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Fantasy Life
By B.A. Nilsson
Nowhere Man: The Final
Days of John Lennon
By
Robert Rosen
Quick American Archives, 225 pages, $13.95
Not long ago, the Beatles put out a CD of their No. 1 hits
and once again owned the Billboard list. Thanks to
recently rediscovered tapes, more CDs are on the way. It’s
safe to assume that they, too, will crown the charts.
Interest in the foursome never wanes, collectively or individually,
and among the individuals, John Lennon proved to be the most
complex, enigmatic and, ultimately, tragic.
You have to decide for yourself whether Robert Rosen’s book
accurately reproduces material from John Lennon’s diaries.
Famous for their postmortem peregrinations, the diaries were
swiped by one of Lennon’s assistants and stashed in Rosen’s
apartment. According to Rosen, he worked 16 hours a day, every
day for more than a month, “fueled by coffee and amphetamines,”
to transcribe those diary entries. “I said them out loud like
an incantation, and I began to feel what seemed to be like
Lennon’s energy flowing through me.”
The listings were extensive: “. . . every detail, every dream,
every conversation, every morsel of food he put in his mouth
. . . and it was all an enormous contradiction. Here was a
man who aspired to be like Jesus and Gandhi as much as he
craved money and carnal pleasures.”
But the diaries and Rosen’s transcriptions were soon stolen
back by that assistant, who’d been fired by Yoko Ono. Her
investigation of those shenanigans suddenly threw Rosen into
Ono’s brief employ.
Ultimately, Rosen wrote this account of the last years of
Lennon’s life from memory and published sources. Although
he once again reconstructed diary passages, he was legally
barred from quoting them. As the author notes, it is a “confluence
of information, imagination, and intuition,” which frees it
to get closer to Lennon’s own inner workings than any other
biographical account. Ironically, the book gained tremendous
credibility in the wake of a court case last September in
which Rosen was called to testify on Ono’s behalf.
Take Nowhere Man on Rosen’s terms and it succeeds admirably.
He is a skilled writer whose format allows him to go behind
a mere recitation of facts: He evokes Lennon’s complicated
feelings, which come across as all the more human because
of that complexity.
It’s a strange, compelling story, and we know from the start
that it’s a tragedy. We follow the rich, befuddled rock star
through months of seeming indolence and isolation until he
emerges to record Double Fantasy and prove he is still
at the top of his talent.
Living with his wife and son Sean in a spacious chunk of Manhattan’s
Dakota apartments, Lennon was, if not reclusive, at least
in a state of siegelike retreat. We learn of his routines
and his frustrations, always with glimpses of his own feelings
about these things. In terms of food, for example, “barely
a week went by when John didn’t fast or attempt to fast. Usually
he’d begin a day-long fast, but by dinner time his willpower
would break down and he’d gorge himself on junk food, stuffing
into his mouth anything that happened to be in the refrigerator.
Then he’d call himself a fool.”
Lennon’s relationship with his wife, Yoko Ono, was complex
and, what with her reliance on the occult for decision guidance,
sometimes ridiculous, but Rosen portrays it with enough detachment
and detail to give it credibility. So we learn about numerology,
astrology and the fact that she paid $60,000 to learn how
to cast spells, and it all seems somehow plausible because
of the effective context.
There’s also the relationship with Sean to consider, which
becomes the frustrating story of a man trying to offer his
child a childhood without a sense of communion. Lennon’s last
creative surge seems to have come about, among other reasons,
to give his son a sense of the father, and this compelling
detail emerges about a trip to Bermuda taken by the two:
One afternoon John took Sean to the Botanical Gardens. Everything
was in bloom; it was beautiful. The gardens were meticulously
kept, every plant labeled. They walked hand-in-hand, John
pointing out the plants to Sean, reading the names: Angel
Wings, Purple Imperator, White Excelsior. Then they came
upon a flower from the freesia family. Double Fantasy, it
was called. John, studying the sign closely, said the name
out loud, and, delighted by the sound, he said it again. It
was a good name . . . an excellent name.
The creation of the Double Fantasy album is by itself
a fascinating story, probably the best look we’ll get at Lennon’s
creative process.
You can argue that Rosen gets too fanciful with the dialogue
he gives to his characters, but that’s also one of the qualities
that makes this a fascinating read. The current version of
Nowhere Man is actually its second edition, vastly
improved over the first. Layout and readability have improved,
a few passages have been rewritten for clarification or with
new information, and photos have been added. Rock-star portraits
tend to swing from hagiography to mudslinging; what makes
this book valuable is the sense that Rosen is providing as
honest a characterization as possible—honest enough so that,
in spite of Lennon’s quirks and foibles, his genius ultimately
shines through.
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