The Lives of John Lennon
Encyclopedia
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
.
and a schizophrenic. The author even went into detail about the long-rumored homosexual affair between Lennon and The Beatles
' manager, Brian Epstein
, as well as alleging a number of liaisons by Lennon with other men, including a claim that he solicited underage male prostitutes in Thailand
. This latter assertion greatly angered Yoko Ono
and Paul McCartney
. The book was criticized by Lennon fans for allegedly containing much unsubstantiated conjecture, and tending to present worst-case scenarios when doing so.
Lennon was indeed a heavy drug user, as has now been acknowledged by most people who knew the musician well, including Ono and Lennon's first wife, Cynthia Lennon
. The same is true of Goldman's claims about Lennon's tendency towards violence, a tendency Lennon himself owned up to in a Playboy interview. Concerning Lennon's supposed bisexuality
, Ono herself is found to have said in a 1981 interview that she considered Lennon a "closet fag
," and she further revealed that he liked her because she looked "like a bloke in drag". Of the affair Goldman alleges between Lennon and Epstein, Lennon said in his 1980 Playboy interview that their relationship "was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated."
Among Goldman's most serious charges are that Lennon was not only instrumental in the murder of a sailor whom he met in Hamburg
, but also in the death of bandmate Stuart Sutcliffe
. Goldman states that Sutcliffe's death was the long-term result of severe kicks to the head administered by Lennon in a fit of drunken rage. He also alleges that Lennon caused the death of an unborn baby he'd conceived with Yoko Ono during 1968, when he kicked the pregnant Ono in the belly during an argument.
Goldman does show genuine respect for Lennon's musical achievements with the Beatles and some of his early solo work (although he largely dismisses most of it, even the widely acclaimed "Imagine
"). All the same, Lennon's best writings are presented as more the products of mental illness
or drug abuse (especially after 1966), than the creations of a talented person, while his melodies are charged with being mostly "stolen" from other musicians' songs, changed just enough to avoid legal action. Lennon was sued for plagiarism for "Come Together
" and settled out of court in return for promise to record songs by the original songs' publisher, Morris Levy, resulting in Lennon's 1975 album Rock 'n' Roll
.
Goldman also claimed that when Lennon started making music again in 1980 following a long hibernation, he was not immune to Manhattan's cocaine
-fueled disco
scene. According to Goldman, on the day Lennon was murdered he was scheduled to undergo plastic surgery several days later to repair his nasal septum (due to snorting cocaine, which he supposedly did at the Hit Factory recording studio where he recorded his album Double Fantasy
). Goldman did not cite a single name of anyone who might have witnessed this at the studio. Goldman alleged further that on December 8, 1980 (the day of Lennon's murder) not only did the singer's cocaine snorting warrant plastic surgery, but he was in such bad physical condition from drug abuse and lack of exercise that during his autopsy
the medical examiner
recorded observations to that effect, overlooking the four bullet wounds momentarily.
The over-arching theme of the book is to debunk the notion that Lennon retired from rock for five years, from 1975 until his 1980 comeback album, Double Fantasy
, to live as a househusband and raise the couple's son, Sean
. Goldman asserts that in reality Lennon had retreated into a secluded, darkened room watching television all day, every day, leaving domestic servants to tend his son, while Ono was feeding a chronic heroin habit. This theme is also supported in the book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon
, which is based on Lennon's own diaries from the months and weeks leading up to his murder.
Goldman further asserted that this turn of events was caused, not only by Lennon's own native laziness and dependence on strong women throughout his life to manage his affairs, (other than his marriage to Cynthia, in which he took a dominant role), but through the instigation and manipulation of Yoko Ono, who Goldman claimed in the book was jealous of Lennon and saw his fame as competition for her own musical ambitions.
Goldman contends Ono encouraged Lennon's heroin addiction as a way of controlling him and his vast fortune, to her own ends. She also used tarot
-reading charlatans to feed Lennon readings that would urge him to take various courses of action Ono supported. These readings would determine seemingly trivial choices of Lennon's life, such as which route the limo would take home from the studio or which day was most propitious on which to record, but were, in fact, according to Goldman, often part of Ono's constant machinations. Ono's concern for routes and directions reflects a belief in Japanese traditional katatagae
, but this is overlooked by Goldman, who has been accused of racism
.
