On Saturday, August 5, 1972 John and Yoko were on a vacation in San Francisco, California. On this day Geraldo Rivera spent the day in the City by the Bay with the couple. They did some typical sightseeing: they rode a trolly car, went down the steep hills in the city, saw the Golden Gate Bridge, and Fisherman's Warf. The video footage of this is really interesting and fun to see. Geraldo interviews John and Yoko and Yoko shares that she met her father for the first time when she was 3 years old in San Francisco. He had been working in the city and the Ono family traveled from Japan to see him.
Geraldo did a longer interview with them inside. I am not sure if this is the same day because they are wearing totally different clothes. It is a very sad interview because they are talking about how they do not know where Kyoko is and how they think Tony Cox is keeping Kyoko hidden until John got kicked out of America. Yoko always says that she has learned that her 8-year-old daughter is 2 years behind in school. That just breaks my heart if it was true.
I think this is an interesting time in John and Yoko's history that we don't hear much about.
The bottom pic was from April 18, 1972 when Geraldo first interviewed them following another appearance at the immigration offices.
ReplyDeleteJohn mentions that they took the old Gold Rush route (I-80) when driving across the U.S. in late May/early June (on a tip that Kyoko might be in California). She had been, but by March she was in Kalona, Iowa. John and Yoko's route took them through Iowa, and at one point they were less than 30 minutes away from Kyoko.
ReplyDeletep.s. I understand that John and Yoko were staying at the Hotel Miyako in Japantown and that may have been where the indoors interview took place (would have been convenient for them to change clothes). You can hear John beginning to tell Geraldo about Japantown in some of the footage (gets cut off). I wrote a blog post on this excursion to California, it was during this same road trip that they stayed with acupuncturist Yuan Hong in San Mateo for a number of days.
ReplyDeleteMy band "One" performed for a J&Y private party in SF in 1972 that I was told was a B-day party for one of them. The house was in a gated SF neigborhood up a really long flight of stairs that the roadies had to haul all our gear up. J&Y stayed in a room upstairs and greeted anyone that waited in a long line spanning down the stairs. One of our band guests Cindra Pruitt got to meet them. The band was too busy setting up and performing and breaking down to stand in the line, and J&Y did not come down to meet us or jam. A case of my drums was stolen at the bottom of the entry stairs while the roadies were not looking on the way out. Has anyone any other info about this party?
ReplyDelete