best john lennon biography book

Imagine: 12 Great Books About John Lennon

Writer & author

Thirty-five years ago, on December 8, 1980, John Lennon was murdered outside his Dakota apartment by Mark David Chapman. Lennon, a brilliant artist and complex man, was witty, ornery, and haunted, exploring his life through his art. Lennon remains an influential part of our culture. His song "Imagine" has become a timeless plea for peace.

Because his early life and half of his artistic career was so interwoven with the Beatles, I've included several biographies of the Beatles as well, which show the evolution of the group and the interactions of the members, especially the genius writing team of Lennon and Paul McCartney.

1. John Lennon: The Life Philip Norman

Norman, whose 1981 classic Shout! is considered the definitive biography of The Beatles, returns with John Lennon: The Life. It's an intimate look at the troubled genius who, with other Beatles members, changed the shape and sound of popular music. The book takes us from his early Liverpool days and childhood tragedies through the roller-coaster ride that was The Beatles. It studies his post-Beatles career, his turbulent marriage to Yoko Ono, his peace crusade, and his murder. Monitor critic Lorne Entress called it " wonderful unfolding of Lennon's life with all its talent, tenderness and tragedy."

2. The Making of John Lennon: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of the Beatles Francis Kenny

The author focuses on the question of what might have caused the downfall of one of the most brilliant musicians of the past century. Kenny emphasizes three main influences which helped shape Lennon's creative process and stayed with him throughout his life: his strong roots in his hometown of Liverpool; his troubled mental health; and a turbulent family background. Kenny explores how Lennon's troubles affected his relationship with the other Beatles, his family, the press and the public.

3. The Last Days of John Lennon: A Personal Memoir Frederic Seaman

Seaman was John Lennon's personal assistant, driver and companion from 1979 until his death. His memoir includes Lennon's virtual imprisonment in his apartment house, his obsession with food and sex, the Lennons' colossal shopping sprees, John and Yoko's fascination with the Occult, and John's premonition of his violent death.

4. Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon Robert Rosen

Written by one of the few people outside John Lennon's inner circle to have read his personal diaries, Nowhere Man is an intimate journey through Lennon's last years, taking us from his self-imposed seclusion to his re-entry into public life with the Double Fantasy album. The book focuses on the human side of a cultural icon as Lennon struggled to create a meaningful life in the spotlight of international fame. He was on the verge of a comeback when he was murdered. The book has become a cult classic in the U.S. and U.K.

5. John Cynthia Lennon

Cynthia Lennon, John's first wife, talks about their years together as a young couple, the sudden fame of the Beatles, John's drifting away from her and their son Julian, and of course, Yoko Ono, the ultimate game changer for Lennon and, to an extent, the Beatles themselves. "Only I know what really happened between us," Cynthia says, "why we stayed together, why we parted, and the price I have paid for being John's wife."

6. Imagine This Julia Baird

John Lennon's sister Julia steps forth with an inside look at the happy and troubled times of the Lennon family which includes strong, self-willed and selfish women who surrounded John as he grew up. John was taken from his mother at the age of 5 to live with his Aunt Mimi. Julia shows the cruelty of this decision to both mother and son. She sheds new light on John's upbringing with Mimi which is often at odds with the traditional story. When John was 17, his mother was killed when hit by a speeding car. The loss haunted him the rest of his life. This book gives us new and deep insights into Lennon's life and reveals the source of the artist's emotional fragility and musical genius.

7. John Lennon (Stories Behind the Songs) Paul Du Noyer

This book delves into the extraordinary solo work Lennon produced in his final decade, between the end of The Beatles in 1970 and his death in 1980. The exploration of his work provides insights into the man and artist.

8. John Lennon: The New York Years Bob Gruen

Bob Gruen first photographed Lennon in 1971 and became his personal photographer taking photos regularly over the next nine years. This book collects the most revealing of those images, taken during Lennon's years in New York, together with Gruen's reflections on the circumstances surrounding the photos, including John's relationship with Yoko, how he dealt with fame, and his experiences with fatherhood. The result is a new behind-the-scenes look at Lennon as a performer, artist, and person.

9. Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music Tim Riley

This biography explores Lennon from his childhood beginnings to his tragic end and draws on previously unseen or under-utilized materials, including the memoir of Lennon's father Alf, new records from the city of Liverpool, and fresh interviews with the Beatle's friends and enemies.

10. Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years Mark Lewisohn

Tune In is the first volume of All These Years by the world's leading Beatles historian, Mark Lewisohn. A decade in the making, it follows the band members from their childhoods through 1962 when their breakthrough -- and unexpected success -- was just days away. This book has been almost universally lauded as the most thorough (944 pages), riveting and accurate story of the Fab Four.

11. The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of the Beatles Peter Brown

Peter Brown was a close friend of and business manager for the band. This book tells the inside story of the music and the madness, the feuds and the drugs, the marriages and the affairs--from the greatest heights to the self-destructive depths of the Fab Four. It's one of the most comprehensive, revealing biographies of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Newsday called it "the most authoritative and candid look yet at the personal lives...of the oft-scrutinized group."

12. Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation Philip Norman

Philip Norman's biography of the Beatles is considered by many the definitive work on the world's most influential band. The updated edition charts the rise of four Liverpool lads from their wild, early days to the astonishing heights of Beatlemania. It describes the chaos of Apple and the collapse of idealism as the band heads for breakup. It also describes their struggle to escape the smothering Beatles' legacy and the deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison. It's witty, insightful, and moving.

For a more comprehensive list, see my blog 50 Great Books About the Beatles .

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(7 Fascinating Books) about John Lennon and his life

December 19, 2018 Cameron Musician Tips 0

In this article, you’ll discover 5 fascinating books about the incredible life John Lennon lead.

For a man once told he wouldn’t make a living out of a guitar (his mother when he was five)…..John certainly did that and so much more.

As one of the most influential people the world has ever known, John’s life is one of the most captivating stories you’ll ever hear.

He swayed the hearts of many with his music. Some even say he was more popular than Jesus. (He said this as well in an interview once, which caused quite a controversy)

Fun Fact: John was actually so influential that even Richard Nixon once went on a campaign to try and have him deported. The campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, but Richard did stoop low enough to even attack Lennon’s immigration status. Why did Richard Nixon want him deported? Because Nixon believed that he could get enough people to the polls to vote for the anti war movement.

There’s really so many truly fascinating things about Lennon, learning about his life is incredibly inspiring.

If you’re interested in Lennon’s life, you should find these 7books I chose interesting.

I’ve read a few of them, and the rest are ones I plan on getting soon. (I’ve got a lot to read at the moment,I’m kind of a bookaholic of sorts)

Many of these books have uncommon knowledge about Lennon’s life, it’s very interesting to get a peek behind the curtain into what it was like to be John.

1. John Lennon the life Phillip Norman

This book is probably the most popular, of all on the list.

With three years of full blown extensive research that went into this, Phillip Norman really went deep into johns life. He was given access to all sort of people and things in johns life, and because of this we’re now getting to see into johns life deeper than ever before.

It’s a really interesting read. Phillip’s writing style is like a breeze to follow along. So easy.

Out of all the people interviewed, and there were tons of interesting people interviewed such as Sean(his son), and Paul McCartney…..the most interesting interviews are definitely with his wife yoko ono.

She really doesn’t seem to want to leave anything out. She’s very open.

The book in general though is very open, they talk about absolutely everything you can think of about Lennon and so much more, it makes you wonder how someone could have this much going on in their life. Especially a life that was tragically cut short.

If you only want to get one book, this is probably the one to get.

Small note: This book is the best one to get if you don’t know much about what was going on politically around these times. The book goes into detail about the current events as well, which is helpful. 

(More Details and pricing on Amazon )

2. The John Lennon letters

This is simply a collection of letters John sent out to different people throughout his life.

Thankfully they were kept for this book, because these letters give a different type of insight into how Lennon thought and spoke to those he cared for.

There are 285 letters total, which show a very gentle side of Lennon.

These letters were very personal, and a lot of people find that them being published is wrong because of privacy issues. Honestly, that’s a whole subject that can be debated a ton of different ways. I feel however, that Lennon probably would’ve wanted people to read them if they got some good out of them. Lennon seemed to always want to make others around him happy. Then again, you never know.

This book will bring you on a roller coaster of emotions so be prepared. You will laugh, feel incredibly sad, and even angry reading these. I definitely recommend it. P.S. If you don’t feel like buying the book, you can find some letters online. They’re not annotated, but still pretty cool.

3. John Lennon the collected artwork

I understand this is not directly a book about John Lennon’s life, but do hear me out on this one.

This particular book gives insight into his life by showing some of his artwork to Ono, artwork that he gave to her to profess his love. The whole book has tons of different incredible pieces, that are definitely worth framing and do in fact show his character in an unexpected way.

Some things to note about the book however, is that this does not actually include all his artwork (even though there is a ton of artwork in there) but this is actually a large coffee table style book, which is very cool. This is a better way to admire art in my opinion than if they had put the art in a normal sized hardcover or paperback.

4. Can’t buy me love

This is probably the best book out there on the Beatles, and for this reason it’s a great read to get a different angle on the group.

A lot of the other books specifically about John Lennon will actually bash and be very biased against the rest of the Beatles. They’ll praise Lennon and acting as if he was basically all the group was.

This is honestly just ridiculous, but it’s definitely the angle that you’ll see in many of the biographies about John Lennon. So, this book gives a great unbiased look into Johns life while in the Beatles, it’s very well written and goes extremely in depth.

This book is also pretty funny and very enjoyable to read through, while at the same time giving tons of great information about the group and Lennon.