Goldman also alleges Lennon's comeback was only allowed, and then orchestrated, by Ono after she realized her own ambitions at stardom without Lennon were futile.
He also enumerates what he described as Yoko Ono's lavish spending habits, wasting of Lennon's resources, abuse of domestic servants and personal assistants, even to the point of setting up May Pang
as Lennon's girlfriend and Ono's personal spy during his Lost Weekend when he was separated from Ono during the autumn of 1974.
Much of this story is confirmed by Pang in her own book.
Goldman quotes Harold Seider, Lennon's lawyer for the last few years of his life, as saying that much of Lennon's public image was largely fabricated:
, and depicts her as a willing participant in various alleged crimes of her previous husband, Tony Cox. Goldman also goes into great detail about Ono's treatment of Lennon's first wife Cynthia, and Ono's unconventional behavior and personality. Details of this section appear to be lifted from Peter Brown's The Love You Make. Goldman also depicts Ono as pressuring Lennon into heroin use, as greedy and stingy, and indulging in infidelity with gigolo
s.
Cynthia Lennon claims that the material for Goldman's depiction of her and Lennon's marriage was taken from her book A Twist of Lennon.
Goldman depicts Paul McCartney
in an extremely positive light, as being the only true talent among the Beatles, and the man who made the band able to function. On January 16, 1980, customs
officials in Japan
found 7.7 ounces (218.3 g) of cannabis
in McCartney's luggage as he and the other musicians in Wings
tried to enter the country for a concert tour. Rather than lay the blame for this incident on McCartney, Albert Goldman asserts that it was orchestrated by Yoko Ono. She supposedly had advance notice that her husband's friend would be smuggling drugs into her homeland. She allegedly made overseas telephone calls to government officials she knew with the hope that he would be arrested, thereby giving her a good excuse to forbid her husband from communicating with his friend.
Much more controversially, Goldman depicts manager Allen Klein
as being somewhat of a saint, as someone who had the Beatles' best interests in mind, and who was railroaded by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when he was tried, convicted, and served prison time for insider trading
and securities fraud
.
Goldman implies that Mark David Chapman's
murder of John Lennon may have been part of a conspiracy
by Fundamentalist Christians. Chapman was a fundamentalist who viewed Lennon as a corrupter of youth. Goldman does not offer any conclusions, but mentions that the NYPD files on Lennon's murder are sealed and any conclusive answer would have to wait until the files are released to the public.
, but never pursued any legal action, later explaining that she wanted to maintain a positive attitude and that her lawyers had advised her a civil action would only draw more attention to the book.
Lennon's first wife Cynthia Lennon denounced the book, stating "Every single person was annihilated. My mother was called a bulldog and a domineering woman, which was nothing — nothing — like my mother. And he called me a spaniel. I thought, I'd rather be a spaniel
than a Rottweiler
, which is what he was."
Despite Goldman's praise of him in the book, Paul McCartney did not return the favor, and condemned Goldman's account of his old bandmate, telling fans and the press "Look, don't buy it." He also called it "a piece of trash" and claimed Goldman made up "any old bunch of lies he sees fit" Singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson
, whose friendship with Lennon peaked during his 1974 separation from Ono, told Rolling Stone that Goldman "got me drunk" while interviewing him, probing Nilsson for "dirt" about Lennon, and Nilsson would not cooperate. (Nilsson gets a chapter in the book, "Harry the Hustler", which credits him with having better confidence-man skills than singing talent.)
In Ray Coleman's Lennon: The Definitive Biography, there appears the following quote from The Beatles' record producer George Martin
: "I think it is iniquitous that people can libel the dead. If John was alive, that book would not have come out. It is largely untrue, but, sadly, if mud is thrown it tends to stick." Martin also labeled the book as "codswallop".
Other celebrities who'd known Lennon personally, including Geraldo Rivera
and Tom Snyder
, largely expressed an attitude of "Interesting story—who's it about? That's not the man I knew."
