Yoko Ono

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Exhibition marks Lennon heritage


Yoko Ono said the exhibition was important because of her beliefs
John Lennon's widow has attended the launch of a special art exhibition which marks her late husband's Irish heritage.
Yoko Ono visited the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, where works by more than 100 of Ireland's contemporary artists are on display.

The art and an accompanying book are also on sale, with the proceeds going to the human rights group Amnesty International.

That group was close to the hearts of both John and Yoko.

She told the BBC: "It is very important, because he (John) had a lot to do with world peace and what we believed in, in terms of Amnesty.

"But also, John was Liverpool-Irish and he was very proud of his lineage."

Northern Ireland artists Wille Doherty and Paul Seawright have contributed pieces to the display.

Works by Guggi, a friend of U2's lead singer Bono, are also on display as well as those by perhaps the most famous of all contemporary Irish artists, Louis LeBrocquy.

The exhibition is open to the public from Friday until 23 May. Admission is free.

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Отличный обзор по дискографии Yoko Ono, правда на английском языке.


Cool and Unusual:

The Recordings of Yoko Ono

by David A. Young

My position as editor of The New Times has not only failed to disprove but, in fact, reinforced my long-held view that there are but a handful of important, lasting, and universal spiritual truths. Our receptivity to and integration of these truths and principles has to do with when, where, and through whom we experience them more often than it does with our being the first ever exposed to them. A master, guru, or teacher with proprietary information is to be held suspect; it is not the fundamental teachings with which we resonate (or not), it is the teacher.

Why am I beginning my music column by saying that? As I've prepared for writing about Yoko Ono's music, three of these principles kept returning to my consciousness: the importance of releasing judgment, the value of speaking one's truth, and the belief that the opposite of love is fear. Few artists have been as universally maligned, reviled, and hated - feared - as Ono, who has steadfastly spoken (and written, sung, painted, and sculpted) her truth, only to be judged - harshly - by most of the world.

Because of her commitment to her art and to her themes of peace and equality, I can honestly and gratefully say that she has been one of the teachers with whom I have resonated. I hope that, through these words, I can convince some that may have based a past dislike of Yoko on misinformation or peer influence to reexamine their judgments. I also hope that those who never had an opinion one way or the other will consider checking into the extraordinary body of work she has recorded.

The reason I am bringing Yoko Ono's music to your attention at this time is that her entire back catalog (1968-1985) has just been reissued on CD on the Rykodisc label. (Three more recent albums remain in print on Capitol.) True to the Ryko's form (they're the ones that did such a stellar job with the Bowie and Zappa catalogs), each disc has been meticulously brought into the digital age and adorned with one to three bonus tracks. In 1992, Ryko brought us Onobox, a deluxe boxed six-CD career retrospective and, simultaneously, Walking on Thin Ice, a best-of-the-best single disc; these remain available alongside the individual album reissues. There's never been a better time to (re)discover Yoko Ono.

The lingering prejudice against Yoko seems to stem from two theses: "she's the bitch that broke up The Beatles," and "all she does is shriek, scream, and yodel; she calls that singing?" Even today, few realize that Yoko was already a successful artist in the underground/avant-garde scene while The Beatles were still gigging in Hamburg, with performances with such luminaries as Ornette Coleman and John Cage to her credit long before she hooked up with her future husband. Her list of collaborators now reads like a "Who's Who in Music and Art," and her life's work in and (way) beyond music is well documented in the book Yoko Ono: Arias and Objects. Even if you decide to pass on checking out her musical legacy on CD, this is a book well worth looking into for an overview of why she is such an important artist.

Her reputation as a screecher is not entirely unfounded; her landmark LP Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970) combines the by-now-trademark nonverbal vocalizations that got her stuck in that pigeonhole with such a hard-rocking band that today it'd be labeled grunge. This is a form to which she returned with a vengeance on her most recent album(s), 1995's Rising/Rising Mixes, prominently featuring her son Sean Ono Lennon on background vocals and a variety of instruments. (I should mention that the Rising albums also contain her most quiet and spare pieces to date.) Released simultaneously with the former record was John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band; the two albums had virtually identical front covers and an overall sound unified by the Primal Scream Therapy they were then undergoing with psychologist Arthur Janov (remember Lennon's "Mother"?). Somehow, Lennon's screaming was hailed as groundbreaking and Ono's dismissed as ugly, spontaneous caterwauling.