5. “John”  by Cynthia Lennon

This book almost reads as if his ex wife wrote it so she could give herself some therapy.

But, she did this in a positive way. You don’t find her bashing John at all. The story of her and John should really be the title, even though the book does tell about his early life and give insights to him.

This is honestly a guy wrenching book, you can tell she went through a lot of pain with this man.

In the end, the marriage between her and him probably was a complete mistake. It should’ve just never happened. Not one of those…………good while it lasted type situations. The perspective is very fresh coming from his first wife. Because of this it’s definitely very interesting and worth checking out.

6. Lennon the man the myth the music

Man was this book tough. I actually picked this up at a book sale(highly recommend you check these out, you can find tons of great books for a dollar or even less sometimes).

It’s written by a guy who is simply a wordsmith. It’s actually pretty good, even though it’s hard to read, I haven’t gotten through all of it, but there’s not as much being written about Lennon as much as it’s a book about analyzing the man, his behavior, his lyrics and some of the things happening in the world because of his behavior.

It’s a good read, but it’s very different than most biographies out there that’s for sure. If I was to summarize, it’s that the book is more about what’s going on around Lennon than Lennon himself. Even though it is talking about him as well, just not as much.

7. The last days of John Lennon: a personal memoir

This was written by johns personal assistant, and kind of seems to be trying to show a darker side of John.

You get to find out more about how John was interested in the occult, and how he over indulged in different things.

You find out about yokos battle with heroin, and the fights John and her had as a couple.

Honestly the book makes yoko out to not be a very great wife, and I honestly feel like seaman (the author and assistant) is really biased in this view. Other authors don’t bash her the way he seems to. Overly critical. Then again, that seems to be what he’s going for in the book, a critical view of Lennon and yoko.

Personally, I’d say he just doesn’t like Yoko because she did charge him with stealing Lennon’s diaries. (Which he served probation for but swears he is innocent). Anyways, if you’re looking for something a bit more critical of Lennon’s life, this is probably your best bet.

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• The Beatles

3 Books Every John Lennon Fan Should Read

by Lorie Liebig October 15, 2023, 2:00 pm

As one-fourth of the Beatles , John Lennon became a household name during the early 1960s. As their style and sound as a band changed through the years, the innovative singer/songwriter and guitarist evolved as well. He shed his clean-cut image and embraced the counterculture, ignoring social norms and leaning into activism.

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[RELATED: 3 Songs You Didn’t Know John Lennon and Yoko Ono Wrote Together]

During the 1970s, he focused on his own art, creating avant-garde albums that both captivated and confused many listeners. Alongside Yoko Ono , he pushed musical boundaries with projects like the two-disc LP Double Fantasy , which would become his final full-length project.

It’s been over 40 years since Lennon was murdered outside his New York City apartment, but many fans still want to know more about his life and career. From a surprising collection of creative works to a revealing biography, here are three John Lennon books every music fan should read.

1. John Lennon: The Life

Author Philip Norman doesn’t cut any corners when it comes to his examination of Lennon. Through more than 800 pages, John Lennon: The Life relays many surprising truths about the influential artist. From his relationships to views on spirituality and fame, readers get an intimate look into who Lennon really was in everyday life.

2. In His Own Write

In 1964, Lennon released this unconventional book of works in the midst of the Beatles’ rise to superstardom. A quick read, In His Own Write is a chaotic, humor-infused collection of writings and illustrations created by Lennon. Although it’s a much different type of release than the other two entries on this list, In His Own Write offers a captivating look into Lennon’s creative psyche.

Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia, revealed the truth about their often tumultuous relationship in her 2012 book  John . This enthralling read reflects on their early years together and the many challenges she faced while navigating their marriage. She offers painfully honest details of Lennon’s crueler moments, including his relationship with Yoko Ono, which led to an estranged relationship with Cynthia and their son, Julien.

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5 best books about John Lennon

John lennon , killed by a gunman 31 years ago this week, was the subject for many biographers before and after his death. here are a few of the best books about the beatle we will never forget., 1. 'lennon: the man, the myth, the music,' by tim riley.

December 9, 2011

• By Monitor Staff

This recent biography by Tim Riley explores Lennon from his childhood beginnings to his tragic end and draws on previously unseen or under-utilized materials, including the memoir of Lennon's father Alf, new records from the city of Liverpool , and fresh interviews with the Beatle's friends and enemies. "I think [Lennon] was an enigma to himself," Riley said in an interview with Monitor Books editor Marjorie Kehe . "He was very mercurical, felt differently on different days ... as reflected through his writing, he is really deeply fascinating and quite unknowable."

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ISBN: 006075401X

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John Lennon: The Life

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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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

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John Lennon was born eighty years ago today! Tragically, the brilliant artist was murdered when he was only forty. At the time of his death, he was working on rekindling his music career after a five-year hiatus to care for his young son. Here are seven little known facts about him.

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10 Best Beatles Books

By Colin Fleming

Colin Fleming

Considering that it takes some formidable organizational chops to serve as a competent  Beatles bibliographer, it can be downright daunting if you’re coming to the stacks of Fab Four literature as a neophyte reader wondering where you might start. For those are some buckling shelves, filled with worthy tomes, arresting diversions, gossipy trivia and dense accounts of what kind of gear the band used, who their tailors were, how many times per annum they visited the dentist, etc.

Romantic other-halves have weighed in on the story/saga side of things; ditto competing rivals, A&R men, siblings, business associates, sacked partners. There is a lot of dross. But considering that we’re talking hundreds of books, there are some top-drawer offerings as well.

Philip Norman is an old hand with Beatles-based scholarship, and his massive bio, Paul McCartney: The Life , provides a nice opportunity to survey those shelves of Beatles lit. Here’s a look at 10 of the other best Fab Four volumes to check out.

‘The Beatles, Lennon and Me,’ by Pete Shotton

The standard Beatles history posits the star-crossed Stuart Sutcliffe as John Lennon’s best friend, until his tragic death in 1962, whereupon Paul McCartney became Lennon’s chief mate, but Pete Shotton better fit the bill. He was there first, romping with Lennon as schoolboy tearaways, and in on all the things that boys do with each other: lots of circle jerks, incidentally, in this candid, and very Northern memoir. Lennon later bought Shotton a supermarket, and the latter was awfully adept at telling Lennon when the rocker was full of shit, which was often enough. Bracing, ribald and infused with love.

[ Find It Here ]

‘The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away,’ by Allan Williams

Williams is the titular figure, and you never have to sweat how good he is, how bright, how canny, etc., because he’s always there to tell you. He was the band’s first manager when, in his words, no one would go near them with a barge pole, Not a lot of people can boast like Williams does and still come off as a likable person, but that’s Williams: avuncular, shady as all hell, but earnest, like some comic-relief character from a Fielding novel who steals an early chapter or two. He loses out on future riches, naturally, but the dude keeps coming back, and even plays his role in the bartering of the wildly under-appreciated Star Club tapes.

‘Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Beatles,’ by Geoff Emerick

Beatles producer George Martin has a nice little remembrance called All You Need Is Ears , but it was his mid-1960s engineer Geoff Emerick who shot past him in the post-career Beatle book game. Emerick was integral to the sounds of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper – he is, in his way, as responsible for McCartney’s bass tone at the time as the bassist himself – and the band’s sonic palette was never richer. Here he tells you how many of those sounds came to be at Abbey Road, and what might have been a dry accounting for gearheads pulses with “damn, I didn’t know that!” narrative glee.

‘Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation,’ by Philip Norman

The knock on this Philip Norman bio has always been that he looks down on his subjects, but the author’s honesty is admirable. In fact, the most compelling Beatles books tend to be the ones that you can have a mental punch-up over, disagreeing with a given taken, but enjoying it all the same because it makes you think, or sends you back to reevaluate something. Norman puts his readers through these enjoyable paces, and he also nails the Hamburg period better than anyone. If you want the spirit of the Beatles hustling and grinding on the Reeperbahn, trying like madmen – and pilled up, desperate, manic madmen – to get somewhere, get good, get better than everyone else so as to give the world that eventual fist pump of being the best, you come to this book.

[Find It Here]

‘The Beatles: The Authorized Biography,’ by Hunter Davies

The volume many people think of – erroneously – as the first Beatles book set a high standard with its frankness. Released in 1968, The Beatles was the only place, for a long time, you could get examples of the correspondence between John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe. Consider these lines from a poem Lennon sent his friend: “I can’t remember anything/Without a sadness/So deep that it hardly/Becomes known to me.” That is Fitzgerald “dark night of the soul” territory, and it comes from a time when few people would have thought the Beatles anything but louts. Don’t be put off by the authorized-access element – clearly these were guys who needed to unburden themselves of some truths they’d been toting around for the bulk of a decade, and they pile up here.

‘Lennon Remembers,’ by Jann S. Wenner

The Beatles have just ended, and Rolling Stone founder Wenner  sits down with Lennon for a confessional that doubles as harsh attack, soul purging, study in how songs came to be, and, in the end, a kind of lament for something that was the defining journey of a life, which would never come close to being replicated. Lennon is more hurt than angry, one senses, as he lobs stones at the stained-glass windows of Beatledom.

Ironically, for all of the bashing, the book presents McCartney as the Beatles’ most talented member, reflecting a respect that Lennon clearly feels. He tells you – not always correctly — who wrote what, song-wise. But beyond the hurt feelings and foggy memories is a clarity of thought that emerges almost despite the man himself. As he says: “And the thing about rock and roll, good rock and roll, whatever good means, etc., ha-ha, and all that shit, is that it’s real. And realism gets through to you, despite yourself. You recognize something in it which is true, like all true art.” Hear, hear.