The October 20, 1988 issue of Rolling Stone
lambasted the book in a lengthy and extensively-researched article by David Fricke and Jeffrey Ressner, "Imaginary Lennon". The reviewers described the book as "riddled with factual inaccuracies, embroidered accounts of true events that border on fiction and suspect information provided by tainted sources." Further, Fricke and Ressner stated that "Rolling Stone spoke to sources interviewed by Goldman who said that they were misquoted or that the information they provided him was used out of context. Other figures close to Lennon who refused to speak to Goldman or were not contacted by him claim that incidents in the book in which they appear either never happened or did not occur in the way Goldman recounts them." Among the factual errors listed by Rolling Stone:
David Gates responded in Newsweek
by reminding readers that a romantic vision of Lennon is just as much of a myth as Goldman's portrayal. Editor Jann Wenner
is quoted as saying that the book "offended him at every level", suggesting that he as a personal friend of the Lennons had good reason to want to preserve an idealistic version of Lennon's life. However, by stating a number of easily researched facts, the article also exposes a number of Goldman's inaccuracies and concludes with a reminder that the best way to know Lennon is through his recordings. Gates noted in the article that Goldman presents no evidence for his claim that Lennon patronized male prostitutes in Thailand or that Lennon killed a sailor in Hamburg, and only secondhand hearsay for the tale of Lennon blaming himself for Stuart Sutcliffe's death.
Louis Menand in The New Republic
described the sourcing of Goldman's book as "vague and unreliable". Menand wrote of Goldman's book that "The little things don't matter, of course, if the big things can be trusted. But the big things can't." Luc Sante, in New York Review of Books, said about the account of Lennon's consumption of LSD in the book: "Goldman's background research was either slovenly or nonexistent."
Goldman denounced the Rolling Stone article as "a farrago of groundless or insignificant charges designed to discredit my biography of John Lennon". He also mocked what he called "the stupidity of the [Newsweek] magazine employees who were assigned the task of smearing me and my book", and concluded by saying that Sante was "a young man of no reputation in the field of popular culture." Sante good-naturedly replied that Goldman's tirade proved that the book was a gigantic, humorous "put-on".
Author Phillip Norman
, whose own biography of Lennon (John Lennon: The Life) was published 20 years after The Lives of John Lennon, described Goldman's book as "malevolent" and "risibly ignorant".
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author Albert Goldman
Albert Goldman
Albert Harry Goldman was an American professor and author.Born in Dormont, Pennsylvania, Albert Goldman wrote about the culture and personalities of the American music industry both in books and as a contributor to magazines...
. 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
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
.
Lennon in the work
When first published, The Lives of John Lennon was controversial because of its portrayal of Lennon in a highly critical light. Lennon was presented in the book as a talented but deeply flawed man who manipulated people and relationships throughout his life, flinging them aside when they were no longer useful to him. Goldman also suggested that Lennon was an anti-Semite and a heavy drug-user and that he was dyslexicDyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
and a schizophrenic. The author even went into detail about the long-rumored homosexual affair between Lennon and The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' manager, Brian Epstein
Brian Epstein
Brian Samuel Epstein , was an English music entrepreneur, and is best known for being the manager of The Beatles up until his death. He also managed several other musical artists such as Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Cilla Black, The Remo Four & The Cyrkle...
, as well as alleging a number of liaisons by Lennon with other men, including a claim that he solicited underage male prostitutes in Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
. This latter assertion greatly angered Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
and Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
. The book was criticized by Lennon fans for allegedly containing much unsubstantiated conjecture, and tending to present worst-case scenarios when doing so.
Lennon was indeed a heavy drug user, as has now been acknowledged by most people who knew the musician well, including Ono and Lennon's first wife, Cynthia Lennon
Cynthia Lennon
Cynthia Lillian Lennon is the former wife of musician John Lennon, and mother of Julian Lennon. She grew up in the middle-class section of Hoylake, on the Wirral Peninsula in North West England. At the age of twelve, she was accepted into the Junior Art School, and was later enrolled in the...
