Download or read book John Lennon Did Not Die a Slow Death written by Jim O'Donnell and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013-08-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: JOHN LENNON'S LAST MOMENTS The title piece in this 10-story book tackles the question of whether former Beatle John Lennon died a swift death in seconds when he was shot in 1980, or an appallingly slow death over several excruciating minutes. Urban legend has it that Lennon was actually able to speak within minutes after being shot. But through many interviews with police officers and doctors, and a thorough look at various reports, author Jim O'Donnell dislodges this urban legend about a legend. Although some of the details about Lennon's death are graphic, they serve to show that Lennon most likely died a fast death, not a slow, tormented one. For example, there were two officers first on the scene where Lennon was shot. One of them told O'Donnell: "His [Lennon's] face was right into the floor, actually, face down. He wasn't turned left or right. His arms were spread out in front of his head, almost like you were taking a dive. He was actually turning white at that point." The remaining pieces in the book present the stories of nine other deceased people from the world of rock, including six rock stars, a DJ, a TV host, and a writer. CONTENTS 1. John Lennon Did Not Die A Slow Death 2. Jim Morrison: Rock's Wildest Celebrant 3. Elvis Presley (Occupation: Pop Singer) 4. And the Wind Cries Jimi 5. Janis Joplin: Lone Star 6. Getting Zapped by Zappa 7. Bill Haley: Rock's William the Conqueror 8. The Freed Kingdom 9. A Dick Clark Special 10. Ray Coleman: Author, Journalist, Mentor Excerpts On John Lennon: "It is time to put to rest the story that after being shot John Lennon was living, talking, conscious. Actually, he was dying, moaning, unconscious. This man who lived a fast life died a fast death, not a slow, tormented one." On Jim Morrison: "No singer before or since has had such a gift for embodying and dramatizing the search for self. He ate up every deep, dark aggression in the room, and sent it back in the emotional colors of his art. He was a natural. All Jim Morrison did for stardom, claimed Jim Morrison, was stop getting haircuts." On Elvis Presley: "It is the face that sailed a thousand hips. Twentieth-Century man-and woman, especially-knows the first name better than any other two names that ever graced the lips of humankind-Charlie Chaplain and Beethoven, Walter Cronkite and Sandy Koufax, Jane Fonda and Harry Truman, notwithstanding." On Jimi Hendrix: "He raised the performance level of rock 'n' roll in one blazing fell swoop. He was virtuosity AND flash. And once you saw him put the two together, the image was harder to shake than dandruff. You couldn't help demanding more from every performer you saw thereafter." On Janis Joplin: "Some performers let off steam on a stage. Janis Joplin let off lava. She was so volcanic, her back-up bands functioned mainly as rumbling blue clouds harboring her lightning bolts." On Frank Zappa: "Ugliness objectively correlates Zappa's thoroughly anarchic notion that acting and thinking strictly within society's unwritten rules prevents you from being fully and freely you. (Whew! What a long way of saying nicety is the mother of prevention.)" On Bill Haley: "Bill Haley was a smuggler: he smuggled rock 'n' roll past adult customs and into teen toyland. He had a diamond in his shoe-though he didn't really know it, or intend to break any laws. It was just that the commodity he offered was as freakoid to his public as fifty years earlier the horseless carriage that Barnum and Bailey Circus offered was to their public." On Alan Freed: "He is the reason the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland-not in Memphis or Liverpool. He gave rock 'n' roll its name by using rock to do what it's supposed to do: free the spirit. And he freed many."
Download or read book Death of a Dreamer written by Alison Behnke and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York, December 8, 1980: The announcement shocked the world. Beatles founder and legendary musician John Lennon had been murdered in front of his New York home. With no warning, a lone gunman opened fire, shooting Lennon in the back just as Lennon returned from a recording session with his wife, Yoko Ono. Husband, father of two, cultural icon, and hero to millions, Lennon was dead. Around the globe, people mourned the loss of a man who had stood for peace, a man who had given so much joy to the world through his gift of music. No one had seen it coming...except one man—Mark David Chapman, Lennon's assassin. What drove this former Beatles fan to commit such a terrible act? Follow the lives of both Lennon and Chapman, learn about the political and cultural settings in which both grew up, and trace—step by excruciating step—the final moments of John Lennon's life.
Download or read book The Last Days of John Lennon written by James Patterson and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover one of the greatest true crime stories in music history, as only James Patterson can tell it. With the Beatles, John Lennon surpasses his youthful dreams, achieving a level of superstardom that defies classification. “We were the best bloody band there was,” he says. “There was nobody to touch us.” Nobody except the original nowhere man, Mark David Chapman. Chapman once worshipped his idols from afar—but now harbors grudges against those, like Lennon, whom he feels betrayed him. He’s convinced Lennon has misled fans with his message of hope and peace. And Chapman’s not staying away any longer. By the summer of 1980, Lennon is recording new music for the first time in years, energized and ready for it to be “(Just Like) Starting Over.” He can’t wait to show the world what he will do. Neither can Chapman, who quits his security job and boards a flight to New York, a handgun and bullets stowed in his luggage. The greatest true-crime story in music history, as only James Patterson can tell it. Enriched by exclusive interviews with Lennon’s friends and associates, including Paul McCartney, The Last Days of John Lennon is the thrilling true story of two men who changed history: One whose indelible songs enliven our world to this day—and the other who ended the beautiful music with five pulls of a trigger.
