I was 12 years old when the Beatles came to the US in 1964, a perfect age to become a Beatlemaniac.  In reading teen magazines prior to their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, my favorite was George.  But that changed the night of February 9, 1964, when glued to the TV set as were 73 million other people, I fell under Paul McCartney’s spell.  For the rest of the 60’s, I read anything and everything written about him and the other Beatles.  True Beatlemania had set in.

 

But over the years, I can’t say that I’ve read all that has been written and actually this is the first biography that I’ve read about Paul.  So I can’t compare it to other biographies about him and I can’t really say whether there’s new information contained in it or not.  A lot of it was old to me but a lot of it I didn’t know before reading this book.  What drew me to this particular book was that I had read that the author, Philip Norman, was quite against Paul in his 1980’s book “Shout”, saying that “John Lennon was three quarters of the Beatles” but has since then changed his opinion of Paul and wanted to set the record straight.

 

In this book, the author had tacit approval from Paul, meaning that, while Paul wasn’t actually cooperating in the writing of the book, he wasn’t interfering either and that opened doors to Mr. Norman.  At the end of the book, the author says that he uncovered a different McCartney than the world thought they knew, a man who was a perfectionist and a workaholic.  But that’s the McCartney I’ve come to “know” over the years.  How else could he have accomplished what he has?  So I didn’t actually discover a “new” Paul but rather the book confirmed what I already thought about him.

 

This is a very comprehensive biography, starting off with the births and upbringings of his parents and ending in present day.  The author is a very good storyteller and I found the book to be readable and entertaining.  I gulped when I first saw the 849-page figure on my e-reader but there are many photos (many of which I’ve never seen) and the book just flew by.  The author also does a fine job detailing the history behind many of Paul and John’s songs and the meaning of the lyrics, which I found to be very interesting.  All in all, it seems to be an honest portrayal of my fav Beatle and I enjoyed reading it.

 

This book was given to me by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

can a gay male 'bottom' be detected through prose alone? Dr. Paul Ekman, who wrote extensively about 'microexpressions,' by the end of his forty years in ethnology, supposedly could take one look at a photograph of an obscure african or indonesian tribe and instantly tell whether the tribe was pacifist or violent, predominately hetero or predominately homo, agriculturalist or carnivore etc. (this would be a plain, color portrait-photograph with the tribe not carrying weapons or lugging around a side of cow...)

I've been working in writing or reading for twenty years, and I think I can successfully identify Philip as a homosexual receiver-type, based on prose alone. it would explain his fascination with rock gods.


http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/28478/Philip_Norman/index.aspx

this issue aside, John Lennon: The Life is a meticulously researched and deeply well-written biography of John Lennon. Norman researches and recounts actual table-side conversations from the early 1960s, and apparently converses with all parties to recreate exactly who said what and why, to what emotional end. it is fantastic to follow along with John Lennon who in the course of the 1960s goes from Liverpool to Berlin to the famous "post-acid" style finally to Yoko and NYC, L.A. days... until you see it in print, it's hard to understand exactly the progression of years, but here it all written out in well-organized chronological order, age 10-20 rebellious, emotionally crippled teenager, 20-25 Hamburg and the Reeperbahn, 25-30 stardom, NYC and Ed Sullivan Show, 30-40 Yoko years incl. 'Lost Weekend' episode. every age progression is carefully researched, annotated, footnoted, and laid out so we feel exactly how long each period lasted and what everyone was feeling at the time.

and despite knowing all the Beatles' music, of course the "lost weekend," where lennon goes out for 18 months with a Chinese (!) girl was something I never knew. (= the "Lost Weekend")

Norman's work is not for everyone. among his more spurious accusations is that the early Beatles were formed by 15-hour work days in the hamburg red light district (fine) but also a gang of black-leather clad 'artists' who at one point threatened the beatles with a large handgun. because black leather at this point was a motif of the Nazi SS, the Beatles can therefore be read as a sort of residual product of the SS movement, accounting for their mass appeal (The Nazis invented crowd control). I find this somewhat hard to believe. do any pictures exist of the early beatles in black leather jackets and jackboots?... somebody research this.

second, Norman implies that Lennon was deeply sexually troubled throughout his life, existing in a sort of perpetual anguish, a deathly fear of being or becoming a "cripple," and this angst only lifted through the intervention of the Japanese, who not only rigorously controlled the Beatles' first show at the Budokan, but also took the form of a sexually-frigid older woman 'Yoko Ono' who both permitted Lennon to go off with a Chinese girl for 18 months, (May Pang?, I think the name was/) and also served as Lennon's only period of peace in his brief life. Lennon was eventually killed by another Japanese woman, Mariko Abe, who manipulated Chapman and possibly even provided the copy of [b:The Catcher in the Rye|5107|The Catcher in the Rye|J.D. Salinger|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349928703s/5107.jpg|3036731], which more than one celebrity killer carried during their killings. we should be scared of Catcher in the Rye fanatics? Mariko Abe was middle-class and resentful of the upper-class Yoko Ono, and JL was just an incidental byproduct? this is getting stranger by the minute...

anyway a fantastic work, both stylisticaly, research, structure, and that famous writing problem: "characterizing music:. many kudos to Norman-- i just wish the thesis wasn't, "everyone had unrequited homosexual crushes on John Lennon," including Epstein, J. Edgar Hoover, possibly his father etc. etc etc.... more reality, less speculation please Mr. Norman!

So far it's more informative about Lennon's earlier life than other bios read, and much better than Albert Goldman's hack job. I recently heard a movie is in the work about Lennon's childhood, so it will be interesting to see how the book compares.Spoilers below.Finished 3/17/09 - On a whole, a detailed retelling of Lennon's life. I enjoyed the final chapter of reflections from Sean Lennon - that's one thing you don't see much, understandable since Sean was still young when the other books were written. A few surprises, notably the Sutcliffe family's accusations of John's alleged involvement in Stu's death. Not sure what to make of that.It did disappoint me that John's story seemed to end abruptly. Right after 12/08/80, it seems there's nothing left to tell. I would liked to have read more of the aftermath of John's death - not so much about his killer, but the reactions and effect his death left on friends and family. In some ways, after death parts of the story truly begin, and I missed that here.

Anti Paul, but otherwise a good read.