. The same is true of Goldman's claims about Lennon's tendency towards violence, a tendency Lennon himself owned up to in a Playboy interview. Concerning Lennon's supposed bisexuality
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
, Ono herself is found to have said in a 1981 interview that she considered Lennon a "closet fag
The Closet
The Closet may refer to:* The Closet , Chinese film* The Closet , French film* The closet, referring to undisclosed homosexuality- See also :* Closet* Closet * In the closet...
," and she further revealed that he liked her because she looked "like a bloke in drag". Of the affair Goldman alleges between Lennon and Epstein, Lennon said in his 1980 Playboy interview that their relationship "was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated."
Among Goldman's most serious charges are that Lennon was not only instrumental in the murder of a sailor whom he met in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, but also in the death of bandmate Stuart Sutcliffe
Stuart Sutcliffe
Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe was a Scottish artist and musician, best known as the original bass player of The Beatles. Sutcliffe left the band to pursue a career as an artist, having previously attended the Liverpool College of Art...
. Goldman states that Sutcliffe's death was the long-term result of severe kicks to the head administered by Lennon in a fit of drunken rage. He also alleges that Lennon caused the death of an unborn baby he'd conceived with Yoko Ono during 1968, when he kicked the pregnant Ono in the belly during an argument.
Goldman does show genuine respect for Lennon's musical achievements with the Beatles and some of his early solo work (although he largely dismisses most of it, even the widely acclaimed "Imagine
Imagine (song)
"Imagine" is a song written and performed by the English musician John Lennon. It is the opening track on his album Imagine, released in 1971...
"). All the same, Lennon's best writings are presented as more the products of mental illness
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
or drug abuse (especially after 1966), than the creations of a talented person, while his melodies are charged with being mostly "stolen" from other musicians' songs, changed just enough to avoid legal action. Lennon was sued for plagiarism for "Come Together
Come Together
"Come Together" is a song by The Beatles written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The song is the opening track on The Beatles' September 1969 album Abbey Road....
" and settled out of court in return for promise to record songs by the original songs' publisher, Morris Levy, resulting in Lennon's 1975 album Rock 'n' Roll
Rock 'n' Roll (John Lennon album)
Rock 'n' Roll is a 1975 album of late 1950s and early 1960s songs covered by John Lennon. Recording the album was problematic and spanned a year. Though critically derided, it reached #6 in both the United Kingdom and the United States.-History:...
.
Goldman also claimed that when Lennon started making music again in 1980 following a long hibernation, he was not immune to Manhattan's cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
-fueled disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
scene. According to Goldman, on the day Lennon was murdered he was scheduled to undergo plastic surgery several days later to repair his nasal septum (due to snorting cocaine, which he supposedly did at the Hit Factory recording studio where he recorded his album Double Fantasy
Double Fantasy
Double Fantasy is an album released by John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, in 1980. Though initially poorly received, the album is notable for its association with Lennon's murder three weeks after its release, whereupon it become a worldwide commercial success, and went on to win the 1981 Album...
). Goldman did not cite a single name of anyone who might have witnessed this at the studio. Goldman alleged further that on December 8, 1980 (the day of Lennon's murder) not only did the singer's cocaine snorting warrant plastic surgery, but he was in such bad physical condition from drug abuse and lack of exercise that during his autopsy
Autopsy
An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...
the medical examiner
Medical examiner
A medical examiner is a medically qualified government officer whose duty is to investigate deaths and injuries that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortem examinations, and in some jurisdictions to initiate inquests....
recorded observations to that effect, overlooking the four bullet wounds momentarily.
The over-arching theme of the book is to debunk the notion that Lennon retired from rock for five years, from 1975 until his 1980 comeback album, Double Fantasy
Double Fantasy
Double Fantasy is an album released by John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, in 1980. Though initially poorly received, the album is notable for its association with Lennon's murder three weeks after its release, whereupon it become a worldwide commercial success, and went on to win the 1981 Album...
, to live as a househusband and raise the couple's son, Sean
Sean Lennon
is an American singer, songwriter, musician, guitarist and actor. He is the only child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. His godfather is Sir Elton John.-Early life and education:...