Download or read book The Last Days of John Lennon written by Fred Seaman and published by Dell Publishing Company. This book was released on 1992-09-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the late Beatle's last days discusses Lennon's relationship with Yoko Ono, Yoko's heroin use and extramarital affairs, Lennon's virtual self-imprisonment in the Dakota, his battles with Yoko, and more. Reprint.
Download or read book Trouble written by Kate Jennings and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-08 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1970 Kate Jennings, twenty-one, stunned a Sydney anti-war rally with a pull-no-punches speech that put women s lib on the map. Brave, impassioned and searing, the speech set the tone for the idiosyncratic career that was to follow. A few years later, she was on her way to New York, where she would make her name as a writer and enjoy a ringside seat at some of the most confronting events of our time. Trouble collects Jennings s best work from the last four decades. With a polemical anger tempered by a keen sense of the absurd and a fiercely independent streak, she writes incisively about politics, morality, finance, feminism and the writing life. She describes America with the keen eye of an outsider and looks back at Australia with an expatriate s frankness. Trouble is both an unconventional autobiography and a record of remarkable times. From the protest movements of the 1970s, via Wall Street s heyday and dramatic collapse, to the historic election of Barack Obama, Jennings captures the shifts seismic and subtle, personal and political that brought us to where we are now. After four decades, Kate Jennings work is as exhilarating and impossible to categorise shocking with the shock of recognition as the day it was written.
Download or read book Beatlebone written by Kevin Barry and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2015 He will spend three days alone on his island. That is all that he asks . . . John is so many miles from love now and home. This is the story of his strangest trip. John owns a tiny island off the west coast of Ireland. Maybe it is there that he can at last outrun the shadows of his past. The tale of a wild journey into the world and a wild journey within, Beatlebone is a mystery box of a novel. It's a portrait of an artist at a time of creative strife. It is most of all a sad and beautiful comedy from one of the most gifted stylists now at work.
Download or read book John Lennon The Life written by Philip Norman and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 866 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Bestseller Drawing on previously unknown sources, unpublished letters, and unprecedented access to all the key figures, author and journalist Philip Norman gives us the most complete and revealing portrait of John Lennon that is ever likely to be published. For this masterpiece of biography, Philip Norman set himself the challenge of looking afresh at every aspect of Lennon’s much-chronicled life. He has not just dug deep into the archives, including his own vast collection of tapes and notebooks dating back to the 60s, but spoken to hundreds of witnesses, from every walk of life and every stage of Lennon’s. The interviewees include Sean Lennon, whose moving reminiscences reveal his father as never before, and Yoko Ono, who speaks with sometimes shocking candour about her marriage to John. In his brilliant Shout!, we were shown a band; in John Lennon, Philip Norman gives us a portrait of a man. It reconciles as never before the contradictions of this endlessly fascinating character–the volatile and violent hippie, the phenomenally wealthy advocate of no possessions, the family man and junkie–and his journey from Liverpool suburbia to becoming one of the presiding geniuses of pop culture.
Download or read book The Walrus Was Paul written by R. Gary Patterson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1998-10-29 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to the hoax that Paul McCartney was killed in an automobile accident in 1966 and replaced by a look-a-like.
Download or read book This Day in Music written by Neil Cossar and published by . This book was released on 2014-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Births, deaths and marriages, No1 singles, drug busts and arrests, famous gigs and awards... all these and much more appear in this fascinating 50 year almanac.Using a page for every day of the calendar year, the author records a variety of rock and pop events that took place on a given day of the month across the years.This Day in Music is fully illustrated with hundreds of pictures, cuttings and album covers, making this the must-have book for any pop music fan.
