Come Together: John Lennon in His Time

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University of Illinois Press, 1984 - Biography & Autobiography - 379 pages
An engaging look at one of music's most defiantly political figures, Come Together recreates two decades of rock and rebellion by tracing John Lennon's ever-evolving politics from the formation of the Beatles in 1960 to his assassination in 1980. From modest anti-establishment tweaking and a penchant for "more popular than Jesus" pot-stirring, Lennon grew into an influential voice of the peace movement opposed to the Vietnam War. His activism drew the ire of the FBI. In 1972, the Bureau tried to deport Lennon back to Britain--a fabled and failed effort to choke off Lennon's threat to merge his celebrity and music with radical politics. Wiener brilliantly recreates an amazing, impassioned time in American life that saw Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono holding bed-ins for peace, commenting on current events, and recording antiwar anthems like "Imagine." He also astutely observes Lennon's naivete and blind spots while offering details of his own ongoing effort to force the release of Lennon's FBI file by the US government.
 

Contents

The Dream Is Over
3
The 1966 Tour
11
Private Gripweed and Yoko Ono
25
Sgt Pepper and Flower Power
33
From Brian Epstein to the Maharishi
45
Rock against Revolution
58
Two Virgins
73
AvantGarde Peacenik
88
Hanratty and Michael X
110
Life on Bank Street
173
It Aint Fair John Sinclair
187
A Strategic CounterMeasure
225
From Madison Square Garden to Election Night
241
Watching the Wheels
283
Starting Over
297
The Struggle of Mark David Chapman
307

The Renunciation of What the Beatles Had Stood For
100
An Interview with Yoko Ono
313

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About the author (1984)

Jon Wiener is a member of the history department at the University of California at Irvine and the author of Social Origins of the New South.

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