Starred review from July 7, 2008
Norman (Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation
) offers a grand, comprehensive, yet sprightly biography of the late Beatle. His sympathetic but sharp treatment captures Lennon’s charm and charisma, but also his cruelty to loved ones, his rebel posturings, his resentment of Paul McCartney’s matchless songwriting powers and growing dominance of the band, his debaucheries, his drunk and disorderlies, his shoplifting and his Oedipal yearnings. Norman is a smart analyst of pop music and its cultural setting and a scintillating miniaturist of Beatlemania. (He likens the band’s trademark shriek-inducing hair-shakings to “manic feather-dusters.”) He manages the difficult trick of loving Lennon’s music without swooning over it, pronouncing “Strawberry Fields” both a great song and “crafted druggy gibberish.” Lennon emerges as a bright, troubled, insecure man who grasped at profundity and occasionally touched it; from Norman’s portrait, we see why so many consider him a soul mate. Photos.
Starred review from January 26, 2009
Graeme Malcolm does an excellent job reading Norman's studious biography of the most beloved Beatle. Beginning with Lennon's parents' roots in working-class Liverpool, and continuing through his enormous success as part of the world's most popular band and as a solo artist, Norman's biography covers all the bases of an already-well-thumbed life. Malcolm does a particularly superb job of capturing the inimitable Liverpudlian accents of the Fab Four, and Lennon in particular. Stately, but studded with flashes of good humor and a storyteller's sensibility for rhythm, Malcolm's reading is good enough to keep listeners hooked, as if they were listening to “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” or “Let It Be.” An Ecco hardcover (Reviews, July 7).