. Goldman asserts that in reality Lennon had retreated into a secluded, darkened room watching television all day, every day, leaving domestic servants to tend his son, while Ono was feeding a chronic heroin habit. This theme is also supported in the book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon
Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon
Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, first published in 2000 and written by New York journalist Robert Rosen, who in 1981 had access to John Lennon's diaries, is a controversial account of the ex-Beatle's last five years. The book disputes the official view of Lennon as a contented...
, which is based on Lennon's own diaries from the months and weeks leading up to his murder.
Goldman further asserted that this turn of events was caused, not only by Lennon's own native laziness and dependence on strong women throughout his life to manage his affairs, (other than his marriage to Cynthia, in which he took a dominant role), but through the instigation and manipulation of Yoko Ono, who Goldman claimed in the book was jealous of Lennon and saw his fame as competition for her own musical ambitions.
Goldman contends Ono encouraged Lennon's heroin addiction as a way of controlling him and his vast fortune, to her own ends. She also used tarot
Tarot
The tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
-reading charlatans to feed Lennon readings that would urge him to take various courses of action Ono supported. These readings would determine seemingly trivial choices of Lennon's life, such as which route the limo would take home from the studio or which day was most propitious on which to record, but were, in fact, according to Goldman, often part of Ono's constant machinations. Ono's concern for routes and directions reflects a belief in Japanese traditional katatagae
Onmyodo
is a traditional Japanese esoteric cosmology, a mixture of natural science and occultism. It is based on the Chinese philosophies of Wu Xing and Yin and yang, introduced into Japan at the turn of the 6th century, and accepted as a practical system of divination...
, but this is overlooked by Goldman, who has been accused of racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
.
Goldman also alleges Lennon's comeback was only allowed, and then orchestrated, by Ono after she realized her own ambitions at stardom without Lennon were futile.
He also enumerates what he described as Yoko Ono's lavish spending habits, wasting of Lennon's resources, abuse of domestic servants and personal assistants, even to the point of setting up May Pang
May Pang
May Fung Yee Pang is best known as the former girlfriend of John Lennon. She had previously worked as a personal assistant and production coordinator for Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono....
as Lennon's girlfriend and Ono's personal spy during his Lost Weekend when he was separated from Ono during the autumn of 1974.
Much of this story is confirmed by Pang in her own book.
Goldman quotes Harold Seider, Lennon's lawyer for the last few years of his life, as saying that much of Lennon's public image was largely fabricated:
Others in the work
Lennon comes across much better than Yoko Ono, for whom Goldman shows unbridled contempt. Goldman insults Ono's appearance, describing her as "simian-looking". Goldman alleges that Ono had been a prostitute while attending Sarah Lawrence CollegeSarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...
, and depicts her as a willing participant in various alleged crimes of her previous husband, Tony Cox. Goldman also goes into great detail about Ono's treatment of Lennon's first wife Cynthia, and Ono's unconventional behavior and personality. Details of this section appear to be lifted from Peter Brown's The Love You Make. Goldman also depicts Ono as pressuring Lennon into heroin use, as greedy and stingy, and indulging in infidelity with gigolo
Gigolo
Gigolo may refer to:* A male prostitute, escort, or dancer, who offers services to women* Gigolo , a 2006 single by Helena Paparizou* Gigolo , a 2003 single by Nick Cannon...
s.
Cynthia Lennon claims that the material for Goldman's depiction of her and Lennon's marriage was taken from her book A Twist of Lennon.
Goldman depicts Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
in an extremely positive light, as being the only true talent among the Beatles, and the man who made the band able to function. On January 16, 1980, customs
Customs
Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting and safeguarding customs duties and for controlling the flow of goods including animals, transports, personal effects and hazardous items in and out of a country...
officials in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
found 7.7 ounces (218.3 g) of cannabis
Cannabis
Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...
in McCartney's luggage as he and the other musicians in Wings
Wings (band)
Wings were a British-American rock group formed in 1971 by Paul McCartney, Denny Laine and Linda McCartney that remained active until 1981....
tried to enter the country for a concert tour. Rather than lay the blame for this incident on McCartney, Albert Goldman asserts that it was orchestrated by Yoko Ono. She supposedly had advance notice that her husband's friend would be smuggling drugs into her homeland. She allegedly made overseas telephone calls to government officials she knew with the hope that he would be arrested, thereby giving her a good excuse to forbid her husband from communicating with his friend.