‘The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions,’ by Mark Lewisohn

You wouldn’t think you’d be able to turn what’s basically a log book of every Beatles session at EMI studios – running down who the producer was, who the engineer was, what songs, backing tracks or overdubs were put on tape – into a page-turning wonder, but so it goes here. Lewisohn, whose gargantuan Tune In – the first of a three-volume Beatles series – came out a few years ago, has never been good at discussing why a song functions as well or not as well as it does, but he does have a knack for situating you in a spot. Reading Recording Sessions , you practically find yourself sitting in the studio as the band start up the next take. This was also the first time readers got a sense for the treasures locked away at Abbey Road, the gems that would surface on a lot of bootlegs that further changed how one understood the band.

‘The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles,’ by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines

The scandalous choice. This 1983 gossip orgy was a huge seller, and it brought the dirt, thanks to Brian Epstein assistant Peter Brown. Is it akin to Gibbon? No – it’s very clickbait-y, paperback-style, but it does capture the spirit of the Beatles as a unit, and as individuals, like little ever has. You might even say as well as the Beatles themselves did on their own. The band possessed a strange alchemy in that there was something about them, and their music, that fostered works not by them but which were very Beatlesque works nonetheless. The Yellow Submarine film is another example. Reading The Love You Make feels, at times, illicit, and if a book can give you a contact high, this would be it.

‘Revolution in the Head,’ by Ian MacDonald

Woe that MacDonald didn’t write more – he committed suicide in 2003 – but this is a major work quite apart from the Beatles book repository. He takes on every song, and some sacred cows are off to that processing plant never to return home again. One wonders how such eviscerations would be greeted in the Internet age. MacDonald has no problem telling you he thinks some beloved work sucks – like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” – which is fine, but what is better is that he backs it up. Do you have to agree? Hell no. We’re not here to agree, we’re here for an experience: to think, to challenge old saws, to see, too, things we loved anew, and better. That teacher who changed your life when you were a kid was not the one who dispensed the easy A’s, but rather the one who made you work, and MacDonald is a tough grader. This is the Beatles book to read a dozen times. Every pass through brings something new. Also, while the critical reputation of Sgt. Pepper has been eclipsed in recent years by Revolver , Rubber Soul , and Abbey Road – with the White Album and A Hard Day’s Night making progress, too – MacDonald just flat out gets that album better than any other writer on record. Even when he’s panning individual parts of it, he knows, and he helps you know, how the totality is something else entirely, and that this is one of the key documents of Western Civilization.

‘Love Me Do! The Beatles’ Progress,’ by Michael Braun

The first, and what I’d maintain as the best, Beatles book is one even most Beatles fans are unaware of. Hasn’t helped that it tends to dip out of print, but this is as close to a Beatles ride-along as you’ll get, with American writer Michael Braun following the band at the end of 1963 and into the early phases of the U.S. invasion the following year. Lennon himself, in the Wenner book, singled out this one as better than the Davies, a true book that portrayed them as they were: as bastards, in his word. And, yeah, there’s some of that. They make cracks at the expense of Jews, the disabled, gays. A lot of it is in a blow-off-steam kind of way, and Braun does a compelling job of conveying the non-stop pressure the group was under. In some ways they can’t handle it, and sleep away huge amounts of time; in other ways, they do what they do, and write songs no one else could touch. The Beatle wit is depicted better here than in any other book, and if the four, and their patter, were in effect a hermetically sealed entity so designed as to better take on the world, this is your chance to crack the fold.

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These Are the Best Beatles Books

By Stephen Thomas Erlewine

In the decades since the Beatles ’ 1970 breakup, the group’s rise and fall has been told as a myth. It’s also been told via children’s story, salacious gossip, dry history, detailed diaries, technical manuals, cartoons, and graphic novels. There are volumes dedicated to their recording equipment, encyclopedias chronicling all of the music and film the group has yet to release, collections of the photos from before they were stars—basically, if you can think of an idea related to John Lennon ,  Paul McCartney , George Harrison , and Ringo Starr , it’s been published. This constant trickle of books can overwhelm even steadfast Beatlemaniacs, but the greatness of the music has also drawn out greatness within authors. The best books about the Beatles rank among the best pop culture writing—and criticism—ever.

Along with the band’s massive, lasting influence on music, their narrative has a clean, dramatic arc, separated into three distinct acts, each of which is worthy of deep exploration. While there are certainly more than 10 worthy books about the group, the following volumes provide the foundation of any Beatles library. These titles offer richly reported history, incisive critical analysis, detailed accounts of the quartet at work, and insider accounts that humanize a band who are still often seen as larger-than-life caricatures. Reading any one of these books will provide insight into a phenomenon that’s often thought of only in the broadest terms. Reading all 10 will illustrate why their myth only grows stronger over the years: Their story is always the same, yet always different.

The Best Overall Introduction

Shout! was first published 11 years after the Beatles split and, more importantly, a year after the assassination of John Lennon, during a period when conventional wisdom began to settle. Author Philip Norman received no direct input from any of the four Beatles for the book, so he relied on research and first-person interviews with people who operated in their orbit, all of whom were ready to settle scores while keeping the fires of the Beatles’ myth alight. This perspective distinguishes the swift, thorough, and entertaining Shout! over its only other single-volume bio competitor, Hunter Davies’ official 1968 account, The Beatles , and helps place the quartet’s mercurial ’60s output in the context of that tumultuous decade.

The Definitive Origin Story

Tune In —the first (and, to date, only) installment in a planned three-part biography from eminent Beatles scholar Mark Lewisohn—is the opposite of Shout! Where Norman’s book moves at a rapid clip, Lewisohn intentionally recreates the rise of the Beatles at a pace so unhurried, it gives the illusion that events are unfolding in real time. Perhaps such deliberateness is the inexorable result of a lifetime spent researching the Beatles, but the remarkable achievement of Tune In is how it makes the group’s first act, which runs from before the band’s formation until the end of 1962, seem like their most exciting era.

All of this is due to to Lewisohn’s decision to start his research from scratch. In doing so, he finds that printing the legend has obscured the truth: Such worn stories like Decca Records refusing to sign the Beatles, how George Martin received his assignment to produce the group, and John choosing which parent to live with simply didn’t happen the way scores of books say they did. These revelations, combined with Lewisohn’s knack at illustrating how the Beatles’ rise was not inevitable—time and time again, they hit limits on their respective circuits, and Lennon and McCartney went years without writing originals—gives Tune In a corrective punch. If Lewisohn never completes the other two volumes, at least he set the record straight for what is perhaps the murkiest period of the Beatles.

The Tales Behind Every Song

Granted unprecedented access to Abbey Road’s vaults and tape logs, Mark Lewisohn wrote The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions as a sequel to The Beatles Live! , a chronicle of all the concerts the Fabs played. That 1986 book splits the difference between fan service and scholarship, but The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions transcends such distinctions by providing a riveting day-by-day account of how the Beatles created their art. Alternate takes are examined in detail, along with overdubs and unreleased songs, many of which wouldn’t make it out of the Abbey Road vaults until the ’90s release of the multi-part Anthology , if ever. Lewisohn’s skills as a documentarian give this book an enthralling narrative: The songs take shape in print as he precisely details them.

The Critical Analysis

With  Revolution in the Head , Ian MacDonald breaks down every song the Beatles ever released, placing each one within its cultural context while sussing out the motivations behind both compositions and covers. As a critic, MacDonald is exacting and not overly generous: He’s quick to dismiss songs he deems as throwaways, sometimes ascribing emotional attributes to the Beatles that aren’t entirely supported by the text. But these critiques hardly diminish the massive achievement of  Revolution in the Head , nor its influence. It’s a sober, compelling read that frequently questions deeply cherished beliefs, a book that lives inside the head as much as it does on the page.

The Official Story (According to Paul)

After years of being painted as the soft, fuzzy one in the Beatles, Paul McCartney took part in this biography written by his longtime friend Barry Miles. It relies on never-before-published interviews between the two mates and, given this tight relationship, Many Years From Now is as close to a McCartney autobiography as we’re likely to get.

It’s fascinating—and revealing—that the bulk of this weighty book is focused on the life of the mind. McCartney isn’t as interested with the old tales as he is with getting proper credit for his achievements, so Miles devotes most of his lengthy tome to Paul’s insights on nearly every composition he penned in the ’60s and, tellingly, the narrative comes to a close when the Beatles do. Consequentially, the book reads like a necessary corrective: It smashes the stereotype that Paul was merely a pop star by establishing his avant-garde credentials, a move that illustrates just how complicated the creative team of Lennon/McCartney really was.

What Beatlemania Was Really Like

Published during the waning days of Beatlemania, Love Me Do! is the definitive document of what the Beatles meant during their popular peak. Embedded with the band between the release of Please Please Me and the filming of A Hard Day’s Night , the American journalist Michael Braun reported the sensation around the Beatles with a fond detachment. He was open to their charms but cognizant of their flaws—neither of which the Beatles disguised, because their success was so sudden and they’d yet to develop their guard. As such, Love Me Do! captures how the Beatles really were during this heady time: They spiked their Cokes with Scotch, they flexed their muscles, while John admitted the avant-garde bored him, and Paul puzzled out the meaning of Fellini. Braun nails the personalities of all four of the Fabs while also capturing the chaos surrounding them, and that makes Love Me Do! the rarest of things: an act of snap journalism that transcends its time.