The pair had collaborated on three prior albums, all of an experimental, nonmusical nature. These are of somewhat anecdotal interest at this point, but do serve to remind one of the extent to which Mr. Lennon shared his future bride's interest in sound for sound's sake. The third of these, Wedding Album (1969), featured a takeoff on Stan Freberg's 1953 novelty hit "A Dear John and Marsha Letter" ("John & Yoko") on one side and an aural documentary of their "bed-in" honeymoon, during which the (released separately) hit "Give Peace a Chance" was recorded, on the other. The original B-side to that single, Yoko's lovely "Remember Love," appears as a bonus track on the CD reissue of John and Yoko's infamous nude-cover Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins (1968). Two other Ono B-sides turn up as bonus cuts on the Wedding Album CD: "Who Has Seen the Wind?" ("Instant Karma") and "Listen (The Snow is Falling)" ("Happy Xmas [War Is Over]"); it's great to hear these three again without the scratches!

Fly (1971) is a transitional album. Yoko here has one defiant foot in the avant-garde improvisations that defined the limiting stereotypes that still plague her. The other is confidently feeling its way to the achingly beautiful but powerfully direct poetry, the sensitive instrumentation, and evocative singing that have characterized her work ever since - the work few have heard, despite the fact that it constitutes the majority of her oeuvre.

Having established her identity with Fly, Yoko never looked back. The next four albums she recorded, as far as I'm concerned, are the jewels in her musical crown, although there's nothing beyond Fly that I feel slightly equivocated about recommending to New Times readers. Well, the technical exception to this is the original cast recording of a short-lived musical based on her songs, New York Rock. Broadway show tune-type voices are such a gross mismatch for this material that the CD constitutes the sole blot on her legacy.

One of the first in the genre now known as "tribute albums," 1984's Every Man Has a Woman (PolyGram) is a much better way to prove to yourself what a fine gift for songwriting Ono possesses, and how adaptable the songs are to interpretation in different - but appropriate - styles. Harry Nilsson, Roberta Flack, Elvis Costello, Rosanne Cash, and Eddie Money are among the diverse artists turning in more-than-credible performances on the Ono tunes here.

1972 saw Yoko taking a strong stand on feminist issues, and both that year's Approximately Infinite Universe and 1973's Feeling the Space are dominated by songs that were loudly focused on that topic. The material was so direct that it even put off some feminists at the time. In "I Want My Man to Rest Tonight," Yoko reminds her sisters that men and women were complicit in creating a society in which "He was taught by his mothers to never trust girls/ He was told by his fathers to never shed tears." In "What a Mess," she cautions, "If you keep hammering anti-abortion/ We'll tell you no more masturbation for men/ Every day you're killing living sperms in billions/ So how do you feel about that, brother?"

Feeling the Space was, like its two predecessors, recorded with the intention of releasing it as a two-record set. That idea was shelved at the time, although Onobox's version of the album restores the five songs cut. The version of the anthem "Woman Power" (which still gets my fist in the air!) included on Onobox is treated to an ultramodern remix that makes it sound as though it were recorded yesterday. The stand-alone reissue of Feeling the Space is true in mix and sequencing to the original; the bad news is that you have to go to the box set for the extra five songs.

The good news is that one of the bonus tracks here is taken from Yoko's appearance at the First International Feminist Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at which she both spoke (without) and performed (with) John. She movingly tells of how she was "upgraded from 'bitch' as a successful (woman) artist to 'witch' as 'the ugly Jap who took your monument [John] away from you.' She says that, as John's mate, society treated her differently and even her closest friends changed their tune from one of support to "shut up, stay in the background, and you'll be happy." The more powerful she became - both intrinsically and in terms of influence - the more universally she experienced the maxim about fear being the flip side of love. She relates that three years of societal pressure and guilt trips taught her to - literally - stutter.

How wonderful for all of us that she unlearned that through music that was - and remains - cathartic not only for her but also for those that it reached, both through her and through Lennon. (Her influence on him musically and politically cannot be overestimated; witness, for example, his 1972 single "Woman Is the Nigger of the World," backed with her "Sisters O Sisters.")

Ono recorded her next album in 1974. Titled A Story, it did not see release until Onobox. It chronicles in painful detail her processing of her feelings around a "trial separation" she and John were going through at the time. If I were to single out one disc from the batch of Ryko reissues as the New Times album of the month, it would be this fragile masterpiece of heart-on-sleeve soul bearing. The deceptively simple beauty of the arrangements, and the peace, playfulness, and ironically cheerful tone suggested by them, stand in cruel contrast to the heartbreaking angst of the lyrics. This is a masterpiece of honesty, confused yet enhanced by the mixed message of the instrumentation.

