If I had to choose my all-time favorite book -- biography or otherwise -- this would probably be it. Certainly, the fact that it's about a Beatle automatically moves it toward the front of the line. But why choose this particular book -- which I've re-read more times than I can count -- when there are so many other Beatle bios out there? Simple: this one's terrible.

No, really. This is a train wreck. Goldman has a major axe to grind, and over the course of 700-plus pages, he grinds his axe to iron powder. Lennon comes across as a mainly lucky, mostly untalented, naive bisexual musician with serious mother issues. It's Character Assassination to the Extreme -- of Lennon, Yoko Ono, and almost everyone but Paul McCartney -- and you'll find yourself marveling at the body count Goldman leaves behind. Every page contains one cynical, sneering appraisal of Lennon and his work after another, with Goldman trashing Lennon's motivations and so often rooting for him to fail that it begs the question of "Why in the world would you devote 700 pages and seven years of your life to a subject you obviously can't stand??"

I don't know the answer, but I'm glad Goldman did it anyway -- because this one is so gawdawful that it's terrific. ( )

An exhaustive and in-depth study of Lennon, his whole life and the events and influences that formed a bi-directional wash over the times he lived through. It is a psychological treatise of major proportions, and literally no stone is left unturned.

Goldman's biography has been described as "controversial", and if by that is meant "not sufficiently reverent", then this is quite true. But Goldman lists a long appendix of his sources, which include Cynthia Lennon and May Pang among many others, plus an equally full list of all the sources he tried to contact without success.

And you may well find that Goldman actually manages to sympathise with the "warts and all" Lennon, saving the major portion of his ire for Yoko Ono, who - if there is a villain of this piece - emerges from this book as that villain. Her background is exhaustively researched and some of those closest to her were interviewed for the biography. She also emerges as one of those who, in the last 5 or 6 years of his life, proved the greatest 'drag' on him, holding him back.

Lennon-worshippers will hate this book, and it is not a pretty account. Yet its scholarship and research demands that any reader should pass this way at least once, even if ultimately they reject its findings. ( )

Goldman has been exposed by more than one reviewer of his "work" as essentially a turd. The "1,200 interviews" he alleged conducted did not include any of the principles in Lennon's life -- that is, those who actually knew him. Instead, regardless whether he conducted "1,200 interviews" with 1,200 people, or "1,200 interviews" with one, those alleged interviewees include the person who stole Lennon's diaries, and more, immediately after Lennon was assassinated, and one who was an opponet of Yoko in a law suit -- hardly the sort of sources one would consider credible.

Goldman first did the equivalent to Elvis -- who was, fo course, dead, therefore unable to answer back -- so the credible who knew Lennon wouldn't talk to him, because they saw what he was about.

In short, Goldman essentially interviewed those who, if they knew Lennon at all, had ulterior motives in their relationship with him -- spell it C-A-S-H -- and were willing to say anything for loot, or out of sheer nastiness for not getting from Lennon what they'd hoped to get.

And note that none of these alleged "facts" came out while Lennon was alive -- and could talk back. It's interesting the number of knives-out biographies of Lennon were written by individuals who waited until he was dead and couldn't answer them. Or sue them for libel, and demand that they put up or pay up.

If you read only one biography of Lennon, don't make it this piece of trash.

In this definitive biography, the product of six years' work and twelve hundred interviews conducted all around the world Albert Goldman takes us deep inside John Lennon's carefully guarded world, enabling us to witness ultimately every significant epsidode in a life of labyrinthine complexity. What emerges is a startling and revolutionary portrait. The man of peace proves to be a man of uncontrollable violence. The man of madcap humour and unfailing wit turns out to be a taciturn melancholic. The strong and aggressive character conceals a weak and passive personality. The supreme symbol of youthful vitality is more than half in love with death. ( )