Yoko Ono is considered one of the most important characters in The Beatles history.
Yoko comes from an affluent and influential Japanese family. It is rumored that Yoko's great grandfather had amassed a fortune of a billion dollars by his assassination in 1921.
Yoko studied at the same
school as Emporer Hirohito's two sons, where she became heavily interested in the arts. However, she dropped out of Gakushuin University and at the age of 20 she enrolled at Sarah
Lawrence College - coincidentally the same
college that Linda Eastman, future wife of Paul McCartney attended.
Yoko began touring as an artist, and appealed to the artsy upper echelon of New York and Tokyo. (In 2002, Ono wrote that at the
time she thought herself avant garde - a real talent, but she now realized that she was a nobody in the scheme of things.)
Yoko's had her first child, and second
marriage, with Anthony Cox. They traveled playing
music, and shooting short films. One of their more memorable works is of the striking of a single match. Another, was their 1966 film 'Buttocks,' in which they traveled to London to film 365 Briton's naked backsides. Notably, a journalist named Hunter Davies was invited down to the shoot, and devoted his column to the story "Oh no, Ono!", which introduced the British Public to the Japanese artist. Notably, Davies went on to write the The Beatles' first authorized biography - spending endless of hours with the band during the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band recordings. Davies can be seen in the 1967 All You Need Is Love /
Baby You're a Rich Man TV performance.
Yoko Ono met John Lennon, singer/songwriter of the The Beatles at an exhibit of her work at the Indica gallery in London. However, it was not until the Yellow Submarine world premiere in 1968 that the world saw them together for the first
time. They soon became inseparable, their togetherness even intruding into the The Beatles' recording studios, a place that until then had been a band-member only sanctuary.
Yoko quarreled with the band, even with producer George Martin during editing stages. Nonetheless, the couple stayed strong. Both John Lennon and Ono divorced their spouses. (Interesting note - John Lennon's elation in hearing Ono's successful divorce was caught on tape during an early run through of Paul McCartney's "Oh, Darling!", which can be found on the The Beatles Anthology 3 album.)
The
marriage of John Lennon and Ono was chronicled nicely in John Lennon's #1 single The Ballad of John and Yoko / Old Brown Shoe The ballad tells the story of the public's outcry against their beloved John Lennon marrying Ono, and their struggles to find a place to wed. This song was recorded solely by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, John Lennon on lead vocals and guitars, Paul McCartney on backing vocals, guitar,
bass, and drums.
The Beatles disbanded at the end of the decade, and each of the members went their own ways. John Lennon embarked on a sadly short lived solo career, and he did this hand in hand with his Yoko Ono.
Yoko Ono was ever-present in John Lennon's work, being mentioned in nearly every song on the John Lennon/
Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums. The two continued to make
music together (besides a break-up in the mid 70s, but this was hushed up), up until 1980's Grammy winning Album of the Year Double Fantasy.
John Lennon's story ended that year with his assassination outside his New York apartment. Yoko Ono has been slandered as a professional widow, and the woman who broke up one of the biggest bands of all
time. True or not, she is an icon of the 60s and 70s, and a reminder of a part of
music history.
