Rating: 
Summary: Badly Researched, Barely Credible, Save Your Money
Review: After reading this book, I just have to say that the author really did a pathetic job of researching and attribution. How bad? Well, bad enough that the entire credibility of this book comes into question. Example: He speaks of Lennon's sour relationship with his father, particularly after an incident at the Magical Mystery Tour Premeire Party, where his father showed up drunk dressed as a garbage man in 1968. Then he goes on to say this incident was forgiven by John in 1964. This is one of the many inconsistencies. Mr. Giuliano, just how many favorite cats did John Lennon have -- my last count was about 7 until I gave up. Let's not even mention the reference to John's obsession with Madonna, who's first album came out in 1982, 2 full years after Lennon's death. Considering source material was the alleged Diaries of John Lennon, which of course are not reproduced in this work, one would hope to have gotten an insight into Lennon's last years. Instead, it is filled with innuendo, the predictable Yoko-bashing, and useless bits of information. Save your money on this one. For fans of John Lennon, best to just remember the artist as you like, not how Giuliano or Goldman or Seaman or Mintz or the slew of other sycophants who continue to feed on the corpse of this man.
Rating: 
Summary: Muddled but mostly true
Review: For a guy who seems to crank out the Beatle books Giuliano is a surprisingly poor writer. This book seemed rushed and was rather muddled, his view on Lennon or Ono seeminly changing in different chapters. Still what emerges from the dross and Giuliano's boorish and at times prudish slant is a credible version of Lennon. In fact what surprised me was that all the "new" stuff was material Goldman had covered years ago. Interestingly Guiliano never mentions Goldman, no doubt due to the baggage the latter carries. Indeed it made me wonder if Goldman's book deserves its bad rap. Goldman's biggest crime seemed to me not to share the Rolling Stone magazine view of the world and point up such heresies as historical overview (showing that the youth in say Weimar Germany were at least as wild as any in Haight-Ashbury). If anyone doubts the view of Yoko presented here one need only read her liner notes for the Lennon anthology of a few years back where she spends most of her time talking about herself, repeatedly mentioning that both John and her thought she was by far the better artist! Her Stalinist tone towards her late husband's life giving great insight into her totalitarian personality. The first chapter here is the best, otherwise skip to Goldman and listen to Revolver.
Rating:
Summary: GUILIANO'S BAD KARMA
Review: Geoffrey Guiliano's book " Lennon in America" is a devious piece of lowly thrash out to make a few quick bucks.
Mr. Guiliano has dedicated this book to his mentor and master A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada of the KRSNA consciousness. Being a hindu myself, i wonder how a genuine disciple of " KRSNA Consciousness" can sink to such prurient depths... or is it just the author living out his bad karma?
As a Lennon follower one is left cheated because most of Lennon's supposed escapades ( as recounted by the author) are nothing but cooked-up hogwash without proof or substance.
It is easy to write such books. I paid Rs 500/- for this garbage and i don't suppose Mr Guilaino will return the money back.
Rating:
Summary: [Weak]
Review: Having only recently become interested in John Lennon's music, ... It was a very poor introduction to the artist.
I picked it up because it purported to be about the final ten years of Lennon's life, which seemed the most interesting from my limited knowledge.
The book left many gaps in its narration, many times referring to events never explained, seeming to have the assumption that the reader already knew much about Lennon, and so for me thus failed abysmally as a biography of this period. And rather than help me get an understanding on the man, all I found was lots of stories about drug use, [and weaknesses]. Hardly what I was hoping for in wanting to know more about the man behind great music. I'm sure all these things were part of Lennon's life, as they are of many other successful people, but at the end I was left with an unbalanced and unconvincing tale that told me nothing of real value, and left me with no impression of Lennon or any understanding of what made him great. The author at the start of the book tries to justify his tales by saying he wants to give a full picture of the man, but some-one might like to point out to him that involvement in [weaknesses]is quite easily accomplished by millions of nobodies that never achieve anything. These things tell me little about what made Lennon who he was.
