The Lennon Companion: Twenty-Five Years of Comment

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. (May)