John Lennon 1980: The Last Days in the Life
Kenneth Womack - Omnibus Books
The most notorious of all rock biographies, Albert Goldman's "Lives Of John Lennon" (1988) was an appallingly mean-spirited book in which Goldman displayed no affection for his subject matter but he commissioned first-rate research and much of the Liverpool-based material was obtained through interviews conducted by a friend of mine, the Liverpool crime writer Ron Ellis. When Bob Spitz wrote his biography of the Beatles in 2005, he had access to Goldman's source material, and it has now been deposited with Columbia University in New York. You could argue that Goldman's book meant John Lennon was assassinated twice, but Kenneth Womack, a university professor in New York, should have checked what was there.
Goldman deliberately misconstrued the way John and Yoko lived their lives and there is no doubt that the book reveals an astonishing hatred by Goldman for Yoko but nevertheless, he unearthed very unorthodox stories of their behaviour which he revealed in the most unpleasant way possible.
You cannot accuse Goldman of sitting on the fence and his opinions saturate the text. Kenneth Womack though is more like an impartial BBC broadcaster. Time and again, he gives us chapter and verse for some controversial issue in Lennon's life, and quotes opinions from several sources, but he doesn't sort them out for us by saying, "This is what I think." If anything, he falls back on what the writer Ray Connolly told him. "Lennon was a complex, contradictory character", which means damn all, and you can use that line to justify almost anything.
Take for example when Yoko tells John that he should have an affair with their assistant, May Pang. Womack's line is that this is John and Yoko being John and Yoko but it's way out of order. Can you think of another couple, famous or not, who have behaved in a similar way?
Giving John Lennon the benefit of the doubt is the overall impression you get from this comprehensive biography. Fair enough I suppose, because as you are reading this book, you know that he is about to be killed and you wish you could warn him. Indeed, a recurrent theme is the poor security around the Dakota, and also the fact that John Lennon didn't think that a bodyguard would save him: "They kill the bodyguard first," he said.
The title of the book is misleading. I was expecting it to cover the last couple of months in John Lennon's life - that is, the release of "Double Fantasy", the return to public life and their long interviews. My chum Andy Peebles gave me a wallet that John and Yoko gave to him, sadly not stuffed with dollars, but with one of John's cartoons on the front. Andy was with John and Yoko for just a couple of hours and he found them charming with John full of nostalgia for life back in Britain. It was good that Womack confirmed this by saying John was planning a European tour.
Womack thinks that the possible reason for John's retreat into the Dakota around 1975 was not so much the birth of his son or his fight for a Green Card to stay in the US, but the embarrassment of not being able to write decent songs. Some tapes that have come to light don't suggest a major songwriter at work. There was no shortage of fine songwriters in New York so why didn't he collaborate as that could have given him the kickstart he needed?
For example, Doc Pomus' daughter Sharyn introduced herself to John and Yoko in a shop. John was so delighted that he sang 'Save The Last Dance For Me' around the premises. Doc was the most helpful and considerate of songwriters and surely he could have resolved John's problems.
On this theme, Womack says that John told Paul not to call at the Dakota without an appointment, which is fair enough, but he says that what irked John wasn't Paul but the fact that he carried a guitar. On the contrary and on another day, this "complex, contradictory character" might well have welcomed it. His inability to write decent songs could be because he had nobody of similar stature to comment on his work. John and Paul didn't write all that many songs together in the Beatles but they shared what they were doing and gave each other encouragement and improvements.
We are told that John couldn't come to terms with the new music, but punk was a return to rock and roll with added agit prop, a mix that was completely up Lennon's street. He would have loved the aggression of the Clash and the Jam. Contradicting himself, Womack tells us that John suggested that Ringo Starr record Blondie's "Heart Of Glass".
Every page of this book contains fascinating details. For example, the Lennons bought their Dakota apartment from the Hollywood actor Robert Ryan. They believed that the spirit of Ryan's late wife visited them and told Ryan's daughter about this. She wondered why the ghost wasn't visiting her but John and Yoko.
Womack is wrong in saying that "Double Fantasy" was a gold record in the UK before John's death. It had come into the UK album chart at Number 9 and stayed there a second week, while the album everybody wanted was Abba's "Super Trouper". I bought the record the day it was released and immediately put John's seven songs onto a cassette for repeat play. This was the drawback: radio listeners liked what they heard but they didn't want to spend full-price for half-an-album. No matter what we think of Yoko as a person, her music was Division Three and she wrecked that album. Ridiculously, they encouraged each other's self-indulgence: by all means, write about yourself but if you do, your life should be an archetype and Lennon's certainly wasn't.
Nevertheless, that half-album represented a massive return to form by John Lennon and showed that he was still a vibrant artist with much to offer. Again, I would have liked Womack's take on the album and what it said for his future.
Very effectively, the book builds up to John's killing but there are no details of the act itself as Womack cuts to how people reacted to the drama and doesn't mention the name of his assassin. Within hours Yoko is determining the way forward and when Ringo consoled her with "I know how you feel", Yoko replied, "No, you don't." It's yet another example of Ringo speaking before he thinks, but how was Yoko feeling? I don't know but had she expected the killer to shoot her too?
Spencer Leigh
Imagine
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