Wootton's biography recounts the life of singer and songwriter John Lennon, best known for his collaboration with Paul McCartney as the combined creative force which made the Beatles the most famous, popular, and successful musical group in history. Lennon was born on October 9,1940 in Liverpool, England to Julia and Alfred "Freddie" Lennon during a violent air raid by the German Luftwaffe. The author begins with Lennon's troubled youth as a temperamental and obstinate boy who performed poorly in school, but he devotes most of the book to Lennon's success with The Beatles, and concludes with the star's solo musical career and tragic death outside his apartment in New York City.

Lennon's parents married on impulse against the wishes of Julia's family, and they were not emotionally prepared for parenthood. Consequently, Julia's sister, Mimi Smith, raised John. Wootton discusses his troubled childhood, his failure at school (he failed all eight of his exams at the Quarry Bank Grammar in the summer of 1957), his playing of dangerous "dare" games, and his shoplifting of candy. Lennon's very strong commitment to his son Sean derived partly from his need to compensate for the lack of devotion he had received from his parents.

The biography focuses most on how the musicians met, formed an embryonic band called the Quarrymen (a name derived from Lennon's old Grammar school), and how the four different personalities blended together to form The Beatles.

Wootton describes in detail the meteoric rise of The Beatles: how they became a popular local group, then a somewhat successful group in Hamburg, Germany, then a smash success in Britain, and finally the most famous rock band of all time. He writes about the success of each particular album, the individual songs from each record, and how they singly and collectively built the legendary reputation of the Beatles. Wootton judiciously compares the albums, showing how they evolved out of and differed from their predecessors. As the albums became increasingly more sophisticated, complex, and accomplished, the group's teamwork began to disintegrate, as evidenced by the lyrical failure of the albums Abbey Road and Let It Be. The fragments of uncompleted lyrics and songs in Abbey Road resulted from feuding between Lennon and McCartney that adversely affected their creative collaboration. The Abbey Road album was a commercial success, though it was clearly not their best work.

Wootton spends the last part of the book discussing Lennon's solo career; its limited success was only underscored by his prior incredible artistic and commercial triumphs with The Beatles. The author also writes of the marriage of John and Yoko Ono, the Japanese avant-garde artist who some say hastened the breakup of the group. The reader learns of their life together, complete with various controversies such as the decision to do a nude album cover. Ono sang and wrote songs with John, supplanting McCartney as Lennon's musical partner, with inferior results.

The book concludes with the murder of Lennon at the hands of Mark David Chapman on December 8, 1980. Wootton claims that Lennon's death inspired a greater mass outpouring of grief than any since President John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 23, 1963. Thousands began a vigil outside the Dakota apartment building where he lived, and radio stations throughout the world played his music.