Days That I’ll Remember: Spending Time With John Lennon and Yoko Ono

by Jonathan Cott
Doubleday, 256 pp., $25.95

No one will argue that John Lennon remains a cultural touchstone. More than 30 years after his assassination, the Beatle lives on as a household name amongst the children’s children of anyone who actually bought Rubber Soul the day it hit shelves. In that sense, there’s nothing terribly wrong with Days That I’ll Remember, a warmly nostalgic memoir of one journalist’s relationship with Lennon and his widow, Yoko Ono. Jonathan Cott interviewed the pair twice, in 1968 and again in 1980, mere days before Lennon’s death, and he details the minutiae around those interviews with a genuine admiration of the artist. The John here is the John you thought you knew, though it’s tough to justify a book about a cordial relationship with one of the most documented lives in pop history. If Days That I’ll Remember feels comfortable in slightness, it’s because Cott never stoops to vanity. Sweet, but pointless.

This article appears in June 21 • 2013.

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