John Lennon: The Life

By: Philip Norman

Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm

For more than a quarter century, biographer 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 being a Beatle was never enough. Drawing on previously untapped sources, and with unprecedented access to all the major characters, Norman presents the comprehensive and most revealing portrait of John Lennon ever 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 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.” -New York Times

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.

Expected Better

Norman's McCartney book was excellent. This one jumped around a bit. The last two Chapters were the best.

Reader was monotonous and feeble attempts at accents were terrible

Well done!

I enjoyed the vivid writing and awesome voice over. I didnt know John Lennon life was so interesting.

What's there is good, but there isn't enough there

Why, oh why, does Audible provide unabridged versions of, say, a 3-volume history of the stapler yet insist on abridging books like this? The other commenters have it right: these are excerpts, not a real abridged version.

And the selections are puzzling: this version skips the entire first 3 albums, U.S. tour, etc., but gives in excruciating detail a long, Wikipedia-like history of LSD that is familiar from every 1960s documentary ever made. But John Lennon's life from 1974-1980? Missing.

The writing is good, as is the narration and the information provided. But you'll find yourself going back to see if you missed something because of inattention. You didn't. It isn't there.

John Lennon The Life

Phillip Norman has done another great job on a Legend. Very well researched and seems to be a very honest portrayal of a truly gifted artist.

Where is Beautiful Boy?

Why are some chapters missing? I listened here, because I didn’t want to read the paper version. Now, I need to read it to make up for what the audio version is missing. I wasted my credit on an incomplete book.