Much more controversially, Goldman depicts manager Allen Klein
Allen Klein
Allen Klein was an American businessman, talent agent and record label executive. His clients included The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.- The accountant :...
as being somewhat of a saint, as someone who had the Beatles' best interests in mind, and who was railroaded by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when he was tried, convicted, and served prison time for insider trading
Insider trading
Insider trading is the trading of a corporation's stock or other securities by individuals with potential access to non-public information about the company...
and securities fraud
Securities fraud
Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a practice that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in losses, in violation of the securities laws....
.
Goldman implies that Mark David Chapman's
Mark David Chapman
Mark David Chapman is an American prison inmate who murdered former Beatles member John Lennon on December 8, 1980. He committed the crime as Lennon and Yoko Ono were outside of The Dakota apartment building in New York City. Chapman aimed five shots at Lennon, hitting him four times in his back...
murder of John Lennon may have been part of a conspiracy
Conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...
by Fundamentalist Christians. Chapman was a fundamentalist who viewed Lennon as a corrupter of youth. Goldman does not offer any conclusions, but mentions that the NYPD files on Lennon's murder are sealed and any conclusive answer would have to wait until the files are released to the public.
Criticism
Lennon's widow Yoko Ono threatened to sue for libel, claiming the book made her briefly consider suicideSuicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
, but never pursued any legal action, later explaining that she wanted to maintain a positive attitude and that her lawyers had advised her a civil action would only draw more attention to the book.
Lennon's first wife Cynthia Lennon denounced the book, stating "Every single person was annihilated. My mother was called a bulldog and a domineering woman, which was nothing — nothing — like my mother. And he called me a spaniel. I thought, I'd rather be a spaniel
Spaniel
A spaniel is a type of gun dog. It is assumed spaniels originated from Spain as the word spaniel may be derived from Hispania or possibly from the French phrase "Chiens de l’Espagnol" . Spaniels were especially bred to flush game out of dense brush. By the late 17th century spaniels had become...
than a Rottweiler
Rottweiler
The Rottweiler is a medium to large size breed of domestic dog that originated in Rottweil, Germany. The dogs were known as "Rottweil butchers' dogs" because they were used to herd livestock and pull carts laden with butchered meat and other products to market...
, which is what he was."
Despite Goldman's praise of him in the book, Paul McCartney did not return the favor, and condemned Goldman's account of his old bandmate, telling fans and the press "Look, don't buy it." He also called it "a piece of trash" and claimed Goldman made up "any old bunch of lies he sees fit" Singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson
Harry Nilsson
Harry Edward Nilsson III was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. On all but his earliest recordings he is credited as Nilsson...
, whose friendship with Lennon peaked during his 1974 separation from Ono, told Rolling Stone that Goldman "got me drunk" while interviewing him, probing Nilsson for "dirt" about Lennon, and Nilsson would not cooperate. (Nilsson gets a chapter in the book, "Harry the Hustler", which credits him with having better confidence-man skills than singing talent.)
In Ray Coleman's Lennon: The Definitive Biography, there appears the following quote from The Beatles' record producer George Martin
George Martin
Sir George Henry Martin CBE is an English record producer, arranger, composer and musician. He is sometimes referred to as "the Fifth Beatle"— a title that he often describes as "nonsense," but the fact remains that he served as producer on all but one of The Beatles' original albums...
: "I think it is iniquitous that people can libel the dead. If John was alive, that book would not have come out. It is largely untrue, but, sadly, if mud is thrown it tends to stick." Martin also labeled the book as "codswallop".
