-Special thanks to Sofie for sending!

English Translation of article:

”John” is Cynthia’s second book about John Lennon. The first one, “A Twist of Lennon”, was published in 1978. Cynthia says she wants to write a new book because she has so many incidents she couldn’t have written about before, and she has so many feeling she didn’t know how to express.
 
Cynthia writes about the relationship between her, John and Julian, the daily life as a Beatle-wife, the life they shared, and the life after the divorce and the shooting at the 8th of 1980. The book begins in the early days, when Cynthia and John met at art school. This is the funniest part to read; John as a fascinating though guy with romantic back pages, when they fell in love and their relationship, and the rise to fame. Then comes Julian, the fame, the drugs and the following, continual distance between the parts in the little family.
 
It’s always interesting to read about the private person John Lennon. The man had great musical skills, and such a complex way to be. This books says a lot about the private person Lennon, but it dosen’t give you the greatest news of all time and unknown facts; it mostly make my impressions and thoughts I had about him from before stronger. The really nice thing about this book is that it’s very honest, and you don’t get the perfect and always-nice picture of John that others often give, among them Yoko. When this book came out , the newspapers wrote that Lennon was a man who hit his wife, and that he had a cold relationship to his son Julian. This isn’t really big news either. But it’s still heartbreaking to read about Julian's want for a daddy, and John and Yoko's treatment on Cynthia and Julian.
 
But the thing I find most irritating about this book, isn’t just Cynthia’s naive attitude, but also all the mistakes about the facts. The faults is to find in geography, dates and years. She claims All My Loving was written for her by John, but this song is written by Paul alone. She also says the EP Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane didn’t get to number one at once, but it never got to number one at all.
Cynthia says the Beatles and Brian Epstein signed a contract in December of of 1961, and that Brian would get 25% of the profits. That’s wrong; their first was signed in January 1962, and Epstein's share was 10%. Epstein didn’t sign the contract that time, but signed a new one in October of 1962, where he got 25%. Cynthia writes that the Beatles offered Ringo Starr the job as a drummer when they heard he’d left his band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. This is not right; Ringo was offered the job while he still was a Hurricane, and left the band. She also writes that the Beatles in the early day used to play songs by Cliff Richard!
There is many interesting facts about John’s family, though there are some mistakes there too. Cynthia claims among other things that John’s aunt Elisabeth divorced for her husband Charles and married the dentist Robert Sutherland. But it wasn’t like that – Charles died, and she married Sutherland many years later.
 
There are many faults like these, but the facts aren’t really the most important things in this book – you can read facts in other books.
If you want to know more about the person Lennon, this is a good book to read.
 
Written by L. Englebraaten, translated by S.B. Ringstad

 

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