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In Reply to: Re: Yoko Ono ... posted by halfnote on November 28, 2006 at 21:27:42:
My pleasure. I'm glad that you were at least able to see where I was coming from. Trust me, as I've previously mentioned, I have no great interest in defending Yoko Ono...I just have a problem with the attitudes pointed in her direction on this topic. If we as fans object to her presence, our issue should be with the person who brought her there--not her. And on that basis, I'd say that if anyone should be digitized out of this or that Let It Be clip, it should be Lennon, because he didn't want to be there.>It is my opinion that her so called experimental "vocalizations" are given far more credit than they deserve.
What credit? Who's giving her credit? 99% of what I've seen consists of the super-obvious observations that her atonal caterwauling is unlistenable noise. And maybe 1%, of which I am a reluctant member, either defend her, with some actually enjoying what it is that she does, and some of us who know that this is just a distorted view & think the record should be set straight. So the credit I've assigned her based on what I've read is only presented because I think it's a necessary part of the discussion, not because I have much interest in lauding her work.
>Ever here of a song called "Surfin' Bird" by the Trash Men? That was 1963.
Cool, Daddy-O, but give a listen to 'Little Girl' by John & Jackie, 'Woo-Hoo,' which is currently on those Vonage commercials (though I think it's the 5.6.7.8.s version from Kill Bill), 'Lawdy Mama' by Edgar Blanchard, 'She's My Baby Doll' by Terry Clements & the Tune Tones, some Screaming Lord Sutch shrieks like the one on 'Til The Following Night,' 'Oop Shoop' by Big John & the Buzzards...or a variety of other trashy r&b/rockabilly howlers with insane vocals that you can find on reissue labels like Crypt, where 'Surfin' Bird' is, well, just another novelty. If you want to get even more eccentric, then why not Slim Gaillard? However, all this is stuff that shouldn't really be compared to Yoko Ono, least of all the Trashmen. The Ramones' cover of Surfin' Bird provides perspective on that tune, as well. Yoko shrieked, and, in that Carnegie Recital Hall performance that's documented, apparently had sounds during the performance such as miked flushing toilets.
Some call this art. It ain't for me, but I don't dispute it. And when someone invariably crawls out of the woodwork to lambast someone like me for not making judgments, that this stuff is the Emperor's New Clothes, blah blah blah, all I can say is that I'm certainly not afraid of making judgments, but I refuse to impose them on others. So, what Yoko did was either art, music, film, performance art, whatever, or it wasn't. I say it was, and her laundry list of collaborators is nothing to be sneezed at. Like I said, I don't think you're going to get someone like Ornette Coleman to play with just anyone, even if all she's doing is shrieking. He wasn't exactly playing Percy Faith himself.
>Incidentally, I think the B-52's are enormously talented. I'm surprised you are somewhat dismissive of them.Decent singles band. I like Strobe Light, Private Idaho, et al. Just not exactly my cup of tea. I far prefer the Ramones & other NYC punk, the Clash & Pistols, Buzzcocks, Jam & Damned & other UK punk from that era, Elvis Costello, and, when I'm in that mood for the quirky stuff, Devo. Or, hell, this or that Talking Heads record. Among the new wave eccentric types I'd rather hear a Lene Lovich single, or something like the Rezillos. But that's just me. I don't deny the B-52's, it's just a little off from my primary area of interest.
But any way you slice it, that's a DIRECT Yoko Ono influence on those vocals. Anyone who isn't willing to admit that has no business complaining about her vocals in the first place. And I certainly wouldn't recommend Serge Gainsbourg to someone fitting that description.
>I know you didn't quite compare Ono to Ives, et al. But you referred to John Cage as an atonal composer, which, to my mind, is not quite true.No, I didn't, actually. I wouldn't have been able to put into words anything resembling a reasonable definition of what Cage did, and what you wrote actually seems to make sense. But I never made that connotation. On a good day, I might be able to string some words together that would've approached yr characterization. On...not a good day, I might've merely waved it off as a bunch of half-assed conceptual horseshit that captivated many musicians I admire in ways I'll never understand. But I guess there was something to it, even if I'm not willing to spend the time to try to see what Lou Reed saw in him, or John Cale, or Lennon for that matter.
>As an aside, on Pollack's score, I can say that I have seen a number of his canvases first hand, and they are absolutely stunning.Oh, yeah. I'm a big fan. I saw some of the drip paintings at MOMA about 10 years ago, in an exhibit that featured a good cross-section of his earlier work, and a re-creation of the shed he worked out of on his property out in Springs. I wrote more about him in my reply to Dave C. There's a malcontent who comes to this site & pisses a lot of people off in doing so, and he rails about 'The Emperor's New Clothes' and how modern art is a bunch of bullshit, and in many respects I agree with him...but not on Pollock. Interesting character, interesting work, which captured something beyond a dead canvas propped up in front of a googly-eyed museum-goer. A guy with an idea that I admired, and, what's more the ability to execute it to its fullest potential.
