While most biographers tend to portray Lennon as a hippie saint or a hopeless jerk, he tries very hard to find a happy medium that encompasses all of Lennon’s personality: a flawed man who had a boatload of issues and could be both cruel and kind. While this lifestyle didn’t quite tame Lennon’s wild side, it led to new focuses in his life - until it was tragically cut short. Suddenly he was devoting himself not to pop hits, but to experimental numbers, “bed-ins” and sitting in bags, and using his world-wide celebrity for the furtherance of peace. Hit album after hit album poured from the Beatles, along with the usual rock-star intake of drugs, sex and occasional PR disasters.īut Lennon’s interests began to stray in more spiritual directions, and as his marriage to the sweet-natured Cynthia fell apart, he met and fell in love with eccentric Japanese artist Yoko Ono. Though briefly devastated by the death of a bandmate, Lennon quickly rose to fame and fortune when the renamed Beatles became not just a hit band, but a new way of life for the youth of Britain, and then the entire world. Of course, everyone knows what happened later - after a brief stint at art school, Lennon became part of a band with an ever-shifting name, and started working on pop songs alongside Paul McCartney. The one blot: the tragic, shocking death of his mother Julia. John Lennon was born into an incredibly stormy marriage (which broke up soon after) and raised by his loving, strict Aunt Mimi, though he was something of a hellraising trickster as a child. We’ll never get a John Lennon autobiography, but Norman does a pretty good job of getting inside his shaggy head. Having explored the Beatles and their impact on a generation, Norman narrows his focus down to “John Lennon: The Life” - and he does a superb job unearthing the many details, relationships and differing faces of this much-lamented rock star. Most biographies either focus on the good, or the bad.īut fortunately, Philip Norman is making a valiant effort to show, if not all of John Lennon’s facets, then as many of them as possible.

Most beloved public figures have many facets - some of them nasty, some of them pleasant and admirable. John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman (2008)

John lennon the life philip norman