The Insider Account

Derek Taylor was one of the great non-musical figures of ’60s rock’n’roll. He served as the Beatles press agent twice, once during Beatlemania and once after the 1967 death of the band’s manager, Brian Epstein—before returning to helm the press office of Apple Corps, the doomed multimedia conglomerate the band established in 1968. He also spent the middle of the Swinging Sixties in California, where he worked with the Byrds, organized the Monterey Pop Festival, and was unsuccessfully wooed by Hollywood icon Mae West. Taylor attracted these luminaries because he was there during the heat of Beatlemania, but the wondrous thing about his memoir, As Time Goes By , is how he’s as much an observer as he is a participant in the chaos. Already in his 30s when he discovered the Beatles, Taylor’s life was transformed by the Fabs, yet he never considered them gods. His weariness with the group sometimes seeps through—at one point, he claims he never hated another person like a he hated Paul in 1968—but that’s why the book still crackles. It was written in 1973, when the group were all alive and all thorns in his side, but he was keen to capture just how wondrous their moment in time was. 

The Ultimate Hanger-On Tells All

He was called the “House Hippie” when he worked at Apple Corps between 1968 and 1970, and for good reason. Richard DiLello was a Californian refugee who was Derek Taylor’s deputy, clipping press notices and participating in flights of fancy, such as scouring London to find a giant barrel to house bushels of apples to add flair to a promo party. Ultimately, he was a fly on the wall for the madness of Apple Records in the late ’60s—a neverending million dollar bash he dubbed the “Longest Cocktail Party.”

Published a year before  As Time Goes By , this book sometimes seems to be in dialogue with its companion—DiLello’s affection for Taylor is apparent on every page—but where Taylor was an equal to the Fabs, the House Hippie was a lucky hanger-on who got to witness the disintegration of the Beatles.  The Longest Cocktail Party  captures the rapid collapse of Apple Corps, as DiLello gives PR cover for John and Yoko’s increasingly elaborate art stunts, champions a completely forgotten band named White Trash, skips gingerly around the Hells Angels invited (and subsequently discarded) by George Harrison, then navigates the sudden changes when Allen Klein—the American music mogul and impresario who every Beatle but Paul hired as a manager in 1969—decided to turn the flailing vanity project into a business. Swift, swinging, and alive, it’s by far the funniest Beatles book out there.

The Dramatic Afterlife

Peter Doggett begins You Never Give Me Your Money where most Beatles books end: when the group began to splinter in the wake of Brian Epstein’s death in 1967. It’s an inspired move. The Beatles may have ceased to function as a band in 1970, but John, Paul, George, and Ringo began to drift apart much earlier than that. And ever since, despite a lack of new Beatle music and a surplus of lawsuits—not to mention the deaths of Lennon and Harrison—that perpetual dysfunction has remained a constant undercurrent driving the group’s afterlife.

You Never Give Me Your Money traces the tangled personal and professional relationships of the Beatles all the way through to the 21st century. Doggett focuses on the business, never losing sight of how the Beatles turned into a corporation long before they stopped playing as a band. There may be some gossip lurking in these pages, but the real excitement comes from the revelations of how lawsuits and record contracts affected both the Beatles legacy and the solo careers of all four musicians: witness how each member received royalties from the solo albums of their former bandmates until the mid-’70s, at which point Paul becomes the biggest individual star of the group, tipping the financial balance decidedly in his favor. As these grimy economic particulars constitute largely unexplored territory in Beatles books, You Never Give Me Your Money is riveting in a unique way, as Doggett’s clean and lucid style turns courtroom battles and petty grievances into high drama.

The Contemporary Reevaluation

Nearly every book about the Beatles is a historical document of some sort, attempting to capture the group within the confines of the ’60s. Rob Sheffield turns this concept on its head with Dreaming the Beatles , choosing instead to interpret what they meant as an evolving cultural institution in the decades following their breakup.

This isn’t to say Sheffield dismisses history. As a music critic who grew up with the Beatles as a constant in his life, he’s absorbed countless books and articles about the band, which frees him to draw fresh, surprising insights about their music, including the stacks of records the Fab Four released as solo artists. The thrill of Dreaming the Beatles is discovering how Sheffield finds all the good and not-so-good of McCartney within “So Bad,” a forgotten single from 1983—a conclusion that demonstrates not just the author’s depth of knowledge, but how the Beatles are no longer anchored to history. Here, Paul’s solo recordings are in dialogue with the music he made as a Beatle, as well as the music George, John, and Ringo made on their own, and we, as an audience, hear it as a collective piece, too. Dreaming the Beatles is the only book to acknowledge this interconnectivity and it’s also filled with sharp criticism that challenges conventional wisdom. Once you know the history by heart, this is the place to understand what the Beatles mean now.

By Jazz Monroe

By Andy Cush

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Top 10 books about the Beatles

Paul McCartney’s biographer picks out the best work in a field that has often been marked by ‘leaden paragraphs overstuffed with show-offy facts’

W riting about the Beatles has saddled me with two heavy burdens. The first is that almost everyone considers themselves an expert on what the band’s publicist Derek Taylor called “the 20th century’s greatest romance”. I’ve noticed that many of these self-appointed sages hate to hear something about the subject that they don’t already know. My new biography of Paul McCartney was full of revelations about his life, in and after the Beatles, yet from many quarters still brought that resentful chorus of “nothing new here”.

The second, long-term burden is becoming classified as a “rock biographer”. In Britain, writing about rock music still isn’t really taken seriously – and, by and large, doesn’t deserve to be. In the US, by contrast, it’s taken far too seriously, with the earnest, plodding pair Greil Marcus and Peter Guralnick vying for supremacy in the field. To me, their combined surnames suggests a new verb, “to greilnick” – ie churn out leaden paragraphs overstuffed with show-offy facts, yet be unable to create a compelling narrative or convey character or atmosphere.

In listing my top 10 Beatles books, I’ve omitted most of the best-known “full” biographies. One reason is that they’re often by American authors who combine greilnicking with laughable ignorance of British culture. (In Bob Spitz’s the Beatles, for example, teenage John Lennon learns of his mother Julia’s tragic death from police arriving by “squadcar”, whereas in late-50s Liverpool it would just have been a lone copper on a bike.) Most of my choices are peripheral works, illuminating a specific era or personality.

When I embarked on Shout! – my Beatles biography – in the late 70s, friends and journalistic colleagues told me I was mad; there was nothing more to know. Indeed, at the beginning I was almost embarrassed to mention the B-word, saying instead I was writing about popular culture in the 60s. How different from today, when the appetite for Fab Four trivia seems inexhaustible. If I proposed a book of Ringo’s collected laundry lists, publishers would form a queue.

1. Love Me Do: The Beatles’ Progress by Michael Braun Braun was a 27-year-old New Yorker working in London, who presciently joined the Beatles’ 1963-64 British tour and so was on hand for their first breakthrough in the US with I Want to Hold Your Hand . Though American, he was no greilnicker but a gifted reporter whose fly-on-the-wall account prefigured many later scenes in A Hard Day’s Night. Braun paid a high price for this amazing access: John later admitted the Beatles had been “bastards” to him and photographer Dezo Hoffman remembered them throwing him a lamb chop from a room-service trolley “as if he was a dog”. 2. Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles An authorised biography. Formerly known simply as “Miles”, the author was a co-founder of Indica, the art gallery and bookshop that became the epicentre of London’s underground scene in the mid-60s (and where John famously met Yoko Ono). Initially, Paul intended the book to deal solely with his “London years”, proving how he, not John, was the first to explore the avant garde, but Miles convinced him to include his childhood as well. The result is part-biography, part-autobiography, with long, fascinating first-person reminiscences by its subject. But there’s little about his marriage to Linda and nothing about their much-criticised career in Wings.

3. Daddy Come Home by Pauline Lennon John grew up believing that his father, Freddy, a ship’s steward, had deserted his wife and child when John was a toddler. That feeling of abandonment continued to haunt him even as a Beatle, finally erupting in an anguished shriek of “Daddy, come home!” on the first Plastic Ono Band album. Having reappeared in John’s life in the mid-60s, 54-year-old Freddy astonished everyone by marrying 19-year-old university student Pauline Jones, with whom he had two further children. Jones’s memoir casts him in a more sympathetic – and believable – light.

4. The Longest Cocktail Party by Richard DiLello One of many American flower children who washed up in London in the late 60s, DiLello became Apple’s “house hippy”. His sharp-eyed account runs from the early days, when the Beatles’ business was plundered by con artists and freeloaders, to the arrival of Allen Klein and the reign of terror that followed. Along the way, he assists in ticklish PR projects like promoting John and Yoko’s film Self-Portrait. When this extended study of the Lennon penis is boycotted by conventional reviewers, Yoko comments that “the critics wouldn’t touch it”.

5. Magical Mystery Tours: My Life With the Beatles by Tony Bramwell Bramwell was one of the many babies delivered by Paul’s midwife mother, Mary; his house was on George’s round as a butcher’s delivery boy. As the Beatles grew more famous on Merseyside, long before they had roadies, he’d carry their guitars into gigs, becoming so ubiquitous that John nicknamed him “Measles”. His rollicking autobiography describes how he worked for Brian Epstein’s NEMS company, became an indispensable aide to Paul in particular – witness to the very moment that he fell in love with Linda – and later successively head of Apple Films and Apple Records.

6. Lennon Remembers by Jann S Wenner The full text of a marathon interview John gave to Rolling Stone’s co-founder in 1970, just as the band’s breakup was moving into its final chaotic phase. Like an extension of the therapy he was undergoing, it pours out John’s frustration during years straitjacketed by the Beatles’ image and his bitterness at media attacks on Yoko. It swipes at George and Paul even downgrades the Beatles’ incomparable producer George Martin to a mere “translator”. “What was all that shit about, John,” Martin finally got the chance to ask just a few months before Lennon’s murder in 1980. The reply?: “Out of me head, wasn’t I?”