The only reason I got through the whole book was the author's easy to read style, and the hope that something interesting was going to appear about Lennon's last creative efforts before his murder. Alas, I was sadly disappointed. As a whole the author has little to say on Lennon's creativity and music, and some music released in this period is not even mentioned.
The more I reflect on this book the more it strikes me as tabloid gutter press and I regret ever having paid for it. I hope my review along with the others here on Amazon helps dissuade others from buying this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS-EVEN WINTER
Review: Here is the REAL John Lennon at last! Vulnerable, human and real. After reading this book I feel CLOSER to both the man and his wonderful timeless music. Thank you for being so brave Geoffrey!
Rating:
Summary: All you need is...yuk!
Review: I really felt the need to wash my hands after reading this prurient waste of paper.
If only a tenth of this book were true (and I doubt even that to be the case)Lennon must heve been a true monster.As it is the "author" indulges in wild speculation generally from unnamed sources or from bitter ex-insiders with definite axes to grind or unlikely stories to sell.
Giuliano purports to glean much of this insight from Lennons personal diaries,but as he is unable to show direct quotes his integrity must be questioned.
He shows little or no musical insight (rather a prerequisite I would have thought)and most of the time reads like a gossipy matron spreading dirt over a garden fence.
..makes Albert Goldmans book read like literature.Avoid
Rating: 
Summary: Lennon As Anti-Myth
Review: I've loved John Lennon since I was 15 (I was born in '73) and at first, loved him as the quintessential 'roughneck' Beatle-boy. After listening to all of the Beatles, and most of Lennon's solo work, I felt there was much more to Lennon than one could imagine. A darker, more self-deceptive and sinister side.
If the peace-lovin', or even straightlaced (like my parents) generation of the '60's, would have their way, John would (and is) branded as the radical, hippie peacenik, or just general happiness-spreading guy, that revolutionized the world through his music, his (and the Beatles') charm and the 'media's' interpretation of his work. As a child of the 80's and 90's (god rest Kurt Cobain), I choose to seek out the more bare-boned truth about Lennon. If you believe that the 'Media' tells us everything about an artist, even in his own supposed words, then you should not read this. If you believe that Lennon, in his best efforts in songwriting, showed us 'everything' there is to know about him, you should not read this. If you believe that history is made the most truthful today, instead of when most of the figures are long dead, you should not read this. In the last few years, from seeking out books from Fred Seaman, May Pang, Albert Goldman (gasp!), I have found that Lennon is the most endearing, and the most tragic, of all Myth-like figures.
Lennon's caustic anger is well-known, even innocent figures like Dezo Hoffmann, in his book 'The Faces of John Lennon', tell of John's savage anger, putting Dezo down in front of a whole film crew (and this was a book of portraits, with a small intro, nonetheless!). Brian Epstein, probably the most sympathetic and admirable of the Beatles' entourage, suffered (in his own, or as others' say, Derek Taylor's) book, when he talks about John's savage outbursts.
Can it not be said that John was a completely insecure, paranoid man who suffered many demons?
This is what Giuliano is trying to convey, and I think he does it quite well.
That John was bisexual, I have no doubt. Stuart Sutcliffe was an up and coming great artist, and according to many modern opinions in the art world, might have become one of the defining artists of his generation, if not for his death. When John met Yoko, I believe he said something to the effect of his 'wanting to meet a true artist and be swept away', as he was with her.
Why wouldn't John have been captivated by Stuart? He met Cynthia at art school, but she didn't live up to his demanding expectations...
Giuliano's writings may not merit 'scholarly research', but it seems to me that his writing of John in his later years, paranoid, lost, self-doubting, starving himself or drugging himself into ill-health (can anyone say that the last pictures of John are HEALTHY ones! To me, in every pic, good and bad, of the last few years of his life, he seems to be a very emaciated, walking skeleton, so very sad to see, considering how beautiful John was up to about 35), are very true ones.