Other celebrities who'd known Lennon personally, including Geraldo Rivera
Geraldo Rivera
Geraldo Rivera is an American attorney, journalist, author, reporter, and former talk show host...
and Tom Snyder
Tom Snyder
Thomas James "Tom" Snyder was an American television personality, news anchor and radio personality best known for his late night talk shows The Tomorrow Show, on the NBC television network in the 1970s and 1980s, and The Late Late Show, on the CBS Television Network in the 1990s...
, largely expressed an attitude of "Interesting story—who's it about? That's not the man I knew."
The October 20, 1988 issue of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
lambasted the book in a lengthy and extensively-researched article by David Fricke and Jeffrey Ressner, "Imaginary Lennon". The reviewers described the book as "riddled with factual inaccuracies, embroidered accounts of true events that border on fiction and suspect information provided by tainted sources." Further, Fricke and Ressner stated that "Rolling Stone spoke to sources interviewed by Goldman who said that they were misquoted or that the information they provided him was used out of context. Other figures close to Lennon who refused to speak to Goldman or were not contacted by him claim that incidents in the book in which they appear either never happened or did not occur in the way Goldman recounts them." Among the factual errors listed by Rolling Stone:
- Guitarist Danny Forchnar denies Lennon ever bit him in the nose
- Goldman source Tony Monero denies Lennon ever told him to "Suck my cock!"
- Apple executive Tony KingTony KingTony King is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Chris Coghill. He was the partner of established character Bianca Jackson , and a father-figure to her four children...
denies Lennon snorted cocaine before his 1974 concert appearance with Elton JohnElton JohnSir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
- Goldman incorrectly describes the Lennon's kitchen stove as match-lit when recounting an anecdote of Lennon trying to set Ono's hair on fire
- Goldman incorrectly describes the "Love Me DoLove Me Do"Love Me Do" is The Beatles' first single, backed by "P.S. I Love You" and released on 5 October 1962. When the single was originally released in the United Kingdom, it peaked at number seventeen; in 1982 it was re-issued and reached number four...
" single as a 78 instead of a 45.
David Gates responded in Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
by reminding readers that a romantic vision of Lennon is just as much of a myth as Goldman's portrayal. Editor Jann Wenner
Jann Wenner
Jann Simon Wenner is the co-founder and publisher of the music and politics biweekly Rolling Stone, as well as the owner of Men's Journal and Us Weekly magazines.-Childhood:...
is quoted as saying that the book "offended him at every level", suggesting that he as a personal friend of the Lennons had good reason to want to preserve an idealistic version of Lennon's life. However, by stating a number of easily researched facts, the article also exposes a number of Goldman's inaccuracies and concludes with a reminder that the best way to know Lennon is through his recordings. Gates noted in the article that Goldman presents no evidence for his claim that Lennon patronized male prostitutes in Thailand or that Lennon killed a sailor in Hamburg, and only secondhand hearsay for the tale of Lennon blaming himself for Stuart Sutcliffe's death.
Louis Menand in The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
described the sourcing of Goldman's book as "vague and unreliable". Menand wrote of Goldman's book that "The little things don't matter, of course, if the big things can be trusted. But the big things can't." Luc Sante, in New York Review of Books, said about the account of Lennon's consumption of LSD in the book: "Goldman's background research was either slovenly or nonexistent."
Goldman denounced the Rolling Stone article as "a farrago of groundless or insignificant charges designed to discredit my biography of John Lennon". He also mocked what he called "the stupidity of the [Newsweek] magazine employees who were assigned the task of smearing me and my book", and concluded by saying that Sante was "a young man of no reputation in the field of popular culture." Sante good-naturedly replied that Goldman's tirade proved that the book was a gigantic, humorous "put-on".
Author Phillip Norman
Philip Norman (author)
Philip Norman is an English novelist, biographer, journalist and playwright.Norman grew up in Ryde, Isle of Wight. He attended Ryde School, and his father, Clive Norman, ran the Seagull Ballroom on Ryde Pier. He described his childhood in his book Babycham Night...
, whose own biography of Lennon (John Lennon: The Life) was published 20 years after The Lives of John Lennon, described Goldman's book as "malevolent" and "risibly ignorant".