lennon by Yoko would likely be a transAtlantic bestseller. To write it would be a great service to Beatles, Lennon and Yoko fans alike. To die with it still unwritten would be a tremendous DISS-ervice to everyone, including John.

How is it even possible that Yoko could think it unnecessary to write this? I don't get it. Granted her own recording work in recent decades has often been excellent. But surely she could make time, and do the right thing by John. Which is to tell the whole truth, warts and all.

Yoko is already in her late-70s. She'd better start firing up those `late 1960s through 1980' memories before they fade to black.

What we need is `John Lennon: a Memoir' by Yoko Ono. The present volume has its merits but is totally inadequate by way of substitute.

I honestly can't believe some of these prior reviews. So much vitriol, that it gives one a hint of the type of ugliness that John & Yoko had to deal with simply because they were together. Regardless, this is simply an essential book about John Lennon, providing many candid insights of people who were fortunate to have personal interactions with a man who was an undisputed titan of the 20th century.

Thank you so much for compiling this book Yoko. John was fortunate to have found you, his soulmate, during his lifetime. God bless you.

Like any bottom-sucker, Yoko continues to feed off the legacy of a deeply troubled, yet brilliant, man. If you have a warm spot in your heart for John Lennon, do not buy this book.

Rather than a biography in the traditional sense, this is rather a book of memories from the early sixties right up to and after John Lennon's tragic death.

Instead of memories from the individual himself as one would expect, it is a collection of thoughts and anecdotes from almost eighty people, all of whom have something of insight and value to say about John.

The introduction by Yoko Ono is moving and informative, giving a glimpse into her attitude towards the memory of her late husband, and also her desire to keep his remembrance as dignified as possible.

Each small section dedicated to the writings and pictures of various people give the reader a more extensive layered impression of John Lennon that you would at first think. Far from being superficial, it reveals a far more playful, warm-hearted, considerate and thoughtful individual than one would ever imagine, given his well-known public personae.

Each short chapter tells us how deeply he moved people, which in turn is touching by itself.

The short contributions from Yoko Ono Lennon reveal the depth of loss, and also to a certain extent, the depth of love she still feels.

This was one of the most genuinely affecting reads I've had, speaking purely as an admirer of John Lennon, the man, and also the way he chose to lead his life.

This is a book I shall treasure, as despite the bittersweet feelings it conjures up, it is also one of the most uplifting reads. It evokes memories of ideals mostly of days gone by, but also gives a feeling of hope that one associates with the time of The Beatles, and also with John Lennon himself. If anything, that is the legacy of John Lennon.

Armchair Interviews says: All in all Memories of John Lennon is a truly moving read.




Fr