Even Julian, on his own website, has this quote:
"My dad's music was a great inspiration to me
He wasn't a great father. He was a great musician. That's always been a touchy one, and it will be until I can find the answer, but I don't know if there is one. I didn't hate him, but I was scared of him. I didn't know this man at all, and trying to rebuild a relationship that was never there made him as frightened of me as I was of him." Giuliano actually treats Yoko fairly, I think (but then again, I've read Goldman, and his absolute vilification of her character chills me). Giuliano does give Yoko some credit, unlike many reviewers who have said he grates her to shreds, by noting that Yoko did her best to save Lennon from a sure breakdown, a few times over. At the same time, it seems that Yoko stifled John by becoming an almost 'Aunt Mimi' figure, demanding, impossible to please, ever critical.
As far as all the mumbo-jumbo about numerology, astrology, psychic matters in the book, isn't it clear that John wrote some rather shamanistic tunes? #9 dream, Mind Games, I Am the Walrus, Tomorrow Never Knows? Didn't he write some rather low self-esteem tunes, like 'I'm A Loser', 'Help!', 'Mother', 'Jealous Guy', and dare I say, 'Crippled Inside' (which was supposedly written about Paul, but I really think is John talking about himself).
Overall, I think he's done a fair job of showing us the last years of Lennon. I actually felt very depressed, though, in seeing a great man, who, if he would have believed more in himself, could have saved himself and gone on to make more meaningful, gorgeous music, as he did with the boys in the glory days.
Rating:
Summary: Do not buy this book
Review: This book is so poor, it does not even qulaify as "fun" garbage, as others have put it. I have over 2000 books and this will be only the 2nd book I will ever throw away to keep it from my library. Why? The scholarship is so bad, I simply cannot believe any of it. Let me give you some examples: On page 89, the author writes, "Lennon's imaginary encounters ranged from rising star Madonna to the unlikely Barbara Walters, from Yoko's sister Setsuko to McCartney's kid sister Ruth." Madonna's first single was released in 1982, two years after Lennon DIED. The author even puts this quote in the chapter about 1975, a year before Madonnna finished High School in Michigan. On Page 109, the author writes "During the 1969 filming of the Let It Be recording sessions, John made insinuating references to the drug, comparing heroin to sex by cracking, "Shooting is good exercise." In the book on the LET IT BE transcripts, it reveals that is YOKO who said this, NOT JOHN, and this is an example of the sloppy way the entire book is put together, seemingly without any effort to tell the truth. The first chapter is so poorly put together, you realize immediately the author is going to put down anything negative about Lennon no matter what the circumstance and believe them all. There are huge blocks of conversations repeated in this book from friends of friends, ex-wives of groupies,etc. Let me try to get this across. The brain does not store whole conversations. Think of someone you talked to yesterday- now try to recreate the conversation exactly as it occurred, word by word. it's impossible, the brain does not record those things, it will record the essence of a conversation, maybe even a sentence or two, but not a word by word blow. But this is what you get here- long conversations that you realize is complete fiction but appears as it is faultless fact. I like "Globe" like articles, so I was not going to take it too seriously, but after seeing things I know cannot possibly be right, I realized I could believe none of it. And neither should you, even for fun.
Rating:
Summary: WHAT A BUNCH OF LIES!
Review: This book which claims to be based on the "lost lennon diaries" which it odviously is not is about 10% truth.Giuliano is a liar who does not have anything nice to say about John in this book which i wish i had never read because it was a waste of my time.
Rating:
Summary: Badly Researched, Barely Credible, Save Your Money
Review: This book which claims to be based on the "lost lennon diaries" which it odviously is not is about 10% truth.Giuliano is a liar who does not have anything nice to say about John in this book which i wish i had never read because it was a waste of my time.
|
