Being John Lennon

Ray Connolly

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781643130538
• eBook ISBN: 9781643130910
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

What was it like to be John Lennon? What was it like to be the castoff child, the clown at school, and the middle-class suburban boy who pretended to be a working-class hero? How did it feel to have one of the most recognizable singing voices in the world, but to dislike it so much he always wanted to disguise it? Being John Lennon is not about the whitewashed Prince of Peace of Imagine legend—because that was only a small part of him. The John Lennon depicted in these pages is a much more kaleidoscopic figure, sometimes almost a collision of different characters. He was, of course, funny, often very funny. But above everything, he had attitude—his impudent style somehow personifying the aspirations of his generation to question authority. He could, and would, say the unsayable. Though there were more glamorous rock stars in rock history, even within the Beatles, it was John Lennon's attitude which caught, and then defined, his era in the most memorable way.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Foreword
• 1. ‘I forgot about my father’
• 2. ‘I was aggressive’
• 3. ‘The sort of gang I led’
• 4. ‘I must be a genius’
• 5. ‘Nobody was fighting’
• 6. ‘The way I looked’
• 7. ‘What’s so sad about the past’
• 8. ‘Paul looked about ten’
• 9. ‘The copper came to the door’
• 10. ‘The underlying chip on my shoulder’
• 11. ‘It was terrible’
• 12. ‘I ruined his life!’
• 13. ‘This guy who had a drum kit’
• 14. ‘I grew up in Hamburg’
• 15. ‘Women should be obscene and not heard’
• 16. ‘Is this what I want to do?’
• 17. ‘You’d call them groupies now’
• 18. ‘I wasn’t too keen on reaching twenty-one’
• 19. ‘We were in a daydream’
• 20. ‘I was the closest to Brian’
• 21. ‘I looked up to Stu’
• 22. ‘Cyn’s having a baby’
• 23. ‘I had to do the talking’
• 24. ‘We sang for twelve hours’
• 25. ‘The holiday was planned’
• 26. ‘I play a guitar, too . . .’
• 27. ‘This isn’t show business’
• 28. ‘We just walked through it’
• 29. ‘A Hard Day’s Night’
• 30. ‘A rock and roll musician’
• 31. ‘We were like Kings of the Jungle’
• 32. ‘Once you plug in and the noise starts’
• 33. ‘Nowhere Man’
• 34. ‘We’re more popular than Jesus’
• 35. ‘It’s like we’re four freaks being wheeled out’
• 36. ‘Our lives had been threatened’
• 37. ‘An imaginary nail’
• 38. ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
• 39. ‘Mick Jagger wears a codpiece’
• 40. ‘I was scared’
• 41. ‘I am the egg man’
• 42. ‘Flying on a magic carpet’
• 43. ‘I think I’m Jesus Christ’
• 44. ‘Someone as barmy as I am’
• 45. ‘Get your drums out’
• 46. ‘You’re not worth any more’
• 47. ‘My prick on an album’
• 48. ‘We hope we passed the audition’
• 49. ‘It was Yoko that changed me’
• 50. ‘I’m leaving the Beatles’
• 51. ‘A crutch for the world’s social lepers’
• 52. ‘Free means free’
• 53. ‘I might just as well have been a comedian’
• 54. ‘The radicalism was phoney’
• 55. ‘Imagine’ is anti-religious
• 56. ‘New York is at my speed’
• 57. ‘Don’t fuck with my ears’
• 58. ‘To finish off . . . we thought we’d do a number’
• 59. ‘If I began writing with Paul again’
• 60. ‘I’ve battled all the monsters’
• 61. ‘A second chance’
• 62. ‘Wanting to make music’
• 63. ‘Playing guitar and singing’
• 64. ‘I don’t believe in dead heroes’
• Illustrations Insert
• Afterword
• After John died what happened to . . .
• John Lennon’s best recordings
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Illustrations Insert
• Index
• Copyright