At 85, Yoko planning new album for peace

Yoko Ono on Tuesday announced that she is releasing a new album at age 85, saying that her lifelong message of peace was sorely needed in 2018. Warzone, which will come out on October 19, will revisit songs penned by Ono since 1970, concluding Imagine, her seminal pacifist anthem with her late husband John Lennon.

“The world is so messed up. Things are very difficult for everybody,” she said. A statement from her representatives added: “It is not too late to change the world. We need Yoko now more than ever.” The Japanese-born New Yorker made clear that Warzone was not a swan song, saying that she is working on another album. The album’s 13 tracks, produced by her son Sean Ono Lennon, are rearranged to strip back the music, bringing to the forefront Ono’s voice in the vein of spoken word.

With the album announcement, she released a new take on the title track, which appeared in Ono’s 1994 musical New York Rock about her life with Lennon. In the 2018 version, an elephant roars and percussion kicks in like a gun as Ono describes a scene of violence over echoing reverb. “If you hear me, please help us!” she concludes.

Ono, who grew up in Tokyo and New York, had become a rising figure in the musical avant-garde when she met Lennon and became his second wife. The couple famously used their honeymoon as a “bed-in” to protest the Vietnam War. She has remained active in peace causes and in preserving Lennon’s legacy after he was assassinated outside their New York apartment in 1980.