The Lennon companion: Twenty-five years of comment - Softcover

Thomson (editor of Conclusions on the Wall: New Essays on Bob Dylan) and Gutman (author of a biography of Prokofiev) here assemble 60 articles on John Lennon and the Beatles, a cultural history of pop music from the rise of the Beatles in the 1960s to the present day. The articleswritten by commentators as diverse as Gloria Steinem, Noel Coward, Ned Rorem and David Frostinclude criticism of the Beatles' music and movies, and of Lennon's books. There is praise, condemnation and scholarly musical analysis, as well as coverage of the FBI investigation of John Lennon's political activities in the U.S. The book includes an extensive bibliography and a selective discography of recordings by Lennon and the Beatles, but no information on the contributors, many of them unfamiliar; short biographies would have been helpful. Illustrations.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

$19.95. music This is the first truly international anthology on John Lennon, its 60 articles coming from countries as diverse as Italy and the Soviet Union. Further, many of the writers, including Gloria Steinem, Tom Wolfe, and Pauline Kael, are from outside the music world. The pieces, some written for this volume, are by turns brilliant, trite, celebratory, and overblown, sometimes revealing as much about the era as they do about Lennon. Despite the title, many essays deal as much with The Beatles as with Lennon, unlike The Ballad of John & Yoko ( LJ 11/15/82). Lennon's impact on our culture as songwriter and performer, and as hero to a generation, is difficult to analyze. In its scattershot style, this is a stimulating, admirable attempt. Daniel J. Lombardo, Jones Lib. Inc., Amherst, Mass.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.