John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman

That attention has scarcely wavered in almost three decades since his untimely death, and Philip Norman's new biography is the culmination of it.

What this book does is to place a magnifying glass on a life that was always under the microscope. After wading through the 800-plus pages, the reader might find he knows more about Lennon than Lennon knew about himself.

Certainly, Norman might have been of more help to the tortured pop star than those he turned to in his lifetime.

The most interesting part of the book is that which deals with Lennon's childhood, and the confused circumstances of his upbringing. His removal from frisky mother Julia to the house of prim Aunt Mimi, the seeming abandonment of the young boy by his father, Alf, the immersion in a society of aunts which would have petrified PG Wodehouse, the sudden death of his mother — all these events were guaranteed to herald the arrival of the angriest young man on the world stage.

And Lennon was angry. While Norman tries to keep a sense of perspective about his various escapades, the feeling persists that Lennon was a nasty piece of work. He was nasty towards women, friends and relatives, all of whom were only trying to help.

The suspicion that he contributed violently to the death of Stuart Sutcliffe — temporary Beatle and "best friend" — is not allayed.

Yet the man was also, in pop music terms, a genius. Norman is at his best when describing Lennon's musical partnership with Paul McCartney, and the way in which it was truly symbiotic rather than confrontational.

Although they increasingly wrote songs apart, each was more than happy to add a lyrical flourish or melodic enhancement to the other's compositions.

The Beatles' triumph was to have two giant egos in harness. The tale of the group's rapid ascent to world domination has been often rehearsed and would not be worthy of repetition were it not for Norman's forensic examination of the archives.

We all know about the furore caused by Lennon's quip that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus but less well known is the story of their ill-fated trip to the Philippines when they were revealed as being smaller than the Marcos regime.

It is in the detail that the book excels.

Somehow, Norman has come by the precise details of every house Lennon inhabited. Contrary to his image as a vagabond, Lennon was a self-confessed homeboy who liked to take up a favourite position on a preferred item of furniture in order to devour the books that fed his imagination. He was also a culinary traditionalist, with a preference for "proper" food, which he consumed without the least semblance of table manners. Yoko Ono was, on the other hand, astonished by his high standards of personal hygiene.

John Lennon's relationships defined his life. He was clearly in love with his mother, with whom he admitted the desire for an incestuous relationship.

It was perhaps as well that he ended up with Mimi, who would not have been agreeable to the suggestion.

Lennon also had the undivided attention of Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, who was in love with the fauxtough Scouser. There has always been a rumour that Lennon once succumbed to his amorous advances: Norman's research suggests otherwise.

Having married Cynthia at a ludicrously young age, it was inevitable that Lennon would find another love. Norman is adept at summoning up the sense of public outrage over Yoko Ono, the Woman Who Broke Up The Beatles.

He also traces the course of their burgeoning relationship in such a way as to make that claim retrospectively ludicrous. If there was one woman in Lennon's world who gave as good as she got, it was the diminutive Japanese artist.

When The Beatles finally broke up — and Norman is acute in his understanding of how this would have happened anyway — Lennon went his own way with mixed results. He engaged in some ludicrous antics with Yoko and made some unmemorable — sometimes atrocious — music.

Although Norman does not dive to the depths of Albert Goldman, whose biography pictured Lennon as a pornaddicted junkie holed up in Dakota, there is a sense of a life which had not achieved completion.

In a sense, one feels that he was never destined to be a great solo artist. The cruelty he displayed towards McCartney when they became solo artists was a thinly veiled recognition of the loss of an inspirational equal.

His callous treatment of Yoko Ono, particularly on his adulterous, 13-week "lost weekend" with Harry Nilsson, showed him to have had, at best, an equivocal attitude towards women.

John Lennon: The Life draws a line under Lennon and The Beatles. I read through its great length with enjoyment because it presents a pungent social history of this country in the Sixties, which could not be bettered by some dour tract.

On the other hand, I don't want to read another word about The Beatles again, nor their founder with the distinctly aquiline nose.

John Lennon may have been a working-class hero in his own mind but I certainly wouldn't have cared to have a beer with him..

'The cruelty he displayed towards McCartney when they became solo artists was a thinly veiled recognition of the loss of an equal'.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

The final word on music's greatest legend, in which Philip Norman reveals a John Lennon the world has never seen. With ground-breaking insight into the pain, beauty and frustration that shaped the genius of modern music, John Lennon: The Life redefines a legend. John Lennon - the iconic songwriter, composer and one quarter of The Beatles - was a giant of the twentieth century. As the founding member of the world's most successful group ever, he changed lives. Now, the bestselling author of Shout!, recognised for over 25 years as the ultimate Beatles biography, 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, Philip Norman presents the most complete and revealing portrait of John Lennon ever written. The book's hundreds of key informants and interviewees include Sir Paul McCartney, Sir George Martin, Neil Aspinall, Sean Lennon, whose moving reminiscence reveals his father as never before, and Yoko Ono, who speaks with sometimes shocking candour about the inner workings of her marriage to John.This masterpiece of biography takes a fresh look at every aspect of Lennon's much-chronicled life as Norman shows us the whole man from Lennon's schooldays to his death outside his New York apartment building on December 8, 1980. Honest and unflinching and featuring previously unseen photographs this truly is the definitive John Lennon.