Everybody from Bill Clinton to Fidel Castro loves to remember John Lennon as the dippy Utopian of “Imagine”: “Imagine there’s no countries/It isn’t hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion, too.”
Less remembered is the Lennon of “Run For Your Life”: “Well I’d rather see you dead little girl/Than to be with another man.” In Philip Norman’s merciless biography, Lennon No. 2 is on full display, and the picture isn’t pretty.
Spiteful and selfish, miserly and misogynistic, Lennon abused his friends, cheated on his women and quarreled with almost everyone he knew. His politics were phony and his public persona a pose, the working-class hero who never labored a day in his life. (Personal motto: “Death before work.”) Even such details as his all-macrobiotic diet were hippie spinmastering; Norman recounts a horrified host discovering Lennon and Yoko Ono ransacking his refrigerator for bologna. (Providence Journal - Full Story)
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