John Lennon by Philip Norman

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." -
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.

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