Download or read book Let Me Take You Down written by Jack Jones and published by Villard. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A top crime journalist reveals precisely how the world-shattering murder of John Lennon happened—and why In Let Me Take You Down, Jack Jones penetrates the borderline world of dangerous fantasy in which Mark David Chapman stalked and killed Lennon: Mark David Chapman rose early on the morning of December 8 to make final preparations. . . . Chapman had neatly arranged and left behind a curious assortment of personal items on top of the hotel dresser. In an orderly semicircle, he had laid out his passport, an eight-track tape of the music of Todd Rundgren, his little Bible, open to The Gospel According to John (Lennon). He left a letter from a former YMCA supervisor at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, where five years earlier, he had worked with refugees from the Vietnam War. Beside the letter were two photographs of himself surrounded by laughing Vietnamese children. At the center of the arrangement of personal effects, he had placed the small Wizard of Oz poster of Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion. “I woke up knowing, somehow, that when I left that room, that was the last time I would see the room again,” Chapman recalled. “I truly felt it in my bones. I don’t know how. I had never seen John Lennon up to that point. I only knew that he was in the Dakota. But I somehow knew that it was it, this was the day. So I laid out on the dresser at the hotel room . . . just a tableau of everything that was important in my life. So it would say, ‘Look, this is me. Probably, this is the real me. This is my past and I’m going, gone to another place.’ “I practiced what it was going to look like when police officers came into the room. It was like I was going through a door and I knew I was going to go through a door, the poet’s door, William Blake’s door, Jim Morrison’s door. . . . I was leaving what I was, going into a future of uncertainty.” Praise for Let Me Take You Down “Jack Jones has written a beautiful book, rare in its attention to the social context giving rise to stalkers and assassins of celebrities . . . celebrity worship is ambivalent—admiration shares the altar with envy. When the worshipped disappoints, a ‘nobody’ can become a ‘somebody’ by killing the pop culture idol. Let Me Take You Down is both fascinating and brilliant.”—Ladd Wheeler, Professor of Psychology, University of Rochester, Former President of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology
Download or read book Redemption Song written by Chris Salewicz and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2008-05-13 with total page 967 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With exclusive access to Strummer's friends, relatives, and fellow musicians, music journalist Chris Salewicz penetrates the soul of an rock 'n roll icon. The Clash was--and still is--one of the most important groups of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Indebted to rockabilly, reggae, Memphis soul, cowboy justice, and '60s protest, the overtly political band railed against war, racism, and a dead-end economy, and in the process imparted a conscience to punk. Their eponymous first record and London Calling still rank in Rolling Stone's top-ten best albums of all time, and in 2003 they were officially inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Joe Strummer was the Clash's front man, a rock-and-roll hero seen by many as the personification of outlaw integrity and street cool. The political heart of the Clash, Strummer synthesized gritty toughness and poetic sensitivity in a manner that still resonates with listeners, and his untimely death in December 2002 shook the world, further solidifying his iconic status. Salewicz was a friend to Strummer for close to three decades and has covered the Clash's career and the entire punk movement from its inception. He uses his vantage point to write Redemption Song, the definitive biography of Strummer, charting his enormous worldwide success, his bleak years in the wilderness after the Clash's bitter breakup, and his triumphant return to stardom at the end of his life. Salewicz argues for Strummer's place in a long line of protest singers that includes Woody Guthrie, John Lennon, and Bob Marley, and examines by turns Strummer's and punk's ongoing cultural influence.
Download or read book The Beatles written by Bob Spitz and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive biography of The Beatles, hailed as "irresistible" by the New York Times, "riveting" by the Boston Globe, and "masterful" by Time. As soon as The Beatles became famous, the spin machine began to construct a myth -- one that has continued to this day. But the truth is much more interesting, much more exciting, and much more moving -- the highs and the lows, the love and the rivalry, the awe and the jealousy, the drugs, the tears, the thrill, and the magic to never be repeated. In this vast, revelatory, exuberantly acclaimed, and bestselling book, Bob Spitz has written the biography for which Beatles fans have long waited.
Download or read book Beatle Meets Destiny written by Gabrielle Williams and published by Marshall Cavendish. This book was released on 2010 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When superstitious eighteen-year-old John "Beatle" Lennon, who is dating the best friend of his twin sister, meets Destiny McCartney, their instant rapport and shared quirkiness make it seem that their fate is written in the stars.
Download or read book The Beatles and the Historians written by Erin Torkelson Weber and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-04-27 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hundreds of books have been written about The Beatles. Over the last half century, their story has been mythologized and de-mythologized and presented by biographers and journalists as history. Yet many of these works do not strictly qualify as history and the story of how the Beatles' mythology continues to be told has been largely ignored. This book examines the band's historiography, exploring the four major narratives that have developed over time: The semi-whitewashed "Fab Four" account, the acrimonious breakup-era Lennon Remembers version, the biased "Shout!" narrative in the wake of John Lennon's murder, and the current Mark Lewisohn orthodoxy. Drawing on the most influential primary and secondary sources, Beatles history is analyzed using historical methods.
Download or read book Lennon Remembers written by Jann Wenner and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rolling Stone interviews conducted in 1970 and published in 1971.
Download or read book Bunny Bunny written by Alan Zweibel and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2000-04-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Applause Books). In a series of funny, tender, and touching dialogues, former Saturday Night Live writer Zweibel recalls his buddy-and-almost-lover friendship with SNL actress Gilda Radner, who died of ovarian cancer. Zweibel claims he "merely scribbled the dialogues playing in my head," and, indeed, these recreated conversations have a neurotic, sarcastic, and vulnerable air of aunthenticity. The actress and writer become fast friends on the SNL set and segue into personal revelation.
Download or read book The Day John Met Paul written by Jim O'Donnell and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Day John Met Paul is a spellbinding hour-by-hour account of July 6, 1957, when fate brought together two men who would radically change the face of popular music: John Lennon and Paul McCartney. This second edition includes a new introduction and photos of the many Liverpool landmarks - from Strawberry Fields to Penny Lane - that played a role in the Beatles' life and works." -back cover.
