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John Lennon: The Life

Author:
Philip Norman
Read by:
Graeme Malcolm
Read Read Own Own

Abridged Audiobook

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Ratings
Book
18
Narrator
2
Release Date
October 28, 2008
Duration
12 hours 52 minutes
Summary
For more than a quarter century, biographer Philip Norman's internationally bestselling Shout! has been unchallenged as the definitive biography of the Beatles. Now, at last, Norman turns his formidable talent to the Beatle for whom being a Beatle was never enough. Drawing on previously untapped sources, and with unprecedented access to all the major characters, Norman presents the comprehensive and most revealing portrait of John Lennon ever published.

This masterly biography takes a fresh and penetrating look at every aspect of Lennon's much-chronicled life, including the songs that have turned him, posthumously, into a near-secular saint. In three years of research, Norman has turned up an extraordinary amount of new information about even the best-known episodes of Lennon folklore—his upbringing by his strict Aunt Mimi; his allegedly wasted school and student days; the evolution of his peerless creative partnership with Paul McCartney; his Beatle-busting love affair with a Japanese performance artist; his forays into painting and literature; his experiments with Transcendental Meditation, primal scream therapy, and drugs. The book's numerous key informants and interviewees include Sir Paul McCartney, Sir George Martin, Sean Lennon—whose moving reminiscence reveals his father as never seen before—and Yoko Ono, who speaks with sometimes shocking candor about the inner workings of her marriage to John.

“[A] haunting, mammoth, terrific piece of work.” -New York Times

Honest and unflinching, as John himself would wish, Norman gives us the whole man in all his endless contradictions—tough and cynical, hilariously funny but also naive, vulnerable and insecure—and reveals how the mother who gave him away as a toddler haunted his mind and his music for the rest of his days.
Reviews
Profile Avatar Anonymous Jul 2012

I didn't realize I chose the abridged version of this book and advise others not to! Whole important sections were omitted, severely detracting from the experience of what was a compelling account of this seminal artist's life.

Profile Avatar Anonymous Jul 2012

I think the book is good, because the audio book is only a sampling. The audio cuts out 5 year stretches at a time. It skips John meeting Paul, goes from the Beatles just getting to do their first album with George Martin to working on the 5th album skipping all the sudden rise to fame. I have read reviews that the book is very good, and I would say what I did listen to was very good, but a terrible hatchet job. This was a terrible disservice to audio books, I will never buy an abridged version of a book again.

John Lennon: The Life

John Lennon: The Life

Author: Philip Norman
Read by: Graeme Malcolm
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