Tomorrow, Saturday, February 18, 2023, the Japanese Fluxus artist and avant-garde musician Yoko Ono will be celebrating her 90th birthday.
We instantly remember the photo of Yoko and John Lennon on a bed in their apartment at The Dakota on New York’s Upper West Side. This was recorded by Annie Leibovitz on December 8, 1980. Hours later, a deranged fan shot and killed Lennon just outside the imposing brick building.
The January 22, 1981 issue of the American Rolling Stone with this “bed picture” on the cover was to become an icon of rock music photography. This recording was internally disputed in the RS editorial team for a long time. It was Lennon himself who insisted that Yoko also be featured on the RS title. Otherwise there would be neither a story nor an individual portrait.
In an advance homage to the 90th birthday, the local Midtown Manhattan magazine “Chelsea News” also addresses negative vibes that would have always surrounded Ono:
“Sure, Yoko isn’t for everyone. Her shrill, screeching voice put off many listeners. Her experimental artworks and films have been ridiculed as well as admired. And many Beatles fanatics are still (wrongly) angry to this day that they allegedly single-handedly blew up the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band.”
Be honest: Yoko has – rightly or wrongly – a bad reputation.
She burst onto the pop culture stage in the flower power ’60s when the Tokyo banker’s daughter and John Lennon fell in love. The couple didn’t stay long at Swingin’ London. They chose a neutral, cosmopolitan terrain: New York. The “Big Apple” was to become the playground and work area of the eccentric duo for more than a decade.
Here’s a quote from the Chelsea News: “Yoko embodied one of our city’s most valued qualities: chutzpah!”
The magazine commemorates the experimental album “Two Virgins” from November 1968, which became world famous mainly because of the nude pose on the cover. Then there’s the said Annie Leibovitz cover for US ROLLING STONE, which was made just hours before Lennon was murdered by a deranged fan when a naked Lennon was wrapped around a clothed Yoko.
According to background reports, Yoko offered to take off her top. During the session, the Leibovitz team decides to photograph her fully clothed. The American Society of Magazine Editors called the recording in 2005 the “most iconic magazine cover of the last 40 years”.
In US criticism, one can agree on the term “appreciation” when it comes to evaluating their ouevres. Again a reference to her “New York characteristics”: individuality, impertinence, provocation. Yoko stayed “at it” even after the horrific death of John Lennon. As a combative artist whose roots are clearly in the rebel spirit of the late sixties. The dictum of “she was ahead of her time” absolutely applies to Yoko. A prophetess who simply annoyed conservative classic rock fans – and is going.
Had she emerged a decade and a half later – when Patti Smith and Debbie Harry and many others alike were shaking up the punk era and the art scene – her work might have been viewed differently. When she was working with John Lennon on the comeback album “Double Fantasy” in 1980, the son of Liverpool proudly noted that popular new wave bands such as the B-52s were based on Yoko’s early works. The husband refers to her shrill singing and her idiosyncratic “Wailing” style. Basically speaking, it’s (also) about her defiant demeanor, with a groundbreaking character.
This weekend, a culture of remembrance will certainly be cultivated from Tokyo to Tuttlingen. “The Ballad of John and Yoko” is being retold for the umpteenth time: According to this, Yoko met her John on November 9, 1966 in London.
On the evening of her art exhibition in the British capital. Lennon had just returned from his six-week shoot as an actor in the anti-war film How I Won the War. Looking for excitement. As is well known, The Beatles ended their US tour on August 29, 1966 in San Francisco. Which should prove to be the last live performance of her career for the time being. What was to follow was the concept album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.
John and Yoko are connected by a unique artist magic. Lennon as a beat, mushroom and rock ‘n’ roll superstar. In the most famous band in the world. Yoko as a “big name” in the underground art world.
It is rumored that John was meditating with the Beatles in India in February/March 1968 and that he was constantly thinking of them. The song “I’m So Tired” is a witness to this, which says: “I’m going insane, you know/I’d give you everything I’ve got/For a little peace of mind.”
The date of their festive, hippie-esque marriage is March 20, 1969. John moved to Los Angeles alone for about 16 months. Nevertheless, the two were considered “inseparable” even on the tough UK boulevard.
John Lennon was searching, and Yoko Ono opened doors to the underground for him. Art and pop music intertwined. The first studio album John and Yoko released together after arriving in Manhattan in 1972 was called Sometime in New York City. On it is Lennon’s unforgettable declaration of love “Que pasa New York, Que pasa, New York?”. No “new Lennon” without Yoko.
In the long decades that followed, Yoko Ono stayed “on the ball” worldwide. Equally avant-garde musically as conceptually artistic. A new website, created by their son Sean Ono Lennon, celebrates Yoko’s 1996 “Wish Tree” concept. Now people can post their wishes online — and in doing so, increase the number of trees planted around the world.
The campaign is being carried out together with the NGO “One Tree Planted” – in Yoko’s honour. Since the analogue version of 1996, Yoko has collected almost two million wishes in more than 200 “physical installations” of the wishing tree in over 35 countries.
The website will be activated for her birthday tomorrow, at www.wishtreeforyokoono.com.
In her original instructions for use for the number one wishing tree, Yoko wrote at the time:
“Make a wish
Write it down on a piece of paper
Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree.
Ask your friend to do the same.
keep wishing
Until the branches are covered with wishes…”
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