7. The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away by Allan Williams In later years, Williams competed with Pete Best as the worst case of what I call “Liverpool eyes” – the tragic gaze of those left behind when the Beatles conquered the world. His coffee bar, the Jacaranda, was the favourite hangout for a band he initially termed “a right load of layabouts”. He nonetheless got them their first work in Hamburg, driving them there in his own beaten-up van. But after they’d avoided paying his commission, he let Brian Epstein take over. This book, ghosted by Daily Mirror journalist William Marshall, has the authentic reek of Liverpool back alleys circa 1961.

8. All You Need Is Ears by George Martin The first of the much-mourned Sir George’s two autobiographies, describing the career path – studying oboe at the Guildhall School of Music, producing classical music and comedy records by the Goons and Peter Sellers – that seemed least likely to lead to the greatest pop act of all time. And how that left him uniquely qualified him to help Lennon and McCartney to their undreamed heights.

9. As Time Goes By by Derek Taylor Though Taylor started as a journalist, his unique wit was too subtle to work in cold print. This is mainly a collection of music-press articles written between his two stints as the Beatles’ press officer when, as he recalled, “I was a Hollywood character, which is easy if you’re a murderer or a twat or know a line of Keats”. One piece of reportage captures the authentic Derek tone in a classic instance of Paul’s readiness to perform anywhere. Driving down from the north on a golden summer’s evening in 1968, they followed a signpost to a village called Harrold simply because they liked the name. Thrilled by this whimsical visit, the villagers laid on a sumptuous cold supper, then they all adjourned to the pub where Paul sat down at the piano for a first sneak preview of Hey Jude.

10. The Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman Included as a masterclass in how not to write a biography of a pop star – or anyone else. Firstly, for its blitz of untruths (John is portrayed as a schizophrenic, epileptic, autistic, bisexual killer and wife-beater) which often contradict one another. Secondly, for its ludicrous ignorance (to take just one random instance, the British police are said to wear “balaclava helmets”). Thirdly, for the sheer futility of writing an 800-plus book about a musician – and a music – its author despises. Even if the subject is a monster (which John wasn’t) your first duty as a biographer is to love your monster.

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John Lennon

Famed singer-songwriter John Lennon founded the Beatles, a band that impacted the popular music scene like no other.

(1940-1980)

Who Was John Lennon?

John Winston Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, during a German air raid in World War II.

When he was four years old, Lennon's parents separated and he ended up living with his Aunt Mimi. Lennon's father was a merchant seaman. He was not present at his son's birth and did not see a lot of his son when he was young.

Lennon's mother, Julia, remarried but visited him and Mimi regularly. She taught Lennon how to play the banjo and the piano and purchased his first guitar. Lennon was devastated when Julia was fatally struck by a car driven by an off-duty police officer in July 1958. Her death was one of the most traumatic events in his life.

As a child, Lennon was a prankster and he enjoyed getting into trouble. As a boy and young adult, he enjoyed drawing grotesque figures and cripples. Lennon's school master thought that he could go to an art school for college since he did not get good grades in school but had artistic talent.

Forming the Beatles

Elvis Presley 's explosion onto the rock music scene inspired a 16-year-old Lennon to create the skiffle band called the Quarry Men, named after his school. Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church fete on July 6, 1957. He soon invited McCartney to join the group, and the two eventually formed one of the most successful songwriting partnerships in musical history.

McCartney introduced George Harrison to Lennon the following year, and Harrison and art college buddy Stuart Sutcliffe also joined Lennon's band. Always in need of a drummer, the group finally settled on Pete Best in 1960.

The first recording they made was Buddy Holly 's "That'll Be the Day" in 1958. In fact, it was Holly's group, the Crickets, that inspired the band to change its name. Lennon would later joke that he had a vision when he was 12 years old — a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, "From this day on, you are Beatles with an 'A.'"

The Beatles were discovered by Brian Epstein in 1961 at Liverpool's Cavern Club, where they were performing on a regular basis. As their new manager, Epstein secured a record contract with EMI. With a new drummer, Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey), and George Martin as a producer, the group released their first single, "Love Me Do," in October 1962. It peaked on the British charts at No. 17.

Lennon wrote the group's follow-up single, "Please Please Me," inspired primarily by Roy Orbison , but also fed by Lennon's infatuation with the pun in Bing Crosby 's famous lyrics, "Oh, please, lend your little ears to my pleas," from the song "Please." The Beatles' "Please Please Me" topped the charts in Britain. The Beatles went on to become the most popular band in Britain with the release of such mega-hits as "She Loves You" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand."

Lennon married Cynthia Powell in August 1962. The couple had one son together, Julian, who was named after Lennon's mother. Cynthia was forced to keep a very low profile during Beatlemania. She and Lennon divorced in 1968. He remarried the following year, on March 20, 1969, to Japanese avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, whom he had met at the Indica Gallery in November 1966.

Beatlemania

In 1964, the Beatles became the first British band to break out big in the United States, beginning with their appearance on television's The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. Beatlemania launched a "British Invasion" of rock bands in the United States that also included the Rolling Stones and the Kinks. Following their appearance on Sullivan , the Beatles returned to Britain to film their first film, A Hard Day's Night (1964), and prepare for their first world tour.

The Beatles' second film, Help! , was released in 1965. That June, Queen Elizabeth II announced that the Beatles would be named a Member of the Order of the British Empire. In August 1965, the foursome performed to 55,600 fans at New York's Shea Stadium, setting a new record for largest concert audience in musical history. When the Beatles returned to England, they recorded the breakthrough album Rubber Soul (1965), noted for extending beyond the love songs and pop formulas for which the band was previously well-known.

The magic of Beatlemania had begun to lose its appeal by 1966. The band members' lives were put in danger when they were accused of snubbing the presidential family in the Philippines. Then, Lennon's remark that the band was "more popular than Jesus now" incited denunciations and Beatles record bonfires in the U.S. Bible belt. The Beatles gave up touring after an August 29, 1966, concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park.

After an extended break, the band returned to the studio to expand their experimental sound with drug-influenced exotic instrumentation/lyrics and tape abstractions. The first sample was the single "Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever," followed by the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), considered by many to be the greatest rock project in musical history.

The Beatles Break Up

The Beatles then suffered a huge blow when Epstein died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills on August 27, 1967. Shaken by Epstein's death, the Beatles retrenched under McCartney's leadership in the fall and filmed Magical Mystery Tour . While the film was panned by critics, the soundtrack album contained Lennon's "I Am The Walrus," the group's most cryptic work yet.

Magical Mystery Tour failed to achieve much commercial success, and the Beatles retreated into Transcendental Meditation and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which took them to India for two months in early 1968. Their next effort, Apple Corps Ltd., was plagued by mismanagement. That July, the group faced its last notably hysterical crowd at the premiere of their film Yellow Submarine . In November 1968, the Beatles' double-album The Beatles (also known as The White Album ) displayed their divergent directions.

By this time, Lennon's artist partnership with second wife Ono had begun to cause serious tensions within the group. Lennon and Ono invented a form of peace protest by staying in bed while being filmed and interviewed, and their single "Give Peace a Chance" (1969), recorded under the name "the Plastic Ono Band," became a national anthem of sorts for pacifists.

Lennon left the Beatles in September 1969, just after the group completed recording Abbey Road. The news of the break-up was kept secret until McCartney announced his departure in April 1970, a month before the band released Let It Be , recorded just before Abbey Road.

Solo Career: 'Imagine' Album

Not long after the Beatles broke up, in 1970, Lennon released his debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band , featuring a raw, minimalist sound that followed "primal-scream" therapy. He followed that project with 1971's Imagine , the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed of all Lennon's post-Beatles efforts. The title track was later named No. 3 on Rolling Stone magazine's "All-Time Best Songs" list.

Peace and love, however, was not always on Lennon's agenda. Imagine also included the track "How Do You Sleep?," a vehement response to veiled messages at Lennon in some of McCartney's solo recordings. The friends and former songwriting duo later buried the hatchet, but never formally worked together again.

Lennon and Ono moved to the United States in September 1971, but were constantly threatened with deportation by the Nixon Administration. Lennon was told that he was being kicked out of the country due to his 1968 marijuana conviction in Britain, but the singer believed that he was being removed because of his activism against the unpopular Vietnam War. Documents later proved him correct. (Two years after Nixon resigned, in 1976, Lennon was granted permanent U.S. residency.)

In 1972, while battling to stay in America, Lennon performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City to benefit mentally handicapped children and continued to promote peace. His immigration battle took a toll on Lennon's marriage, and in the fall of 1973, he and Ono separated. Lennon went to Los Angeles, California, where he partied and took a mistress, May Pang. He still managed to release hit albums, including Mind Games (1973), Walls and Bridges (1974) and Rock 'n' Roll (1975). During this time, Lennon famously collaborated with David Bowie and Elton John .

Lennon and Ono reconciled in 1974, and she gave birth to their only child, a son named Sean, on Lennon's 35th birthday (October 9, 1975). Shortly thereafter, Lennon decided to leave the music business to focus on being a father and husband.

Tragic Death

In 1980, Lennon returned to the music world with the album Double Fantasy , featuring the hit single "(Just Like) Starting Over." Tragically, just a few weeks after the album's release, Mark David Chapman, a deranged fan, shot Lennon several times in front of his apartment complex in New York City. Lennon died at New York City's Roosevelt Hospital on December 8, 1980, at the age of 40.

