
In reality, Yoko Ono was a major figure in the 60s art scene, whose work contributed to conceptualism, Fluxus and op art. Some will maintain she was also a musical pioneer in punk, riot grrl feminism, lo-fi, art rock, and noise pop (eh, IDK).
Whatever your assessment – continue to hate as you please
– but isn't it time that we put aside the inherent racism and admit that Yoko was the love of John's life and therefore the impetus behind both Plastic
Ono Band and Imagine. There is certainly that argument to be made. By
now, you'd think we'd be over it.
I think we're all still enamored, for instance, when the
Beatles in Help! each went into a different door that
connected the same flat. Funny, charming, a part of our eternal fantasy with
the Beatles. I love that scene, but honestly, Yoko didn’t break up the Beatles,
the Beatles just plain grew up - and that was, indeed, a fantasy.
One of my favorite rock vignettes comes from 1966 when
John met Yoko at the Indica Art Gallery in London. The American art scene had
eclipsed that in London, despite the work of Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton,
David Hockney. The focus of pop art was clearly in New York with Warhol and the Factory, with Lichtenstein and Rauschenberg. Art in London still wore a three-piece suit.
But not at the Indica, and on November 9, 1966, John entered the gallery.
John Lennon: There was a sort of underground clique in
London; John Dunbar, who was married to Marianne Faithfull, had an art gallery
in London called Indica, and I'd been going around to galleries a bit on me off
days in between records, also to a few exhibitions in different galleries that
showed sort of unknown artists or underground artists.
I got the word that this amazing woman was putting on a
show the next week, something about people in bags, in black bags, and it was
going to be a bit of a happening and all that. So, I went to a preview the
night before it opened. I went in - she didn't know who I was or anything - and
I was wandering around. There were a couple of artsy-type students who had been
helping, lying around there in the gallery, and I was looking at it and was
astounded. There was an apple on sale there for two hundred quid; I thought it
was fantastic - I got the humor in her work immediately. I didn't have to have
much knowledge about avant-garde or underground art, the humor got me straight away. It was two hundred quid to watch the fresh apple decompose.
But it was another piece that really decided me for or
against the artist: a ladder that led to a painting, which was hung on the
ceiling. It looked like a white canvas with a chain with a spyglass hanging on
the end of it. I climbed the ladder, looked through the spyglass, and in tiny
little letters it said, YES.
So, it was positive. I felt relieved. It's a great relief
when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn't say
NO or FUCK YOU or something.
The point is that 50 years ago the couple married at
Gibraltar, the events of the day captured in the Beatles' hit single "The Ballad
of John and Yoko," on which only John and Paul performed. George was away on
holiday and Ringo was filming The Magic Christian with Peter Sellars. As a bit
of a gag, within the song you can hear Lennon say, "Go a bit faster, Ringo," and Paul shout, "OK, George." The Beatles hadn't lost their sense of
humor. Maybe we should try and find ours. How many bands have an
unblemished 11 LP streak (think what may have happened)? Where would we be today without Imagine or "Live
and Let Die"? Time we get over it, eh?
No comments:
Post a Comment