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Re: Yoko Ono ...

Posted by J (A) on November 26, 2006 at 16:56:51

In Reply to: Re: Yoko Ono ... posted by halfnote on November 25, 2006 at 21:51:09:

Well, part of this is that it would seem that he didn't give a damn what anybody else thought, and it was allegedly his band, after all. Now, I'm certainly not going to put myself in the ridiculous position of defending Yoko Ono's music, most if not all of which I have no use for. But, as to what she was doing there? Perhaps because John Lennon wanted her to be there? If that doesn't make sense, remember that they'd already done the Two Virgins album prior to the Let It Be sessions.

At the time, to most people and especially Beatles fans, the problem with Yoko's presence was her atonal wailing. But at this point it seems to me that complaining about that atonal wailing--which is a little different than yr post--is an exercise that's just a tad obvious. It's akin to 'disco sucks' posts. And, like 'disco sucks' posts, these tend to have little to do with aspects of music beyond the, uh, obvious.

In certain musical circles that John Lennon admired--John Cage, et al--Yoko Ono was taken seriously as a musical figure, albeit an avant-garde one. I'll hazard a guess that Lennon felt he'd left his art behind, didn't want to be in the Beatles anymore, and wasn't crazy about McCartney running the show as he was at that time, if he was going to be there. So her being there makes sense to me, in spite of how unpleasant & useless her music is to my ears.

She may have been a self-promoter, but as little use as I have for it, one can make a reasonable case, if they feel it's worth their time, that she pioneered & helped invent something we know today as 'performance art.' To suggest that she 'inserted' herself like a 'barnacle' doesn't help to explain Revolution 9, Life With The Lions, the Dirty Mac, or Live Peace In Toronto, either. Lennon saw to it that she shared stages with Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Frank Zappa, and Chuck Berry. But he knew of her work with the Fluxus movement, even if the audiences did not.

The woman had musical credentials involving individuals most Beatles fans had never heard of at the time, and the resulting misunderstanding and disgust seems like a wedge out of the Beatles for Lennon as much as anything else. The 'Lennon Remembers' interview delves into quite a bit of this stuff. Yr post reads like it's coming from someone who's never read it. If I'm wrong about that, and if I appear like some sort of 'sophisticate,' then I'm truly sorry to have offended yr sensibilities. Otherwise, it's something I'd consider a must-read for any & all Beatles fans, a long interview conducted by Jann Wenner personally in 1970, and the most revealing & extensive interview John Lennon ever did. I think that if you read that, look at some of his artwork, listen to the direction his music went in ('I Am The Walrus,' etc.), and think about Yoko Ono's accomplishments by that time, I think you might look at all this a little differently.

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