The Lives of John Lennon - Criticism

Criticism

Lennon's widow Yoko Ono threatened to sue for libel, claiming the book made her briefly consider suicide, but never pursued any legal action, later explaining that she wanted to maintain a positive attitude and that her lawyers had advised her a civil action would only draw more attention to the book.

Lennon's first wife Cynthia Lennon denounced the book, stating "Every single person was annihilated. My mother was called a bulldog and a domineering woman, which was nothing — nothing — like my mother. And he called me a spaniel. I thought, I'd rather be a spaniel than a Rottweiler, which is what he was."

Despite Goldman's praise of him in the book, Paul McCartney did not return the favor, and condemned Goldman's account of his old bandmate, telling fans and the press "Look, don't buy it." He also called it "a piece of trash" and claimed Goldman made up "any old bunch of lies he sees fit". Singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, whose friendship with Lennon peaked during his 1974 separation from Ono, told Rolling Stone that Goldman "got me drunk" while interviewing him, probing Nilsson for "dirt" about Lennon, and Nilsson would not cooperate. (Nilsson gets a chapter in the book, "Harry the Hustler", which credits him with having better confidence-man skills than singing talent.)

In Ray Coleman's Lennon: The Definitive Biography, there appears the following quote from The Beatles' record producer George Martin: "I think it is iniquitous that people can libel the dead. If John was alive, that book would not have come out. It is largely untrue, but, sadly, if mud is thrown it tends to stick." Martin also labeled the book as "codswallop".

Other celebrities who'd known Lennon personally, including Geraldo Rivera and Tom Snyder, also largely dismissed the book.

The October 20, 1988 issue of Rolling Stone lambasted the book in a lengthy and extensively-researched article by David Fricke and Jeffrey Ressner, "Imaginary Lennon". The reviewers described the book as "riddled with factual inaccuracies, embroidered accounts of true events that border on fiction and suspect information provided by tainted sources." Further, Fricke and Ressner stated that "Rolling Stone spoke to sources interviewed by Goldman who said that they were misquoted or that the information they provided him was used out of context. Other figures close to Lennon who refused to speak to Goldman or were not contacted by him claim that incidents in the book in which they appear either never happened or did not occur in the way Goldman recounts them." Among the factual errors listed by Rolling Stone:

• Guitarist Danny Forchnar denies Lennon ever bit him in the nose

• Goldman source Tony Monero denies Lennon ever told him to "Suck my cock!"

• Apple executive Tony King denies Lennon snorted cocaine before his 1974 concert appearance with Elton John

• Goldman incorrectly describes the Lennons' kitchen stove as match-lit when recounting an anecdote of Lennon trying to set Ono's hair on fire

• Goldman incorrectly describes the "Love Me Do" single as a 78 instead of a 45.

David Gates responded in Newsweek by reminding readers that a romantic vision of Lennon is just as much of a myth as Goldman's portrayal. Editor Jann Wenner is quoted as saying that the book "offended him at every level", suggesting that he as a personal friend of the Lennons had good reason to want to preserve an idealistic version of Lennon's life. However, by stating a number of easily researched facts, the article also exposes a number of Goldman's inaccuracies and concludes with a reminder that the best way to know Lennon is through his recordings. Gates noted in the article that Goldman presents no evidence for his claim that Lennon patronized male prostitutes in Thailand or that Lennon killed a sailor in Hamburg, and only secondhand hearsay for the tale of Lennon blaming himself for Stuart Sutcliffe's death.

Louis Menand in The New Republic described the sourcing of Goldman's book as "vague and unreliable". Menand wrote of Goldman's book that "The little things don't matter, of course, if the big things can be trusted. But the big things can't." Luc Sante, in New York Review of Books, said about the account of Lennon's consumption of LSD in the book: "Goldman's background research was either slovenly or nonexistent."

Goldman denounced the Rolling Stone article as "a farrago of groundless or insignificant charges designed to discredit my biography of John Lennon". He also mocked what he called "the stupidity of the magazine employees who were assigned the task of smearing me and my book", and concluded by saying that Sante was "a young man of no reputation in the field of popular culture." Sante good-naturedly replied that Goldman's tirade proved that the book was a gigantic, humorous "put-on".

Author Phillip Norman, whose own biography of Lennon (John Lennon: The Life) was published 20 years after The Lives of John Lennon, described Goldman's book as "malevolent" and "risibly ignorant".