Myth: Yoko Ono was responsible for the breakup of the Beatles.
Fact: If Yoko had not accompanied John to recording sessions in the 1970s, the Beatles would have split up much earlier and there would have been no ‘Abbey Road’ or ‘White Album’ and certainly no ‘Imagine’.
The ‘most hated woman in the world’ is still alive and thriving, now in her 90s. This biography by David Sheff leaves little untold. Parts of it have previously appeared in magazine articles, making it a little disjointed at times. Nevertheless, it is a gripping read and hopefully will introduce Yoko’s rare talent to a new generation.
Yoko Ono was born in 1933 into one of the wealthiest and most influential families in Japan. Her parents led busy lives and were cold and distant to their children. From an early age, Yoko learnt independence, but was plagued by loneliness, self-doubt and depression. During her teenage years, she made several suicide attempts – luckily without success.
On 9 March 1945, when Tokyo was fire-bombed her family fled to a bomb shelter, but Yoko had a high fever and could not be moved. She sat alone at her window and watched Tokyo burning – an unforgettable image.
At pre-school, she was taught to listen to sounds in the environment, such as birdsong, and translate them into musical notation, a skill she continued to develop and which shaped her avant-garde performances and compositions throughout her life. She went on to become the first female student in the Philosophy department at the prestigious Gakushūin University but dropped out after only two semesters and joined her family in New York. She enrolled in Sarah Lawrence, the all-women college in Bronxville, where she spent most of her time in the music library, headphones on being inspired by the atonal and dissonant music that was gaining favour at the time.
In New York she established friendships with all the right people – John Cage, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg and many others. She developed her art in various forms – music, poetry, sculpture, painting – often brought together in her notorious ‘happenings’. Her private life was equally complex, even before she met John Lennon, with a couple of marriages and a daughter who was kept away from her for some
25 years.
Life in the US presented its own problems. Due to John’s previous drug conviction in England the couple were being followed by the FBI and other government agencies who were keen to deport John. Believing their phones were being tapped, they recorded all their conversations in case they needed to prove their innocence.
The unimaginable tragedy of witnessing John being murdered before her eyes in 1980 eventually compelled her to continue with her work. She has been able to transcend the hate and vitriol she experienced as ‘the woman who destroyed the Beatles’ and remains one of the most fascinating personalities and challenging artists of our time.
Reviewed by Russell Thomson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Sheff is the author of Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction, Clean, All We Are Saying, The Buddhist on Death Row, Game Over and other books. His latest book is Yoko
David graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. He lives with his family in Northern California. Along with working as a writer, David has been a featured speaker about substance-use disorders and mental illness at the United Nations and high schools and colleges, addiction and mental-health conferences, and community events throughout the United States and Canada.
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