Kelley Library

Being John Lennon, a restless life, Ray Connolly

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 413-414), discography (pages 410-412), and index

individual biography

illustrationsportraitsplates

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non fiction

Being John Lennon

bibliography

Ray Connolly

a restless life

An intimate yet unsparing biography of one of the greatest and most mythologised musicians of the twentieth century. John Lennon was a rock star, a school clown, a writer, a wit, an iconoclast, a sometime peace activist and finally an eccentric millionaire. He was also a Beatle - his plain-speaking and impudent rejection of authority catching, and eloquently articulating, the group's moment in history. Chronicling a troubled life, from that of the cast-aside child of a broken wartime marriage to his murder by a deranged fan, Being John Lennon analyzes the contradictions in the singer-songwriter's creative and destructive personality. A leader who could be easily led, he was often generous and often funny, but sometimes scathingly cruel. As a journalist, author Ray Connolly had a close working relationship with Lennon, and the entire Beatles coterie. In this biography he unsparingly reassesses the chameleon nature of the perpetually dissatisfied star who just couldn't stop reinventing himself. Drawing on many interviews and conversations with Lennon, his first wife Cynthia and second Yoko Ono, as well as his girlfriend May Pang and song-writing partner Paul McCartney, this complex portrait is a revealing insight into a restless man whose emotional turbulence governed his life and talent"An intimate yet unsparing biography of one of the greatest and most mythologized musicians of the twentieth century. What was it like to be John Lennon? What was it like to be the castoff child, the clown at school, and the middle-class suburban boy who pretended to be a working-class hero? How did it feel to have one of the most recognizable singing voices in the world, but to dislike it so much he always wanted to disguise it? Being John Lennon is not about the whitewashed Prince of Peace of Imagine legend--because that was only a small part of him. The John Lennon depicted in these pages is a much more kaleidoscopic figure, sometimes almost a collision of different characters. But above everything, Lennon had attitude--his impudent style somehow personifying the aspirations of his generation to question authority. He could, and would, say the unsayable. Though there were more glamorous rock stars in rock history, even within the Beatles, it was John Lennon's attitude which caught, and then defined, his era in the most memorable way."--Dust jacket

'I forgot about my father' -- 'I was aggressive' -- 'The sort of gang I led' -- 'I must be a genius' -- 'Nobody was fighting' -- 'The way I looked' -- 'What's so sad about the past' -- 'Paul looked about ten' -- 'The copper came to the door' -- 'The underlying chip on my shoulder' -- 'It was terrible' -- 'I ruined his life!' -- 'This guy who had a drum kit' -- 'I grew up in Hamburg' -- 'Women should be obscene and not heard' -- 'Is this what I want to do?' -- 'You'd call them groupies now' -- 'I wasn't too keen on reaching twenty-one' -- 'We were in a daydream' -- 'I was the closest to Brian' -- 'I looked up to Stu' -- 'Cyn's having a baby' -- 'I had to do the talking' -- 'We sang for twelve hours' -- 'The holiday was planned' -- 'I play a guitar too ...' -- 'This isn't show business' -- 'We just walked through it' -- 'A Hard Day's Night' -- 'A rock and roll musician' -- 'We were like Kings of the Jungle' -- 'Once you plug in and the noise starts' -- 'Nowhere Man' -- 'We're more popular than Jesus' -- 'It's like we're four freaks being wheeled out' -- 'Our lives had been threatened' -- 'An imaginary nail' -- 'Strawberry Fields Forever' -- 'Mick Jagger wears a codpiece' -- 'I was scared' -- 'I am the egg man' -- 'Flying on a magic carpet' -- 'I think I'm Jesus Christ' -- 'Someone as barmy as I am' -- 'Get your drums out' -- 'You're not worth any more' -- 'My prick on an album' -- 'We hope we passed the audition' -- 'It was Yoko that changed me' -- 'I'm leaving the Beatles' -- 'A crutch for the world's social lepers' -- 'Free means free' -- 'I might just as well have been a comedian' -- 'The radicalism was phoney' -- 'Imagine' is anti-religious -- 'New York is at my speed' -- 'Don't fuck with my ears' -- 'To finish off ... we thought we'd do a number' -- 'If I began writing with Paul again' -- 'I've battled all the monsters' -- 'A second chance' -- 'Wanting to make music' -- 'Playing guitar and singing' -- 'I don't believe in dead heroes' -- After John died what happened to ..