The Magical Mystery Tool

The picture has nothing to do with the story below. So why is it here, you ask. Well, it's one of the cooler pictures that I've taken, that's why.



Till fairly recently, I was under the impression that just because a biographer has taken the pains to write down someone's life-story, it must all be true. Maybe having picked it up from the non-fiction section of the bookstore had a role in forming that seemingly innocuous but cunningly deceptive opinion. Moreover, if the object of a biographer's affections is not a popular personality, chances are you may have only one source to get all the lowdown on him or her.
But of course, not that having half a dozen bio epics written about someone is of any help either. Every author will claim that the meal he's cooked is closest to the truth. It's author A's word against author B's.
For the longest time, after having read Albert Goldman's "The Lives of John Lennon", I thought I knew enough about the Beatle-founder.
The picture Goldman paints of the Beatle chief is that of a neurotic caricature in a musician's clothing. He takes away the terribly sensitive humane side of John and replaces it with a pathos of vengeful hostility. Goldman says - look here's a man marinated in his own pride. He's this weak-willed, fearful, unnecessarily controversial, perpetually paranoid domestic despot who despises everyone in his house, including his own son, and prowls about in his ivory tower nude as a newborn.
Further, with such cogent insights that would baffle even the most dense lyric interpreter, Goldman says "Imagine" is actually a parody of the impossibility of the song's 'apparent' wishful thinking. He devotes a major chunk of his energies into proving that Lennon was a bit of a madcap posing as an avante-garde artist.
Oh and by the way, the malicious intentions of the author didn't occur to me at all while reading the book.
Only after reading Philip Norman's "Shout" did I find out that Lennon was quite normal. A genius nonetheless, but without those quasi-evil traits that Goldman was talking about.
In fact, Lennon had quit smoking, gone back into making music after a 2-year hiatus and was all set to start life afresh at 41. In his own words, "40 is the new 21".
The funny thing is, both Norman and Goldman don't get too far from each other while describing the events that happened on Lennon's last day on earth. Goldman's account shows a musician who had become so useless in his last days that his only concern was tucking his son in bed. Norman paints a man who for the sake of his wife's music career dons the hat of a househusband as well as an album producer.
Later I found out how Goldman had pulled a fast one on Yoko, making use of the widow's trust and hope for a sincere biography. In "Shout", when Norman confronts Yoko on why she hadn't denied those accusations thrown at her by Goldman, she says there were too many questions and that she couldn't have answered it all by herself. However, the evidence that Goldman had distorted the accounts of some close acquaintances of Lennon helped Yoko's case, and by extension, lent cerdibility to Norman's.

I was more inclined to believe in Norman's version.

Till Norman recently came out with a new book that claims Lennon was gay.