The Lives of John Lennon prostitutes in Thailand. This latter assertion greatly angered Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney. The book was criticized by Lennon fans for allegedly containing much unsubstantiated conjecture, and tending to present worst-case scenarios when doing so. Lennon was indeed a heavy drug user, as has been acknowledged by most people who knew the musician well, including Ono and Lennon's first wife, Cynthia Lennon. Other primary sources also support Goldman's claims about Lennon's tendency toward violence, a tendency Lennon himself owned up to in a "Playboy" interview. Concerning Lennon's supposed bisexuality, Ono herself said in a 1981 interview that she told Lennon—although
The Lives of John Lennon "the stupidity of the ["Newsweek"] magazine employees who were assigned the task of smearing me and my book", and concluded by saying that Sante was "a young man of no reputation in the field of popular culture." Sante good-naturedly replied that Goldman's tirade proved that the book was a gigantic, humorous "put-on". Author Phillip Norman, whose own biography of Lennon ("John Lennon: The Life") was published 20 years after "The Lives of John Lennon", described Goldman's book as "malevolent" and "risibly ignorant". On their 1988 album "Rattle and Hum", U2 attacked Goldman's allegations about Lennon in the song "God Part