WeeklySA_AdminICON: New biography recalls difficult life of collapsing world of Beatles and its controversies
By Jacob Mawela
John Lennon, one of the most famous Beatles alongside Paul McCartney, was inextricably linked to the life of Yoko Ono, his partner until his tragic death – in a relationship that was surrounded by controversy and viewed with suspicious eyes by the world.
David Sheff, the author of the book, ONO, met Ono and Lennon in 1980. With them, he conducting an in-depth interview with shortly before Lennon’s brutal murder
On December 8 1980, Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman in New York City. Chapman, who lived in Hawaii, travelled to New York determined to kill Lennon.
Sheff and Ono became close friends as she rebuilt her life, surviving threats on her life and continuing to create groundbreaking art and music.
Drawing from their decade-long friendship and interviews with Yoko, her family, close friends, and collaborators, Sheff shares the story of Ono – one of the most unlikely and remarkable lives ever lived.
The world will never know why she was falsely vilified for the breaking up of the greatest rock-and-roll band in history.
So often remembered only for her impact on The Beatles, Ono has been caricatured as an opportunistic seductress or manipulative impostor – with devious intentions.
Paul McCartney and Ono had a complex and, often strained relationship characterised by a perception of conflict, particularly regarding Ono’s presence in the Beatles’ recording studio, and her influence on Lennon, labelling it an “interference in the band’s workflow and dynamic”.
Despite these difficulties, Ono was determined to reframe her incredible achievements independent of Lennon. Sheff would write Ono’s biography without seeking to compromise the truth – refraining from depicting her as either a saint or a sinner, but rather by accurate reconstruction of events as they unfolded in real time
But fate dealt a cruel hand on Ono’s life. Without clear plausible explanation, Ono became one of the world’s most hated women. She was roundly vilified. Her vilifications took forms of racism, sexism, with sexist slurs regularly thrown at her character.
The media repeated the slurs without justification, and so did the band’s fans, also spewing unfounded claims that she had caused the breaking up of the band – the Beatles. Ono’s life would be hounded by such misrepresentations of character, muddied in murky waters of gossip and innuendos.
With viciousness that new no bounds, she would be described as “the wondrous mystic prince from the rock ‘n’ roll world” and racist insults such as “an ugly Jap” would abound. Degradations she took without flinching, but with stoic determination focused on advancing her career and proving her critics wrong.
She would be yelled at by the Beatles’ fans to go back to her own country – with dehumanisation and insensitivity and humiliation that knew no end.
But she is a strong woman with character and resilience. She knew in the heart of hearts that, in the words of the ditty, sticks and stones could break his bones, but words, never, these injustices would not break her spirit to do good for the world..
In the aftermath of Lennon’s death, Ono would be a misery – betrayed, robbed, blackmailed, and threatened. Yet the song Imagine would never have been written had it not been of her. Ono would declare it was the hand of fate that brought them together to do good for humanity.
She raved about peace in the world. Justice and peace were her preoccupation and part of her philosophy. She imagined a better world free of conflict and malice and injustice.
Art and social justice campaign were her life, absorbed in the imagined world of egalitarianism. In an act of solidarity with the oppressed.
In November 1969, Lennon returned an MBE medal the Queen had bestowed upon him with the other Beatles in protest against Britain’s involvement in the Biafra War in Nigeria. In that social action, there can be no question that Ono’s hand is obviously present, for justice was her passion.
Now aged 92, Ono has transcended identities and epochs which, among others, include producing 13 Number 1 hits as a recording musician in her own right, and raising an assortment of social injustice bedevilling in the world.
• A trade paperback, Yoko, is published by Simon & Schuster UK and distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball Publishers. Available at leading bookstores countrywide. It retails for R440.
