Lennon, The Mobster & The Lawyer

★★★★ Jay Bergen DEVAULT GRAVES. £20

Dreamer versus grifter: see you in court…

For a peace champion, John Lennon was continually in the wars between 1968 and 1977. Some battles he picked, others were thrust upon him. One such was when the Mafiaconnected music mogul Morris Levy, having already grifted Lennon into agreeing to record and release three songs he controlled in settlement of his Come Together/You Can’t Catch Me plagiarism claim, pushed his luck by releasing – as Roots on his own label – a lo-fi rough mix of what would be rush-released as 1975’s Rock

’N’ Roll covers LP. Battle was joined, with Lennon legally represented by old-school rock fan Jay Bergen. Now 85, he’s assembled his memoir of the case from court transcripts and contemporary notes, and it’s a window into the seldom-seen Lennon: lucid, pragmatic, knowledgeable and unflappable. Despite Levy’s long-shot case and shoddy legal representation, the fight was no cakewalk, so gripping stuff with an all too brief happy-ever-after.