Yoko Ono, the romantic journey of “the famous unknown artist”

Yoko Ono, it was first of all the black widow who caused the scandal; the one who, through manipulation and satanic numbers, destroyed the Beatles from the inside; a witch who exploited the weaknesses of a sensitive musician, John Lennon, to vampirize him and make him her puppet; an occult force driven by an unfulfilled desire for recognition and a sick jealousy. Besides, what could he possibly have found in him?
Obviously, all this is false, but it is the little music that we have heard regularly since the official separation of the group in April 1970.

So who built this reputation?

One thing is certain: before being the wife of a genius, Yoko Ono is first of all, a unique artist, whose aura goes far beyond music. Survivor of the Second World War, arrived in New York from Japan at the age of 19, close to the artistic movement Fluxus, Yoko Ono had a thousand lives before embracing that of the Liverpool 4.
Skillful and calculating as well as warm and optimistic, she is still a mystery today. But who is hiding behind this round face, this impassive look and this inimitable voice?

A documentary account of Guillaume Ballandras

An artist who refuses ambient nihilism

Like many artists of her generation, Yoko Ono sees the war as a founding trauma which acts as the catalyst for her creativity. Seven years after the end of the war, in 1952, she emigrated to the East Coast of the United States. Passionate about oriental calligraphy and the Dada movement from Europe, the 19-year-old girl enrolled at Sarah Lawrence University, not far from New York, to study poetry. And it is a revelation in the intellectual ferment of the Big Apple, far from the atmosphere of famine and the smell of bombs, she very quickly finds an artistic path of her own.
Where the Dadaists respond to the horrors of war with deliberately distorted proposals, the student Ono refuses nihilism and displays an infallible, almost naive faith in humanity. Allergic to cynicism, she composed her first haikus, a mixture of Japanese calligraphy and absurd injunctions.

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The birth of a performer

Against the elitism and overbearing character of the artist, Ono chooses a generous path that transforms visitors into so many co-authors. She then becomes a performer. Four years after her arrival in the USA, in 1956, the promising young artist met one of her compatriots, a contemporary music composer, a certain Toshi Ichiyanagi. Love at first sight was immediate and the two married before settling into a loft in Manhattan. Thanks to him, she became friends with two experimental musicians who then redefined the laws of the genre: John Cage and LaMonte Young. With one foot in the world of art, another in music, she organizes interactive performances and concerts in her loft and even begins to perform. His sound proposals are just as radical as his plastic work.

Despite his growing network, his career as an artist is struggling to take off. His creative work remains confidential and the rare reviews are not very encouraging. To make matters worse, her private life is a disaster, her marriage is falling apart and her parents are having more and more difficulty understanding this bohemian life that she has decided to lead. At the turn of the 60s, Yoko experienced a first depressive episode. Returning to Japan for her family, she overdosed on medication before being interned in a clinic. Condemned to undergo heavy treatment, Yoko is no longer quite herself.
Fortunately, she has a decisive meeting with a jazz musician and film producer, Anthony Cox, close friend of La Monte Young and admirer of her work. Cox arrived in Japan with the intention of studying calligraphy. But when he discovers the artist bedridden, stunned by medication, he takes on the role of savior. Yoko is going to become a zombie, he thinks.

Determined to help her, Cox signs his release slip, then begins a relationship with her. In a few weeks, Yoko Ono turns her life around. She finally divorces her first husband, then becomes pregnant. In 1963, she gave birth to a baby girl called Kyoko. A few months later, the thirty-year-old arrived again in New York with an ambition: to finally become an artist who counts.
Thus, in 1964, she unveiled in the prestigious Carnegie Hall, a performance that would become a landmark, Cut Piece. As always with Yoko, the system focuses on the interaction with the audience seated on the stage, motionless. She invites visitors to come one by one, cut off a piece of her clothes with scissors until she finds herself completely naked.

Then came the decisive meeting with John Lennon.

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Yoko Ono, responsible for the end of the Beatles?

A true psychodrama, the recording of Let it Be of the Beatles marks the beginning of the group’s final fall, which comes six months later, in September 69, after the chaotic production of Abbey Road and his marriage to Yoko, John confides to his colleagues his intention to leave the group.

Seven months later, on April 10, 1970, the divorce was made official, but it was Paul McCartney who announced it to the press, which sent Lennon’s oversized ego into turmoil. And yet, nothing could be more normal, the boss of the Beatles, their Mozart since the big turning point in 1965, is Paul. But now, after ten albums, 213 songs, five films and more than 1000 concerts, the Beatles stopped for good. In just eight years, the group will have marked the history of music like no other. So, the shock wave that constitutes the separation of the Beatles is unprecedented.

All over the world, fans of the group are in mourning. One name keeps coming up: Yoko Ono. After all, it was she who attracted John to new horizons. It was she who separated him from his lifelong friend, Paul. A true witch from the Orient, the artist becomes the punching bag of public opinion, to the great despair of her husband.

The real reason the Beatles broke up

So was Yoko responsible for the end of the greatest band of all time? Well no, even those first concerned, the Beatles themselves, never suggested it: « The group had a lot of problems before Yoko showed up. The formation was already destroying itself very well and Yoko lured John into another way of life. And then thanks to her, he had a second career afterwards, with great success like Imagine and I don’t think he would have done it without Yoko” Paul McCartney will explain.

The four men simply wanted to explore personal artistic paths and this is what they proved during the 80s with Band on the Run for Paul McCartney and Imagine for Lennon. Yoko Ono, 91 years old today, is in no way the cause. Camille Viéville, author of the book Onoreleased in 2024 by Les Pérégrines, explains that the widow Lennon retired from public life in 2021: “She withdrew for health reasons. She left the Dakota Building in New York where she had lived since the 1970s, originally with John Lennon, for a house in the countryside where she lives withdrawn from the world. »

Through his book, OnoCamille Viéville wanted to rehabilitate Yoko Ono through an investigation: “I’m an art historian and a Beatles fan and when I was a teenager in the 90s, I hated Yoko Ono, like many Beatles fans, unfortunately. And it interested me to deconstruct this myth and reveal chapter after chapter, the different exciting activities of Yoko Ono. »

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