The Lives of John Lennon
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Lives of John Lennon is a 1988 biography of musician John Lennon by American author Albert Goldman. The book is a product of several years of research and hundreds of interviews with many of Lennon's friends, acquaintances, servants and musicians. Notwithstanding, it is best known for its criticism and generally negative representation of the personal lives of Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono.
In The Lives of John Lennon, a product of years of research and hundreds of interviews with many of Lennon's friends, acquaintances, servants and musicians, Goldman describes John Lennon as both talented and neurotic. The book reveals a very personal side of the musician who was prone to faults, such as anger, violence, drug abuse, adultery, and indecisiveness, but who was also a generational leader. It deals with Lennon's childhood and the impact others had on the life of the sensitive little boy, among them his aunt, Mimi Smith, his father, Fred Lennon, and Johnny Dykins. Goldman implies that strong women ruined Lennon, starting with Smith, and that he was later being held prisoner by his wife, Yoko Ono.
Focusing on the mistakes Lennon made and mean things he did, Goldman made many controversial allegations, among them the charge that he may have had something to do with the sudden death of his friend Stuart Sutcliffe, an early member of The Beatles. (Sources other than Goldman's book reported the cause of death as a brain hemorrhage.) Goldman also says that Lennon had a homosexual affair with The Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, whom Goldman characterizes as a dishonest, incompetent businessman who hid behind the image of a "gentleman". Half of the book covers the personality of Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, who is portrayed in a very bad light. Goldman alleges that, among other things, she hated Paul McCartney, arranged for customs officials at a Tokyo airport to search carefully his luggage upon his arrival there eleven months before Lennon's death and to arrest him for smuggling marijuana, neglected her children, brainwashed Lennon and pulled him away from everyone who ever meant something to him. Goldman also alleged that the two carried on constant extramarital affairs throughout their marriage, with Ono involved in one during the summer of 1980. Goldman substantially revealed that no record exists of the phone calls Ono claims to have made to McCartney and Mimi Smith the night Lennon was murdered.
Concerning Goldman's account of Lennon's consumption of LSD, Luc Sante, in The New York Review of Books, said: "Goldman's background research was either slovenly or nonexistent." The author replied:
- "What is the basis for this sweeping and defamatory assertion? Absolutely nothing save for my quoting only one book about LSD. Yet if Sante knew anything about drugs, he would recognize that the only serious problem about Lennon's consumption of LSD was one that has no literature; namely, the question of what effect this drug has upon a man who takes it every day, eating it 'like candy.'"
