This eschewal of narrative for argumentation is unpardonable in a book billed as biography, the genre that promises a life story, but it’s not surprising, given Riley’s pedigree. A quarter-century ago, this talented and ambitious music critic was one of the midwives at the birth of Serious Beatles Studies with his “Tell Me Why,”the first rigorous song-by-song analysis of the Fab canon. Like “Lennon,” that earlier work brims with literary sophistication, analytical daring and unabashed, obsessive love for the Beatles and Lennon songbooks. And in both books, every sentence makes you think — deeply and profitably — about the act you’ve known for all these years. But no reader can mistake either for a story well told. The (gimme some) truth is that “Lennon,” at 661 pages of text, presents not a definitive biography but a parade of polemics, by turns persuasive and dubious — and, as a reading experience, a tough slog.
Riley telegraphs his despair at the challenge of retelling Lennon’s well-trod life story early in Part Three, which covers Lennon’s solo years. Nine pages in, nearly 200 pages before the book’s end, Riley diagrams the seven personas Lennon test-drove between 1970 and 1980: “towering pop romantic (‘Instant Karma’), moon-howling ex-lover as wounded narcissist (‘Plastic Ono Band’), New Age sage (‘Imagine’), protest-song pamphleteer (‘Some Time in New York City’), middle-aged cage rattler and nostalgist (‘Mind Games,’ ‘Walls and Bridges’), hopeless and defiant romantic (‘Stand By Me’ and ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’), and finally, aging hippie house-husband on extended leave and father-redeemed-by-son in ‘Double Fantasy.’ ”
In a definitive biography, these metamorphoses and notable works would appear not in a laundry list — he “laid it down for all to see” — but as part of an unfolding narrative, which the author would use his storytelling gifts, the familiarity of the tale notwithstanding, to infuse with suspense. No amount of dazzling riffing on the larger meaning of “Twist and Shout” or “Strawberry Fields Forever” can substitute for that.
Nor can all of Riley’s polemical creations peaceably coexist. Of the Beatles’ later years, 1968-70, he writes: “The received line on this period is how everything worked to pull Lennon and [Paul] McCartney — and the Beatles — apart. But the music conveys a different story: despite their differing personalities and writing sensibilities, the band became their rallying point, and every ensemble impulse held them together even as they composed from separate orbits.” Eighty pages later: “The ensemble peaks of ‘The White Album’ and ‘Abbey Road’ happened in spite of their faltering friendships, not because of them.” As with much of Riley’s commentary, the precise meaning of these passages is not instantly accessible — but my gut tells me they are contradictory.
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