Lennon's assassination had, and continues to have, a profound impact on pop culture. Following the tragic event, millions of fans worldwide mourned as record sales soared. And Lennon's untimely death still evokes deep sadness around the globe today, as he continues to be admired by new generations of fans. Lennon was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: John Lennon
• Birth Year: 1940
• Birth date: October 9, 1940
• Birth City: Liverpool, Merseyside, England
• Birth Country: United Kingdom
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Famed singer-songwriter John Lennon founded the Beatles, a band that impacted the popular music scene like no other.
• Astrological Sign: Libra
• Quarry Bank High School
• Liverpool College of Art
• Death Year: 1980
• Death date: December 8, 1980
• Death State: New York
• Death City: New York
• Death Country: United States

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: John Lennon Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/musicians/john-lennon
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: April 14, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliché that should have been left behind in the '60s, that's a problem. Peace and love are eternal.
• The more that I see, the less that I know for sure.
• All you need is love.
• There is nothing conceptually better than rock.
• We're all responsible for war ... we all must do something, no matter what.
• The thing the '60s did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.
• If there is such a thing as genius, I am one. And if there's not, I don't care.
• I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity.
• What we got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it we'll sink.
• You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
• Declare it—just the same way we declare war. That is how we will have peace ... we just need to declare it.
• Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
• Let it be. Whisper words of wisdom. Let it be.
• As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.
• Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.
• We're more popular than Jesus now.

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Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel

By Burt Kearns Applause: 296 pages, $29.95 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

He leans over the handlebars of his motorcycle, zipped up in a black leather jacket, his biker cap tilted over his right eye. His lips slightly parted, his eyes inquisitive, he instantly embodies contradictions: tough and vulnerable, fearless and scared, masculine and feminine.

This image of Marlon Brando from the 1953 film “The Wild One,” absorbed by the likes of Elvis Presley, James Dean and John Lennon, immortalized in the pop art of Andy Warhol, has had an almost subliminal impact on the American psyche.

“The Wild One” is nowhere close to Brando’s best movie or best performance. But this singular image, culled from an 89-minute film, somehow plumbs the depths of our thoughts and feelings on masculinity and rebellion.

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Burt Kearns’ new book, “Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel,” is not, the author takes pains to explain, a Brando biography. There have been many of those, including the actor’s own “Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me” (written with Robert Lindsey).

“Hollywood Rebel” is, as the author writes, “a study of how one man’s artistic and personal decisions affected not only those around him, but all of Western society and popular culture.” But at its most incisive the book is a biography of this specific image from Brando’s late 20s, the biker portrait seen ’round the world, recognizable and indelible even to those who have never seen the movie from which it was extracted.

“The Wild One” was based on the Frank Rooney short story “Cyclists’ Raid,” which in turn was based on the 1947 invasion of the Central California town of Hollister (near Monterey) by thousands of rowdy bikers over a turbulent Fourth of July weekend. As Kearns writes, post-World War II motorcycle “gangs” were generally populated by veterans set adrift in a new world after their service ended. “Cyclists’ Raid” caught the attention of producer Stanley Kramer, who specialized in progressive “social problem” movies, including one he had just made with Brando, “The Men,” in which the rising star played a paralyzed vet.

When Brando signed on to star in “The Wild One” he was hot off the success of the film adaptation of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” which had made him a young Broadway legend when it premiered there in 1947. In “Streetcar” Brando played Stanley Kowalski as a virtual fire hose of sexuality, a brute in a tight white T-shirt (and, though the film conveys the point with Production Code-mandated subtlety, a rapist). This was a new kind of screen carnality, raw and visceral, and Brando, a mumbling powerhouse, was a new kind of star.

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But “The Wild One” was newer still. As Kearns observes, the movie’s homoerotic subtext quickly becomes homoerotic text. Brando’s Johnny Strabler, pouty with a slight Southern lilt, engages in a frenemy relationship with a rival biker, Chino (played by Lee Marvin), who behaves more like a jilted lover than a fellow road dog (“I love ya, Johnny!” he repeats over and over; during a fistfight Johnny knocks Chino through a store window, where he lands smack in between bride and groom mannequins).

Johnny seems utterly baffled by, if not terrified of, the opposite sex, represented by a townie (Mary Murphy) looking to spice up her small-town existence and a biker moll (Yvonne Doughty) with fond memories of a one-night stand.

Then there’s that tight leather, which would make Brando-as-Johnny a sort of butch fetish object for gay fans, artists and filmmakers, including Warhol, who used the famous image in multiple works; and Kenneth Anger, whose 1963 avant-garde short film “Scorpio Rising” features clips of Johnny cruising on his bike.

That Brando himself freely discussed his sexual adventures with both men and women made the homoerotic symbolism of “The Wild One” both easier and more resonant.

Lest you think the film influenced only gay subculture, Kearns also details its impact on rock ’n’ roll, particularly on a shy megastar from Memphis, who openly proclaimed his Brando worship, and a group of lads from Liverpool.

In one scene, Chino is lamenting to Johnny that “the Beetles” miss him, apparently alluding to the gang’s groupies. And yes, this was seven years before a certain band began to call itself the Beatles. John Lennon was on record as a huge Brando and “Wild One” fan. Kearns builds a compelling case for this origin story of the band’s name as he goes down one of the book’s many rabbit holes, some more rewarding than others.

The big picture is much clearer. Brando, and especially this Brando, has had an outsize influence on American culture and our conception of how a rebel behaves. “What are you rebelling against?” Johnny is asked as his gang makes itself at home in small-town California. His famous response: “Whaddya got?” Brando-as-Johnny grew into an all-purpose symbol of revolt, against norms in society, sexuality, fashion, music … and whaddya got. (Two years later came “Rebel Without a Cause” and another timeless jacket, this one a red nylon windbreaker.)

“Hollywood Rebel” occasionally wears out its welcome. Kearns has a habit of extensively, excessively quoting the same handful of expert sources. He sometimes overstates his arguments, as when he calls the Hollister biker invasion “one of the most influential public disturbances since the Boston Massacre” (one could imagine many rivals for that list, from the Civil War draft riots, to Vietnam protests, to Watts, to Ferguson, to the Jan. 6 insurrection). The author also seems a little too proud of his prolific double-entendre usage, even for a book that is largely about sexual magnetism.

On balance, however, “Hollywood Rebel” is a worthy addition to the Brando bookshelf, largely because the author picks an idea and never loses sight of it, even as he fans across multiple disciplines to explore the idea. This is a book about how one facet of one man captured in one image from one film can send ripples through the world.

Chris Vognar is a freelance culture writer.

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Remembering John Lennon and Paul McCartney's Last Recording Together — Four Years After the Beatles’ Split

Fifty years ago, the pair put aside the pain of the band's breakup to quietly reunite in the studio — and the result is not what you'd expect.

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Last fall the Beatles released “Now and Then,” a long-awaited digital reunion between all four Fabs was made possible through cutting edge technology. Touted as the final entry in the band’s storied cannon, it provided fans with a happy ending to a 60-year saga and the chance to hear Paul McCartney join voices with his late partner John Lennon once again. Though indeed moving, it was a reunion that didn’t occur in reality. The Beatles tragically never reconvened in the studio prior to Lennon’s murder on Dec. 8, 1980 — robbing the world of more potential Beatles albums, and McCartney of his dear friend.

Many assume that Lennon and McCartney’s recording relationship ended with the band’s breakup at the dawn of the ‘70s. But in truth, they quietly teamed up in an LA studio for a one-off impromptu session in 1974. The results were chaotic, unfinished, and (technically) unreleased, but the bootleg tapes are historic for capturing that iconic vocal blend for the very last time. It proves that despite the bitterness of the prior breakup, their bond remained intact. 

The diverse and nuanced reasons for the Beatles’ split are as complex as the men themselves, requiring volumes of books — not to mention legal documents — to unravel. The partnership was dealt its mortal blow with the death of band manager Brian Epstein in August 1967. McCartney did his best to navigate the group through the ensuing upheaval, but his de facto leadership was read as overbearing by his band mates — particularly Lennon, who, since the world beating success of 1967’s groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band , had largely abdicated his creative role due to his own emotional maelstrom of insecurity, boredom, and resentment. “After Brian died, we collapsed,” Lennon said in an infamous interview with Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner in December 1970 . “Paul took over and supposedly led us. But what is leading us, when we went round in circles? We broke up then. That was the disintegration.”

McCartney’s perfectionism in the studio gave him a reputation as a hard task master — “He’s the workaholic!” Ringo Starr once joked, while the band’s producer George Martin chose the word “overbossy” — but beginning with sessions for the ‘White Album’ in 1968, Lennon began openly sniping at McCartney’s work. He particularly loathed the music hall influenced numbers like “Martha My Dear” and “Ob-La-Da, Ob-La-Da,” which he memorably dismissed as “Paul’s granny music s---.” The latter song nearly provoked a battle royale in the studio before Lennon stormed out — only to return again hours later, in a chemically altered state of consciousness. (The sessions for the song were so unpleasant that longtime engineer Geoff Emerick resigned rather than tolerate the bad vibes.) 

For McCartney, the hostility was painful. “John and I were critical of each other's music and I felt John wasn't much interested in performing anything he hadn't written himself,” he told Life in 1971. “So I felt the split coming. And John kept saying we were musically standing still."

Lennon wasn’t particularly taken with the high concept McCartney-helmed projects that the band were obliged to go along with. The 1967 television film Magical Mystery Tour had been a costly flop that was barely salvaged by the soundtrack EP (and eventual album), and the tense sessions recorded for the Let It Be documentary captured just as many squabbles as songs. “The film was set up by Paul for Paul,” Lennon told Wenner. “That is one of the main reasons the Beatles ended. I can't speak for George, but I pretty damn well know we got fed up of being sidemen for Paul…The camera work was set up to show Paul and not anybody else. And that's how I felt about it." The lead single from the project, “Get Back,” was a McCartney composition that Lennon (supposedly) took to be a thinly veiled dig at Yoko Ono , his new romantic partner, who attended each session along with the band. “When we were in the studio recording it, every time he sang the line 'Get back to where you once belonged,' he'd look at Yoko," he claimed. 

