Description
Tim Riley’s definitive life of John Lennon raises the bar for rock biography, elevating his subject just as Peter Guralnick did for Elvis Presley. Challenging the slash-and-burn treatments of previous biographers, Riley, a preeminent Beatles scholar, cuts through the thicket of celebrity gossip and scurrilous innuendo that has dogged Lennon since his assassination. John Ono Lennon taps dozens of new sources and reexamines wrenching testimony from family members and friends to create a musically rich interpretation that rescues him from superficial pop stardom. Particularly haunting is Lennon’s childhood, which emerges fresh, with nuanced attention to his absent parents and controlling Aunt Mimi. Riley frames Lennon’s relationships with Paul McCartney, manager Brian Epstein, and Yoko Ono against the explosive social history of the 1960s and 1970s. Especially newsworthy is Riley’s sympathetic portrait of Yoko, challenging the negative stereotypes that have defined her. The result is a soaring biography that harvests the classic rock myth for the incisive truths it harbors.
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