Ostatnio beatlefani z yahoo ochrzanili mnie za dobor lektur. Glownie nie spodobal im sie Goldman.
Opinie publikuje po angielsku poniewaz - w zasadzie - skoro Goldman nie zostal przetlumaczony na nasz jezyk, to cala sprawa zainteresuje wylacznie "anglikow".
>Lewisohn, Davies and even Norman are a good choice, Goldman one
>can read for a laugh, but Kozinn I would replace with Sulpy - more
>up-to-date and relieable.
Well, I don`t say ALL he writes is wrong. In fact there are a lot
of things in there, that I believe are right. But the way some
stuff is written it like Goldman was under John`s bed all the
time and sometimes even in his head - I`d call it fact-filled-fiction
with more than a tendency of interpretation - a bit like "The day
John met Paul", just with this book the author clearly says, that
he has to make up a few things and beside was researching
very well, while the Goldman research is very doubtful - a lot
of sources, but not very much checking them. Goldman made
a lot of fans rage, I have a different approach, maybe some of
his stuff is plain mean and made-up, but I thought it`s fun to
read - see, I don`t HAVE to believe it`s all true, so I cannot
really become that easily angered. Good for laugh - I stay
with it, but might add: at least. Respect? Well.... not really.
Oh, and because you asked: For example I don`t buy the
story, that John hit Stu so hard, that he had to be afraid, that
he caused his death - in fact I don`t even think he ever hit him.
Sorry, this goes OT - bootlegwise - but I think it`s interesting.
Again - it`s less WHAT he writes, but more HOW he writes.
(suggesting a lot of things and making them look like being
the one and only possible truth instead of admitting it to be
an - often sensationalizing and crude - interpretation.
Also he`s a hobby psychologist with a tendency to search out
dark sides of a personality, which John no doubt had, but the
way he portrays him, John would have been a psycho throughout,
and I don`t really have to buy that, I prefer my own judgement.
KW
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From: kozinn@....com (Kozinn)
Subject: Re: Goldman
> The best reason I can think of not to believe what he says is that too
many people disputed it. He seems to take parts of Lennon's life and
generalize them to his entire life.
Well, there's that, but there are more concrete reasons too. One is that
there are certain verifiable facts about a person's life, particularly one
as public as Lennon's. When you have a book by someone who makes great
claims for his "exhaustive" research, yet whose errors on basic facts are
legion, you know that you have a problem. Here are just a few of Goldman's
howlers: that "Love Me Do" was released on a 10" 78rpm disc, that McCartney
was the composer of "Hello Little Girl" (Lennon's first song), that the Feb
'64 Sullivan Shows took place at the Maxine Elliott Theater in Times Square
(!-- as with the Peter Brown errors, all one has to do is watch the
videotape of the show; Sullivan actually gives the address of the theater,
which was not in Times Square); that Pete Best was a far better and more
interesting drummer than Starr (again, all you have to do is listen to the
Decca auditions, the early BBC performances and the Sheridan recordings);
that "Any Time At All" is "the most exciting song in the Beatles first
filmscore," ... and so on. When I read the book I came up with 10 typed
pages of this kind of error, and other writers have found other mistakes.
There are also contradictions all over the place. At one point he says that
all of Yoko's children were born by Caesarian section; later he says that
Tony Cox delivered Kyoko. At one point he describes Yoko as a careful
Oriental cook; elsewhere he says she couldn't cook rice without burning it.
On one page Lennon is described as a semi-comatose drugged out invalid, and
it is claimed that this was how he was all through the "house-husband"
years; elsewhere he has him out on sprees buying furs or flying off to Cairo
with Yoko in search of antiquities. In each of these cases, and many others,
which is it? This is real sloppiness.
His musical analysis is absurd -- he claims that "A Hard Day's Night" is
entirely in the mixolydian mode, which isn't at all true, and he uses terms
like major and minor, modal and tonal as though they are "opposites," rather
than merely different, which is something no musician would do. At one point
he suggests that Lennon was such an incompetent guitar player that you can't
even hear him on the Beatles recordings.
My point is, if you're going to publish an iconoclastic book, the first
thing you have to do is persuade your readers that you 1) actually do know
your subject, and 2) that you have carefully researched your material and 3)
that you have judiciously weighed all the evidence you've collected before
reaching your conclusion. If a reader familiar with the story runs into
errors and weird contradictory assertions on page after page, the value of
the book is diminished accordingly. So, even if Lennon were the character
Goldman describes, Goldman's own slovenliness undercut his own case.
- Allan
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