John Lennon: For the Record

1984, possibly first edition, from Bantam
Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld
John Lennon: For the Record
Bought newish for $2.95
Worn paperback
C+

You know that this isn't the best researched book when the first sentence is "John Lennon first met Yoko Ono at a London art gallery in 1967."  In the saga of the Beatles, every year matters, particularly in the '60s, and everyone who knows anything about it knows that they met in late 1966.  (Well, Wikipedia offers a second version, where they met in '65 under other circumstances.)  It also matters because the interview in this book, conducted in 1971 as part of research for Apple to the Core (which I've never read), is actually of Yoko as well as John, since the couple were then inseparable.  Part of the interview was published in Penthouse earlier in '84, but this is the first time the full version was released.  If you've read at least one Lennon interview, you won't find out much new here*, although it is interesting to see how naively Lennon trusted Allan Klein.  There's not much about the music, and the focus here is understandably financial, but Lennon does make personal remarks about Paul et. al.  There's not terribly much about Lennon's politics either, although he had joined the New York New Left by that point.  Jon Weiner's Come Together, also coming up in 1984, covers that aspect in particular.



*Well, actually, the photos are different than what I've seen in the other Beatles/Lennon books so far.  And Yoko looks great in them.