He’s so easy to despise and so difficult to defend on any level, but I’m always curious about the case to be made in favor of things found by conventional wisdom to be irremediable. Reading the “Drugs and Differences” comments, I took special note when the ghost of Albert Goldman reared its shiny dome. So strap on your poncho and feel free to skip around. But Michael asked, I answered, this is our blog, and we make the rules. Warning-there’s a lot of rant here, most of it to do with Albert Goldman but some of it just my articulated flailings about the nature of biography and criticism, writers and readers.BEATLES-STREEP-SHEA SHOCKER: IT’S NOT HER!!!! - August 13, 2015ĭEVIN McKINNEY.The Meaning of Fun: The Paul is Dead Rumor - February 3, 2016.What John Lennon Thinks of Donald Trump - November 14, 2016.The result is a book that at once enriches our appreciation of Lennon's larger-than-life genius and his mortality.

With an impressive array of sources, he soberly explores Lennon's many contradictions, ably separating myth from reality. By now, the broad strokes of Lennon's life have been largely sketched, and Riley doesn't veer far from that script%E2%80%94a volatile early childhood the groundbreaking success of the Beatles the crumbling of the group as personal ties frayed, business soured, and artistic paths diverged and Lennon's erratic, activist post-Beatle life with Yoko Ono in America before he settled down to be the father he never had to son Sean. Is there room for another big biography of John Lennon, just a few years from Philip Norman's doorstopper, and four years from Bob Spitz's epic history of the Beatles? Journalist and NPR media critic Tim Riley (the author of previous books on the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Madonna) proves there is with this insightful, page-turning examination of Lennon's roots, his Beatle fame, his art, his manic personality and relationship with Yoko Ono, and the peace he finally seemed to find, only to have his life cut tragically short by a crazed gunman.

John lennon tim riley