This particular instance is likely a product of Lennon’s own paranoia, but the Beatles hardly welcomed Ono with open arms when Lennon chose to make her a permanent fixture at the band’s sessions. "It was like old army buddies splitting up on account of wedding bells,” McCartney reflected in the Beatles Anthology . “He'd fallen in love, and none of us was stupid enough to say, 'Oh, you shouldn't love her.' We could recognize that, but that didn't diminish the hurt we were feeling by being pushed aside.” 

McCartney’s rejection of Ono — real or imagined, playful or malicious — stung Lennon in a way that few things could, and he began to emotionally distance himself from his longtime partner as a self-protective measure. “[Paul] said it many times that at first he hated Yoko, and then he got to like her. But it's too late for me,” he told Wenner. “Ringo was all right, but the other two really gave it to us…I can't forgive 'em for that, really. Although I can't help still loving them either."

When McCartney married Linda Eastman in 1969, he proposed that her father Lee, a prominent New York entertainment lawyer, take over the band’s business affairs that had previously been managed by Epstein. Lennon understandably feared that McCartney’s father-in-law could never be a neutral third party, and instead favored Allen Klein, a brusque and streetwise business barracuda. His shady business reputation had earned him somewhere in the vicinity of 50 lawsuits — Epstein met him once and refused to shake his hand — but Lennon was drawn to his down-to-earth nature. Starr and Harrison followed suit, leaving an awkward three-to-one vote. McCartney never accepted Klein as his manager, taking issue with all manner of business and creative decisions made under his direction. Lennon took this as a personal affront. 

On Sept. 26, 1969, with his confidence bolstered by his first major non-Beatle live performance in years at the Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival Festival, Lennon reported for duty at a Beatles business meeting and made his push for independence. When McCartney suggested the band return to their roots by going on tour, Lennon shut him down immediately. “I think you're daft,” he snarled. “I wasn't going to tell you, but I'm breaking the group up. It feels good. It feels like a divorce.” No one — not even Ono — had seen it coming. "Our jaws dropped," McCartney recalled. Klein and the other Beatles convinced Lennon to keep the news under wraps so it wouldn’t disrupt lucrative business deals in the works. McCartney hoped it was one of Lennon’s moody outbursts, but he remained resolute. When McCartney called six months later to say that he was also leaving the group and readying a solo album, Lennon was unmoved. “That makes two of us who have accepted it mentally,” he replied.

The album in question, titled simply McCartney , was released in April 1970. Press copies included a Q&A that spelled out the fact that the Beatles were finished due to “personal differences, business differences, and musical differences,” and he didn’t foresee a Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership continuing into the future. The stunt, which made global headlines on April 10, enraged Lennon, who had planned to make the big announcement himself when the time was right. "I wanted to do it and I should have done it,” he said later. “I was a fool not to do it, not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record." 

On Dec. 31, 1970, McCartney began legal proceedings to dissolve the Beatles partnership, stretching relations between the formerly Fab foursome to the breaking point. According to legend, at one point Lennon was chauffeured over to McCartney’s London home and tossed a brick through his front window. (Another version has Lennon breaking in and destroying a painting he had gifted him.) Both stories are likely apocryphal but the sentiments were based in reality. 

That same month, an emotionally raw Lennon, fresh off months of psychologically excruciating Primal Scream therapy, sat down with Wenner to give Rolling Stone ’s readers their first look at the beloved band’s dirtiest laundry. “The publication of these interviews was the first time that any of the Beatles, let alone the man who had founded the group and was their leader, finally stepped outside of that protected, beloved fairy tale and told the truth,” Wenner later wrote. “He was bursting and bitter about the sugarcoated mythology of the Beatles and Paul McCartney’s characterization of the breakup.”

McCartney’s response was, characteristically, more subtle. On his second solo disc, 1971’s Ram , he included a jab at Lennon on the opener, “Too Many People,” scoffing at the ex-bandmate’s exhortations for world peace. “The first line is: ‘too many people preaching practices,” he told MOJO in 2001. “I felt John and Yoko were telling everyone what to do. And I felt we didn't need to be told what to do. The whole tenor of the Beatles thing had been, like, to each his own. Freedom. Suddenly it was ‘You should do this.’ It was just a bit the wagging finger, and I was pissed off with it.” (The other lyrical barb, "You took your lucky break and broke it in two," is fairly self-explanatory.)

Few fans picked up on the slight, but Lennon got the reference, and perhaps invented one or two that weren’t actually there. “He’s so obscure other people didn't notice them, but I heard them,” he railed. “I thought 'Well, I’m not obscure, I just get right down to the nitty-gritty.'” He fired back on Imagine , his 1971 masterpiece best remembered for the visions of a tolerant utopia on the opening track. “How Do You Sleep” is the spiritual inverse, a diss track so venomous and overt that it borders on obscene. Even more wounding to McCartney, the slide guitar on the track was played by his fellow Beatle brother, George Harrison . 

In film footage of the session, later released as part of the Imagine documentary, Lennon can be seen huddled with Harrison and Ono, gleefully giggling like conspiratorial children as they trash their former friend. “The sound you make is muzak to my ears/You must have learned something in all those years,” Lennon sings, before taking a shot at McCartney’s most famous song: “ The only thing you done was ‘Yesterday’/And since you’re gone you’re just another day.” (The original words were “and you probably pinched that bitch anyway,” until Klein insisted that he remove the potentially libelous line.) Starr happened to be visiting the studio the day of the recording, and was so scandalized by the lines that he angrily urged Lennon to back off. 

Several years later, when he’d cooled off slightly, Lennon attempted to defuse the song, saying that he was “using somebody as an object to create something. I wasn't really feeling that vicious at the time, but I  was using my resentment towards Paul to create a song.” Even so, the lines undoubtedly hurt McCartney, though he was loathe to punch back. “When John did 'How Do You Sleep,’ I didn't want to get into a slanging match,” he told author Barry Miles in his authorized biography, All These Years from Now . “I just let him do it, because he was being fed a lot of those lines by Klein and Yoko, I had the option of going for equal time and doing all the interviews or deciding to not take up the gauntlet, and I remember consciously thinking, ‘No, I really mustn't.’ Part of it was cowardice: John was a great wit, and I didn't want to go fencing with the rapier champion of East Cheam. That was not a good idea. And I also knew that those vibes could snowball, and you start off with a perfectly innocent little contest and suddenly you find yourself doing duel to the death with the Lennon figure and it's, ‘Oh, my God, what have I carved out here?’ But it meant that I had to take s---.”

When McCartney did respond publicly, on 1971’s Wild Life , it was with an olive branch. His first Wings venture included the mournful “Dear Friend,” an open letter to Lennon that matched “How Do You Sleep” for candor. Built around a haunting solo piano figure, a grief-stricken McCartney sounds lost as he wonders if this was “really the borderline” of their friendship. Lennon kept his response to the song to himself, but the public sparring soon ceased. 

As their business and legal affairs untangled by the middle of the decade, McCartney attempted to carry on as if it were old times. “I would ring him when I went to New York and he would say, 'Yeah, what d'you want?' 'I just thought we might meet?' 'Yeah, what the f--- d'you want, man?'” he told Miles. “It was all very acrimonious and bitter. I remember one time John said, 'You're all pizza and fairy tales.' I thought, ‘What a great album title!’ I said, 'Well, if that's what I am, I'm not wholly against that description of me. I can think of worse things to say.' But another time I called him and it was 'Yeah? Yeah? Whadda ya want?' He suddenly started to sound American. I said, 'Oh, f--- off, Kojak,' and slammed the phone down; we were having those kind of times, it was bad news.”

Relations gradually thawed, and on March 28, 1974 , the unthinkable occurred: Lennon and McCartney jammed together in a recording studio. Unfortunately, the results were a drugged-up shambles. Lennon was at Burbank Studios producing what would become the album Pussy Cats for his friend, Harry Nilsson. In the midst of his 18-month separation from Ono, he frequently anesthetized himself with booze and cocaine, which he generously shared with fellow players Stevie Wonder , Jesse Ed Davis and Bobby Keys. McCartney arrived into this atmosphere of debauchery, and attempted to coax a song out of this supergroup. “There were 50 other people playing, all just watching me and Paul,” Lennon later remembered. Tapes from the session reveal only semi-complete versions of Little Richard's “Lucille” and the Ben E. King slow burn “Stand By Me,” often interrupted by technical problems. Though mostly incomplete and largely unlistenable, it’s the final time Lennon and McCartney’s sweet and sour vocal blend was captured on tape. (Though never released formally, the sessions eventually surfaced on the bootleg,  A Toot and a Snore in ’74 .)

Lennon returned to New York City several months later, where he reunited with his other great love: Yoko Ono. Their reconciliation had been mediated by, of all people, McCartney. A lonely Ono had paid him a visit and explained her terms for rekindling their romance, which McCartney dutifully passed along to Lennon. “I said, 'Yoko was through London and she said she wouldn't mind getting back together. How about you? Would you be interested in that?'” McCartney later explained. “He said, 'Yeah.' That he still loved her and stuff. So I said, 'Here's the deal. You've got to go back to New York. You've got to go get a flat, court her, so-and-so ...' and that's just what he did. That's how they got back together again.”

Soon after the reconciliation, Lennon retired from the music industry to focus on raising their newborn son, Sean. Tensions eased enough for McCartney to occasionally drop by the couple’s new Upper West Side apartment in the ultra-luxe Dakota building when business took music him to America. “He visits me every time he's in New York, like all the other rock 'n" roll creeps,” Lennon laughed at the time. “So whenever he's in town I see him. He comes over and we just sit around and get mildly drunk and reminisce.” 

