Memories february 18, 1933
DESPISED by many, loved by the one who mattered, Yoko Ono put her head on the block when she fell for John Lennon.
This week, as she turns 86, the Japanese artist can look back on a life that’s packed in more huge events than most, and she remains one of the world’s most famous women.
Something that has changed, however, is our attitude towards her.
Many blamed her for the break-up of The Beatles, and when Lennon fell for her it certainly broke up his marriage to Cynthia.
Today, though, even Julian, his son with Cynthia, gets on fine with Yoko, while Paul Mccartney says she turned out to be nothing like the destructive, callous force many thought.
“I thought she was a cold woman,” Sir Paul has admitted.
“That’s wrong. She’s just the opposite. I think she’s just more determined than most people to be herself.”
Already married three times – twice to the same man – when Lennon met her at one of her unconventional art events, there is no denying that.
From albums in which she often screeched and screamed, rather than sang, to art installations including her murdered husband’s trademark spectacles smeared with his blood, Yoko Ono never lets anything get in the way of her art.
It has to be done the Yoko way, and if others hate it or mock it, it’s water off a duck’s back to her.
The fact of the matter is, as time has shown, that other artists out there, from Elvis Costello and the B-52s to painters and sculptors, have admitted they took inspiration from Yoko Ono’s work.
Lennon certainly did. He was thrilled to become part of an arty world he’d admired from outside once he got close to Yoko, while she initially thought his Beatles work was pretty pedestrian and he could have been doing more avant-garde things with it.
What was undeniable was that they loved each other.
Today, John has been dead almost as long as he was alive, but Yoko still fiercely protects his legacy and talks lovingly of him.
Even their marriage was a bit left-field – when they went through a rough patch, it was Yoko who suggested he see someone else, even setting him up with May Pang, their young assistant.
Unlike him, Yoko had come from very posh stock, and was studying piano long before he was old enough to get music.
But once they were together, they were rarely separated and, at the time he was murdered, it was clear that John had found the woman of his dreams and planned on being with her for life.
It is just very sad he is not here now to help celebrate her big day.