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Update (10/27/08)

Hi Steve,

Philip Norman, author of "John Lennon, The Life," will be at the Beatles Coffee Shop at 11am on Monday 27th October. He is being interviewed for Deutsche Welle TV in Germany. The Beatles Coffee Shop is part of St John's Wood Underground Station, just a few hundred metres from Abbey Road.

all the best, Richard Porter
http://www.beatlescoffeeshop.com
http://www.beatlesinlondon.com

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Update (10/5/08)

Hello Steve,

Regarding the UK Mail's photo caption in the first excerpt ("Inseparable: John Lennon and Yoko Ono six months before his death"), I hope they didn't lift it verbatim from Norman's book because if they did it doesn't bode well for its contents. That photo was in fact taken in Cannes, France, in May, 1971, more than nine years before Lennon's death.

Best -
Bamiyan
The Beatles on DVD
http://www.bamiyanshiff.com/beatlesondvd/

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Update (9/17/08)

Hey Steve,

Did anyone find it interesting that Paul’s quote in the UK Sun talks about “after John went to rehab”? I’d never heard anyone say John went to rehab before….

I mean, that’s pretty big news. That’s never been mentioned anywhere by anyone to my knowledge. Did John go to rehab pre-75? Post-75? During the Househusband years? Wow. Pre-Betty Ford, what were rehabs like? J (But the tempest about John & his Mom and Paul is much ado about nothing I think).

Talked to our friend Pete Best the other day on the phone for an interview – his new album is pretty good! Take good care – and again, thanks for what you do for our community.

Philip Norman's first book on the Beatles, "Shout", though well-written, was a great disappointment. His negative approach to the Beatles saga, and Paul McCartney in particular, shows that he, like other Beatles biographers, "can't see the forest for the trees". Norman failed to see the larger picture:how the Beatles reshaped society and how their powerful message of love still reverberates throughout the world. I expect his new book on John Lennon will be more of the same. Hopefully, a writer will come along someday who can truly see the Beatles' story within the context of world history. ps Thanks for the best Beatles website on the internet!

Update (9/16/08)

The interview 'Paul did with the Sun' is no newer than the revelation about John and his mum. It's from an old interview with Howard Stern.

Update (9/15/08)

Update (9/14/08)

These reported "outraging things" inside the new Phillip Norman book "John Lennon The Life" are old news and long known. Too much fuzz about it or maybe just clever PR. You can find it ("The Sun" audio portion is from that) inside John's personal diary tape from 5 Sep 1979 (13,5 mins portion circulates) It's called on bootlegs “John’s (in)famous diary tape” or “Lennon’s Lost Diary Tape.”

You can find it for instance on these bootlegs:

• LP The Complete Lennon Tapes Vol. 26 (BAG Records) Side B- tr. 3 (13:36)
• 2CD The Complete Lost Lennon Tapes Vol. 17 & 18 (Walrus 028/029) CD1 - tr. 24
• CD Filming The Fantasies (VOXX 0009-01) tr. 20

On the web you can listen to it at YouTube:

John Lennon- Diary Part 1 (10:58) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TawfSfiVmjw (the “mother piece” is at 7:40 inside Part 1)

John Lennon- Diary Part 2 (2:25) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ05Q3qrE0g

Update (9/13/08)

(9/12/2008) Author Phillip Norman ("Shout! The Beatles In Their Generation") has written a new epic biography of John Lennon called "John Lennon: The Life", to be released Oct. 18 by Harper Collins. Here's the description of the book from the publisher's website:

For more than a quarter century, 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 belonging to the world's most beloved pop group was never enough. Drawing on previously untapped sources, and with unprecedented access to all the major characters, here is the comprehensive and most revealing portrait of John Lennon that is ever likely to be 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 before—and Yoko Ono, who speaks with sometimes shocking candor about the inner workings of her marriage to John.

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.