Many songs from A Story wound up being recorded in different versions for later projects; two carry tragically prescient alternate meanings in their respective contexts. "Hard Times Are Over" is her affirmation that things will work out for the best, but the false ending on this version bespeaks the fact that Yoko had greater trials to face. When she sings in "Loneliness" of missing her love on A Story, there's quite a different inference than when the song is reprised on 1982's It's Alright (I See Rainbows); by this time, there is no doubt in anyone's mind - Yoko's, John's, or the listener's - that the two are soulmates.

It's well known that the pair took a sabbatical from recording upon their reconciliation, so there is a gap between the latter album and their joint 1980 release, Double Fantasy, upon which - mockery of fate! - appears the re-recording of "Hard Times Are Over." During the sessions for that album, released days before John's assassination, they also recorded the material found on the posthumous album Milk and Honey as well as Ono's only bona fide American hit, "Walking on Thin Ice."

That song turns up as a bonus cut on the reissue of her first post-John album, Season of Glass (1981). Dripping with grief and anger and always eloquent through every intertwined turn of restraint and outburst, the album is as absorbingly, irresistibly painful to listen to as it must have been to make. Yoko was criticized at the time for commercializing John's death, but anyone who understands the soul of an artist knows that this was the only way for her to process her feelings. That point is underscored through the other bonus track, the first version of "I Don't Know Why," recorded on cassette the day after the assassination. In its brooding and plaintive embryonic state, the song offered no foretaste of the seething rage infusing the version included on the album.

If hearing that album is like watching helplessly while a friend bleeds, listening to It's Alright (I See Rainbows) (1982) is like seeing a time-lapse movie of the wound's healing. Poignant and (characteristically) frank, this album comes as close to "charming" as any Ono's produced. The anger from all her previous work, both the source of her power and the reason she had been perceived as threatening and therefore feared and hated, is distilled into its greatest height of personal triumph yet. Couched in a most attractive blend of well-earned pride and heartfelt humility, we hear a musical and poetic definition of the phrase, "righteous anger."

1985 saw the release of Starpeace and a return to Yoko's themes of peace and freedom (the title is a reference to then-president Reagan's Star Wars program). Ahead of her time as usual, she brought about a relentlessly cheerful sound (I've jokingly referred to this as her "Archies" album) by layering what would become known as techno and world beats. Only one track is added to the reissue, but what a doozy: her version of Lennon's "Imagine," recorded live on her 1986 world tour, is as full of authority and conviction as anything she's ever done, actually outstripping his original in impact and believability. We've been imagining it long enough that we really can see it happening; as she said in her 1972 song "Now or Never," "Dream we dream alone is only a dream/ But dream we dream together is reality."

By the time we get to the Rising album, Yoko, in what I think are her most beautiful lyrics to date, makes explicit the "teachings" to which I referred at the beginning of this article, which have always been in her work between the lines. In "Revelations," she blesses the so-called shadow feelings and emotions we all experience and offers advice on making them experiences of light. The various verses address, among other things, anger, sorrow, directionlessness, greed, and jealousy. Having theorized that she is despised because she is feared, I quote what she has to say to those experiencing the shadow side of love: "Bless you for your fear/ It's a sign of wisdom/ (Transform the energy to flexibility/ and you will be free from what you fear.)"

One verse of the 1982 song "Wake Up" goes, "Wake up, wake up/ The bird is up singing/ I know the good times that are coming your way/ I know you're afraid of me and the love of the world/ But open your eyes and you will see that/ I'm singing for you." I believe that Yoko Ono can and will claim the truth of that statement for herself as well as for the bird, and I am grateful that these albums' reissue can hasten that day. In her 1972 song "We're All Water," Yoko sings, "There may not be much difference/ Between you and me/ If we show our dreams." Yoko's been showing you hers for over thirty years; maybe now it's your turn - what are you afraid of? Please take a chance and treat yourself to one or more of these CDs. If you thought you didn't like this music, I think you'll surprise yourself. If you do already like it, you'll be amazed at how fresh it sounds and how lovingly it's been brought back to (digital) life, you'll appreciate the wealth of "new" material, and you'll fall in love with Yoko Ono all over again, more deeply than ever.

