Dakota Days: The True Story of John Lennon's Final Years

Dakota Days is another of the books on John and Yoko that is considered forbidden by the people who deify the Lennons. If you go into certain venues and attempt to discuss the book, the sheep with act all agitated -- because they think they're supposed to. What the Beatles-worshippers will not give you is a rational basis for their hatred of this book. Their dislike of it, after all, isn't reasonable to begin with. It's just that Dakota Days addresses areas of John's and Yoko's lives -- Yoko's outrageous addiction to superstition, Lennon's depression in the mid-to-late 1970s, etc. -- that Lennon worshippers don't want anyone to know about. In fact, this is a very good and extremely readable book which fully exposes Yoko's craziness, some of the problems that plagued the Lennons' marriage, and the creative impotence that tormented Lennon in the late 1970s. It's is very telling that the best response Ono could muster to the book was the trotting out of her loathesome spokesperson Elliot Mintz, who duly spouted his usual nonsense. I recommend Dakota Days to those who are genuinely intersted in John and Yoko's lives in the 1975 - 1980 period.

I'm not quite sure why previous reviews have been so low.I have read many Lennon bios, Goldman, Seaman, May Pang, Ray Coleman, Giuliano.I find that this bio is quite refreshing, in that John Green seems to be a person who did not yield before the 'John and Yoko' force...he seems to have held his own, and wasn't afraid to face up to them. It seems that Yoko was almost 'beholden' to Green, and that he was a person she (and John) would not try to beat down with her (their) relentless quirks. This is a clear and cleverly written account of John's last five or so years. There are intriguing accounts of Yoko's obsession with a South American witch (ending, in this book, with a kinda hysterical discussion of Yoko's wondering if she was signing a pact with the Devil, only to beg Green to sign his own name, to which he later replied, 'My name, Yoko? no, I signed YOUR name!').Another account that stands out is John's visit to a 'new-age' (in 21st century terms, remember this was the early 70s) store, in search of proper ceremonial objects for his and Yoko's renewal of their wedding vows. John's sarcastic response to the store's solemn owners made me laugh out loud. I think Green did a very good job of showing Lennon's various sides...from the witty, sarcastic (public-loving) John, to the emotionally crippled, loner, stay-in-bed til I wither, side. The most revealing aspect of the book (and this can be confirmed by May Pang's book 'Loving John') is that Green kept trying to get John to really take responsibility for his life...he kept telling him that he could really do something, make music, be alive, if only he'd take responsibility for it. And, alas, it seems that John chose to wallow in paranoia and nothingness for too long...all we have left is the legacy he left us when he started back to work in the early 80's...all in all, this book is a definite must-read for Lennon fans who truly want to know what went on during the post 'Lost-Weekend' (a myth in itself, see May Pang's book) period.