On April 24, 1976, they settled in to watch the hip new comedy program, Saturday Night Live , when they found themselves in the peculiar situation of being addressed on air by the show’s producer, Lorne Michaels. Mocking the exorbitant sums of money the Beatles were being offered to reunite, Michaels held up a hilariously paltry check for just $3,000. Amazingly, the joke nearly succeeded. “John said, ‘It's only downtown, we could go now. Come on, let's just show up. Should we, should we?’ and for a second it was like, ‘Yeah, yeah!’ But we decided not to.” (Lennon admitted, “We nearly got a cab, but we were actually too tired.”) 

The night was reportedly be the last time the two men, who had shared so much over the previous two decades, ever shared a room. As they parted ways, Lennon patted McCartney on the shoulder and offered a mock-maudlin farewell: “Think about me every now and then, old friend.”

They managed to stay connected over telephone for the next several years. “I realized that I couldn't always ring him up to ask about business, which was my main priority at the time,” said McCartney . “It was better to talk about cats, or baking bread, or babies. So we did that, and I had a lot in common with him because we were having our babies and I was into a similar sort of mode.” McCartney placed a call to his old partner just before Lennon’s 40 th birthday on Oct. 9, 1980. “[It was] very nice. I remember he said, ‘Do they play me against you against me like they play you against me?’ Because there were always people in the background pitting us against each other. And I said, ‘Yeah, they do…’” It was the final time they spoke.

McCartney would always regret that he was never able to sit down and fully hash out all their differences before Lennon was gunned down on a chilly December night in 1980. But in an interview given hours before his death, Lennon spoke in uncharacteristically glowing terms of his one-time partner. “There’s only ever been two artists I’ve ever worked with for more than a one-night-stand, as it were,” he told RKO Radio . “That’s Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. I think that’s a pretty damn good choice. As a talent scout, I’ve done pretty damn well.” Though effusive words rarely came easily to the man who penned “All You Need Is Love,” mutual friend Harry Nilsson once told a story that summed up Lennon’s feelings for his musical soul mate. “Someone told me … they saw John walking on the street once wearing a button saying ‘I Love Paul.’ And this girl asked him, ‘Why are you wearing a button that says “I Love Paul”?’ He said, ‘Because I love Paul.’”

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Peter Brown, One of the Beatles’ Closest Confidants, Tells All (Again)

At 87, the dapper insider is releasing a new book of interviews conducted in 1980 and 1981 with the band and people nearest to it.

By Ben Sisario

Peter Brown stood in his spacious Central Park West apartment, pointing first at the dining table and then through the window to the park outside, with Strawberry Fields just to the right.

“John sat at that table looking through here,” Brown said, “and he couldn’t take his eyes off the park.”

That’s John as in Lennon. And the story of the former Beatle coveting this living-room view in 1971 — and how Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, eventually got their own place one block down, at the Dakota — is just one of Brown’s countless nuggets of Fab Four lore. In the 1960s he was an assistant to Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, and then an officer at Apple Corps, the band’s company. A key figure in the Beatles’ secretive inner circle, Brown kept a red telephone on his desk whose number was known only to the four members.

And it was Brown who, in 1969, informed Lennon that he and Ono could quickly and quietly wed in a small British territory on the edge of the Mediterranean, a piece of advice immortalized in “The Ballad of John and Yoko”: “Peter Brown called to say, ‘You can make it OK/You can get married in Gibraltar, near Spain.’”

Next week, Brown and the writer Steven Gaines are releasing a book, “All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words,” made up of interviews they conducted in 1980 and 1981 with the band and people close to it, including business representatives, lawyers, wives and ex-wives — the raw material that Brown and Gaines used for their earlier narrative biography of the band, “The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles,” published in 1983.

Now 87, Brown is a polarizing figure in Beatles history. He was a witness to some of the band’s most important moments and was a trusted keeper of its secrets. “The only people left are Paul and Ringo and me,” he said.

On a tour of Brown’s apartment, the spoils of his access were everywhere. In his bedroom, Brown showed off an original image of the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” with background figures (like Gandhi ) that didn’t make the final cut. In the dining room are binders and boxes stuffed with Beatle-related snapshots and correspondence.

But the publication of “The Love You Make” four decades ago also made him a kind of villain. According to Brown, the band agreed to interviews to set the record straight about its history. Yet the book — primarily written by Gaines, a journalist and biographer known for detailed, warts-and-all portraits — was seen as tawdry and sensational, preoccupied with sex lives and internecine conflicts, with music a secondary subject. Excerpts ran in National Enquirer.

To the band and many of those around them, it was seen as a betrayal. Paul McCartney accused Brown of misleading him by pitching it as a more general book about music in the 1960s. Linda McCartney said she and Paul burned it.

“That book was a shame,” Mark Lewisohn , the pre-eminent Beatles scholar, said in a recent interview.

“It’s almost like there are two different Peter Browns,” Lewisohn added. “There’s the Peter Brown I know, who is this upright, respectable, very successful businessman. And then the one who attached his name to this Steven Gaines book.”

Brown has heard all the criticism before, and waves it off. Sitting in a chair he inherited from Epstein — and dapper as always in a purple button-down shirt and charcoal slacks — Brown said the book stands as an accurate portrayal, and that the Beatles knew full well what they were getting into.

“There was never any effort on my part to make it negative,” Brown said in his unflappably gentle voice, as classical music wafted quietly through his home. “And nobody’s ever questioned that it was true.”

He also rejected McCartney’s version of events. “Paul imagines things,” Brown said. “Everything he does, he has his own way of remembering, and he’s crazy about it.”

Gaines, for his part, attributes the notoriety of the original book to his and Brown’s refusal to produce a sanitized hagiography, and their decision instead to publish controversial private details. Among those was a rumor that Lennon once had a sexual encounter with Epstein, which Brown and Gaines reported as fact, based on their research.

“Nobody had put something like that in a book,” Gaines said. That episode, on a trip to Spain in 1963, has been debated for years by Beatles commentators. Lennon denied having sex with Epstein, saying in an interview with Playboy: “It was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated.”

Brown and Gaines’s new book, “All You Need Is Love,” goes even deeper into Beatle lore than their first. It offers an extended transcript of Ono denying, not too persuasively, that she introduced Lennon to heroin, and includes various firsthand accounts of the threats and chaos the band faced on tour in Manila in 1966. Ron Kass, who led the Beatles’ Apple label, describes the impossibility of running a business with Lennon and McCartney as the bosses. One, he says, wanted the label design to be green, the other white; Kass decided to make each side a different color.

There are also startling comments from McCartney and George Harrison about Lennon, revealing the tension and raw feelings that were still present a decade after the band broke up, in interviews recorded just weeks before Lennon was killed in December 1980. Harrison calls his former bandmate “a piece of [expletive]” and wonders why he had “become so nasty.”

McCartney describes Lennon and Ono as “very suspicious people,” and portrays his relationship with them as a kind of power struggle.

“The way to get their friendship is to do everything the way they require it. To do anything else is how to not get their friendship,” McCartney says in the book. “I know that if I absolutely lie down on the ground and just do everything like they say and laugh at all their jokes and don’t expect my jokes to ever get laughed at,” he adds, “if I’m willing to do all that, then we can be friends.”

Lennon never got a chance to respond, Brown said. “I spoke to John, and said, ‘Listen, I’m coming to New York to do some of the recordings,’” he recalled. “And he said, ‘Yes, fine. Looking forward to it.’ And that was the week before he was murdered.” Ono’s interview was done a few months later, in the spring of 1981.

As with many Beatles histories, there are plenty of contradictions, opposing perspectives and selective memories. Interviews with the manager Allen Klein and the lawyer John L. Eastman offer an icy tit-for-tat on the battle for business control during the band’s last days. And Alexis Mardas, a.k.a. Magic Alex, the supposed inventor who others in the book call a con man, gives his account — with skeptical footnotes added by Brown and Gaines — of the Beatles’ retreat in India in 1968.

When asked about finding the truth amid contrasting accounts in an oral history, Brown turned philosophical. “It depends on where you’re sitting,” he said.

There are even conflicting stories about the genesis of Brown and Gaines’s new book. According to Brown, it began when a New York Times reporter — me — asked him for comment three years ago about “The Beatles: Get Back,” Peter Jackson’s exhaustive look at the band’s stormy recording sessions in early 1969. Brown realized then, he said, that he was one of the last remaining witnesses to important history.

But Gaines said that the origins of the project go back years before, to when he wondered what to do with the original interview tapes, which were languishing in his safe deposit box on Long Island. Gaines said he considered donating or selling them, but Brown demurred. They settled on a book of edited transcriptions, though they still squabble over details like ownership of the tapes. “It’s ‘Rashomon’ with Peter,” Gaines said.

After Brown quit his work with the Beatles on Dec. 31, 1970 — the day that McCartney filed a lawsuit to dissolve the band’s partnership — he came to the United States and worked with Robert Stigwood , the Australian-born entertainment mogul who had huge hits in the 1970s with the Bee Gees and the films “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease.” Then Brown founded a public relations firm, BLJ Worldwide, which in 2011 came under scrutiny for its work representing the families of Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya and of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Brown declined to speak about that episode on the record.

But he remains most proud of his association with the Beatles, and said he viewed “All You Need Is Love” as a final gesture defining his legacy with the band.

“This is the end of it,” he said. “Hopefully we’re closing the door now.”

Ben Sisario covers the music industry. He has been writing for The Times since 1998. More about Ben Sisario

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