As John himself said, "Right on, sister!" Bringing that up to date, I would just add, "You go, girl!"

это с одноименного промовика 82 года

Надпись - думай по-другому

Да, надпись - думай по-другому, таит в себе глубокий смысл, но не каждый может в нём разобраться.

Yoko's 1999 Christmas card.

Yoko's Christmas Card 2000

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Yoko's Christmas Card 2001

Yoko Ono's 2002 Christmas Card

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Q: It is an honor to speak with you Yoko. Tell us about "Kiss Kiss Kiss."

It was on Double Fantasy, the last album for John, and the song was on the album and it was a B-side as well.

Q: When you put out music, do you make an effort to have a "Beatles-link" or do you try to avoid that?

I was not trying to make it related, but in many ways, I guess I was (laughs).

Q: Besides the music, what have you been busy with?

I have been working on a new album -- now I am ready to go in the studio again.

¿ Quick fact ?
With a career as a writer, producer, director, and composer, her latest foray into music was marked by the release of 2001's album, Blueprint For A Sunrise, the first album of new material since 1995's Rising.



Q: Which artists do you like these days?

I just love anybody that does anything in the art world and the artistic world. We just have to keep working and I want everyone in the field to know that we support them.

Q: Where do your influences stem from?

I would say from everywhere, but some people say that it is like the Old Spanish classic theme... but I do not know where they come from, I would say from everywhere...

Q: What do you think of today's boy bands, like 'N Sync, the Backstreet Boys, Bazooka 'N Tulips -- will they have any longevity?

It is okay... but I think that the kind of music that we are doing is okay too... it is like flowers -- we do not all like the same flowers, but they are all nice.

Q: What are your thoughts on the 1960s?

I think that the 1960s were about releasing ourselves from conventional society and freeing ourselves. Those are nice thoughts, but today we have to know what we want to do and have a sense of what we want; so it is similar I guess, but in a different way. Some things were not right.

Q: Do you still listen to older stuff, like the Beatles?

Yes, once in a while... I still make some judgments on it; what the Beatles did was something incredible, it was more than what a band could do and we have to give them respect...

How does Yoko feel about being blamed for the Beatles' breakup? Find out...

Q: Does it bother you that some people ask you what role you played regarding the fate of the band?

Are you tiptoeing around the word "break up" and I was responsible? (laughs)

Q: Hey, you said it, not me (laughs)...

It was what you were thinking, no? But I do think that it was very unfair to blame any one person... no one person could have broken up a band, especially one the size of the Beatles. And it was not just John, some of the other guys were having some thoughts about the band, so it happened.

Q: What did you think about the Barenaked Ladies writing "Be My Yoko Ono" and would you ever sing it live?

I thought that it was cute, but I would never sing it at one of my shows... (laughs).

Q: Is there any style you would not try?

I just go with the flow, so any style can be in my music -- that makes it exciting.

Q: How did you end up on Mad About You?

They asked me, I liked the show so I went for it.

¿ Quick fact ?
Although the Beatles' song "Julia" from The White Album was written for John Lennon's mother, the lyrics "ocean child, calls me" was in reference to Yoko Ono. Their affair was not yet public when the song was penned.



Q: You and John seemed to have a great relationship; what advice would you give to couples?

Be understanding of one another and be willing to compromise. I mean, I think that life with another person is always difficult. The alternative however -- being alone -- is also very difficult.

Q: Your children are always going to be in the shadow... how was it, as a parent, to shelter them?

I tell them that they have to think for themselves. Whether they want to be artists, accountants or lawyers, they have to want it themselves.

Q: What do you want people to think when they hear "Yoko Ono"?

Your friend.

Q: What advice do you give people who want to enter show business?

You are in it as soon as you wanna be in it. What you do with it and where you go is the key.

Q: Tell us your thoughts on every decade.

1960s: Discovery. 1970s: Action. 1980s: Solidity. 1990s: Reality. And 2000s: To solidify the wisdom that we have received up to now.

Q: What are your thoughts when the anniversary of John's death passes?

Well, unlike others, I think of John every day, 365 days... we were close, so there is not a day that I do not think of him. I do try to block it, but December 8th is not the only day I think of him.

Q: If John was here with us, what would he be doing?

He would be doing the same: He would be innovating, he would have jumped on computers and the Internet... and he would probably come to the conclusion that they are overrated! (laughs).

Q: Thank you very much for your time Yoko, and we wish you luck in everything you do.