>Finally, with respect to the kernal of our differening view, whether or not Ono was an overweaning barnacle or a valued collaborator and companion, I guess it all depends of your perspective -- i.e., whether you are looking at it from John's perspective or the perspective of a Beatle's fan. John could take her just about anywhere he damned pleased. That doesn't make it right. And, I would add, taking your girlfriend to the office is always, on some level, a bit indecorous.That John could take her anywhere he damned pleased is all the justification he required so far as I'm concerned. At least as a human being. As a Beatles fan, I don't like it, but, again, I do have to accept it. And, unlike the poker analogy, this one makes more sense. But in this case, it's not just bringing yr girlfriend to the office, it's bringing in someone who you believe has expertise in the sort of business conducted in that office, who just happens to be yr girlfriend...or vice-versa, whatever. In any case, the point is that he believed her to be fully qualified to sit in on a Beatles session. It's his band, so what's not right about that? We're only fans, we don't own these people, or what they do, or the band. We can only lay anything resembling a legitimate claim to the music that we've purchased, and no matter how much our reaction to that music makes us feel that we do indeed own a stake in the band, as a group, or individuals, we didn't, and don't.
This is from the "Lennon Remembers" interview I mentioned previously:
Lennon: (referring to the "Yoko Ono: Plastic Ono Band" companion record that was recorded at the same time as the John Lennon version, with a similar cover & personnel) Nobody knows that there is a point on the first song on Yoko's track where the guitar comes in, and even Yoko thought it was her voice, because we did all Yoko's in one night, the whole session. It was just fantastic.
Rolling Stone (Jann Wenner): The whole album?
Lennon: Yeah, except for Ornette. There's a track with Ornette Coleman that was from the past that we put on to show that she wasn't discovered by the Beatles and that she's been around a few years. We got stuff of her with Cage, Ornette Coleman...We are going to put out "Oldies But Goldies" out next for Yoko.
On "screaming," which was a focal point of the Plastic Ono Band albums, done at a time when John & Yoko were involved in Primal Scream therapy, which I believe later had something to do with Tears For Fears:
Lennon: Listen to "Twist And Shout." I couldn't sing the damn thing, I was just screaming. Listen to it...don't get the therapy confused with the music.
Yoko: I was screaming...
Lennon: Yoko's whole thing was that scream. Listen to 'Don't Worry Kyoko.' It's one of the fuckin' best rock and roll records ever made. Listen to it and play 'Tutti Frutti.' Listen to 'Don't Worry Kyoko' on the other side of 'Cold Turkey.' You see, I'm digressing from mine, but if somebody with a rock oriented mind can possibly listen to her stuff you'll see what she's doing. It's fantastic. It's as important as anything we ever did and as important as anything the Stones or Townshend ever did. Listen to it and you'll hear what she is putting down. On "Cold Turkey" I'm getting towards it. I'm influenced by her music 1000 percent more than I ever was by Dylan. She makes music like you've never heard on earth. And when the musicians play with her they're inspired out of their skulls. I don't know how much they play it later...we've got a cut of her from the Lyceum in London, 15 or 20 musicians playing with her from Bonnie and Delaney and the fucking lot, and we played the tracks the other night. It's the most fantastic music I've ever heard. And they've probably gone away and forgotten all about it. It's fantastic. It's like 20 years ahead of its time.
***Now does what I was saying make more sense? I'd go so far as to suggest that it's possible that at that point in time Lennon wanted her there more than he wanted George Martin there. Elsewhere in the interview, he says that Martin developed a way for Lennon & the others to communicate with 'musicians,' specifically referring to violin parts such as on 'In My Life' (though it should be noted that Paul McCartney claims credit for the middle 8 in that song in the first revision of the Hunter Davies biography, from a 1981 interview where Paul pisses & moans about how Lennon was slowly being turned into a posthumous saint following his death). He was firmly into working with Phil Spector at the time of the interview, going so far as to say that George Martin was more 'Paul's' style of music, and that he couldn't see working with him any more. And I don't think he did. So it makes sense to me that if there was going to be someone there who was going to find a way to 'communicate' with 'musicians' in a way different than Martin, whose work was more suited to McCartney, Yoko being there makes perfect sense. The sense I get is that Lennon may well have believed that she was THE most qualified musical figure in the entire studio at that point in his musical life. Keeping in mind that he was not considered to be an exceptional instrumentalist, does this really sound so farfetched?
>John Lennon, as an artist, was doing just fine thank you before he ever heard the name Yoko.That makes perfect sense to me, but somehow I don't think he agreed with this. The sense I've always gotten is that he felt she helped to 'complete' him as an artist.
>Ono was laboring in near obscurity until she met Lennon. It is clear, too, that Ono used her relationship with Lennon for her own personal aggrandizement. I guess you can't blame Lennon in the end for being complicit in this.Completely agree.
>But don't be so hard on those of us who, after seeing a clip from the "Let it Be" sessions with "the great interloper" present, shutter a bit.Nah, sorry, I have to say 'get over it.' I think there was plenty about the guy that was crappy, but I do admire when people follow their muse, when they live their lives the way they want to (the mistreatment of his wife and child is something I find inexcusable, however), and, in his case, he did so knowing full well what his fans thought of his choices. It didn't matter to him. So I just don't see what the hell there is or ever was to shudder about.
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Follow Ups
- Re: Yoko Ono ... - J 03:22:51 11/29/06 (3)
- one thing - dave c 04:13:09 11/29/06 (2)
- Re: one thing - J 10:17:23 11/29/06 (1)
- it was 40 years ago... - dave c 12:03:38 11/29/06 (0)
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