Lennon, Goldman & Me

Sixteen years after its publication, Albert Goldman’s notorious biography of John Lennon still outrages Lennon loyalists. Liverpool writer RON ELLIS remembers helping Goldman to research the book...

No other biographer has attracted as much hate as Albert Goldman, yet his early career as an academic gave no indication of the notoriety that was to envelop him.

From 1952 Goldman set out as a college lecturer and in 1961 was granted a PhD in English and Comparative Literature, his dissertation being on the 19th century Romantic author, Thomas de Quincey. Significantly, this emerged as an exposé of de Quincey’s plagiarism.

But in 1959, he embarked on a second career as a cultural journalist when he became music critic of The New Leader.  As time passed, he moved away from literature and classical music into the fields of jazz and pop culture and became editor in chief of Cultural Affairs, the magazine of the Arts Council of America.

In 1972, he was appointed Adjunct Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York’s prestigious Columbia University, his last teaching post before he became a full-time writer.

His widely acclaimed 1974 biography Ladies And Gentlemen — LENNY BRUCE brought him immediate success but it was not until 1980, with the publication of Elvis, that he achieved international notoriety. Although the book has since become the definitive work on Presley, the revelations about the singer’s private life and the exposure of Colonel Tom Parker as an illegal immigrant …

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