Together -- Just Yoko and John (1971)

 

Together -- Just Yoko and John 

By: Sue Falconbridge

Liverpool Echo

July 27, 1971

    To me, John Lennon is like the morning after the night before. Unfairly, you remember, "This is the man I screamed for and sweated in stuffy dance halls for and wove fantasies around when I was 15."

     But it isn't. That man with the raw, sexy voice, the sick jokes, the deliberately uncouth manner who sang with a group called The Beatles vanished a long time ago. The love and peace syndrome of the late 60s and the advent of Yoko Ono changed John Lennon.

     Now he's 30 -- short-haired, clean-shaven, tastefully dressed in brown trousers and a checked shirt, devoted to his art and to one woman, his wife. (He was married in the early days, too, of course, but it didn't seem as obvious as it does with Yoko.)

     She's a tremendous influence in his life. They are inseparable and plan to go on being so .

    "When you love each other so desperately, you want to be together all the time, and we are together in every way," says Yoko. "It's so strange." Says John. "Any couple who have the money and the opportunity would be together all the time. You don't see Liz and Richard apart, and a lot of young people who don't have lots of money are spending all their time together. If you want to, you can always get jobs together in the same film or teach in the same school. "

    They think it's the natural way to live, but perhaps, too, the hostility of the outside world to their marriage has driven them even closer together. "When I think of the way people here have treated us, and especially her, I think 'I'll never come back', says John, bitterly. "We did a lot for this country. We gave them a lot of money, and we put England on the map and made people realize there was more to the English than Margaret Rutherford and Terry Thomas, but if I hadn't spent so much money on the house at Ascot, I'd live somewhere else for good. We wouldn't pay the taxes, and we wouldn't have dirt thrown at us all the time.

     "People here think it's still swinging England, but as far as art's concerned, it's backwards Britain, they're 30 years behind the times. In every other country, they take Yoko and me seriously as conceptual artists. Here we're ridiculed. In America, her book Grapefruit sold 50,000 copies.  Here, it sold 2000. Mind you, that was because we didn't push it enough."

     They're here at the moment to push the new paperback edition of Grapefruit. It is a collection of some of Yoko's work over the last 10 years. Basically, it's a book of instructions for people to carry out for themselves and create their own paintings. For example, a lighting piece: "Light a match and watch until it goes out". Or line piece: "Draw a line, erase the line."

     Says John, "The point about it is that the artist is letting people do things for themselves. She could do it all for them, but instead, she's saying, 'Here I am, and you can take what you want out of me'.

    " Everyone is an artist until they get it knocked out of them by school and the 11 plus and the nonsense like that."

     John and Yoko cannot understand why people say they don't understand Grapefruit or their artwork. "It's simple, really. Children can understand it easily enough," said Yoko.

     "We had my son, Julian, at the house at the weekend, and we had her artwork all over the house, and he likes it," says John. "He calls it 'Yoko's jokes', but he understands it at once, like this."

     This is a little metal box engraved with the words, "Box of Smile". You open the lid, and the box is lined with mirrors so you see the reflection of your own smile -- a box full of smiles. The book is like that: nice, clever, funny, and not as ridiculous as critics have made it sound. But does it merit the praise John gives it?

     "Grapefruit is a beautiful and profound book from the genius of one of the world's most important artists."

     That's the sort of thing which has all the Yoko haters up in arms. But perhaps it's only John and Yoko overreacting to the bad treatment she has had. She is easy to make fun of in Britain, because she's a foreigner, because she has a funny name, and because she photographs so badly. She and John are under no illusion about her popularity. "John was married when we met, and they thought I was taking him away from his wife," She says realistically. "A glamor girl like Elizabeth Taylor could get away with it and stay popular, but not a dumpy little foreigner. But what can you do when you're in love? You can't sacrifice the rest of your lives..." "and no one would bloody thank you for it if you did," added John.

     "People here still think, 'She got him! Lucky for her!" says Yoko. "And people still treat me like a man who's won the football pools instead of a serious artist," says John."British people are so possessive. I want them to let go. "

    They are both politically motivated artists. John is the active one, concerned with practical problems. He is the one who breaks in with bitter little comments about unemployment in Liverpool, about British imperialism in Northern Ireland, while Yoko talks vaguely about communication and love.

    "But we're revolutionary artists, not revolutionary politicians," he says."The artist changes the climate of opinion with his art to bring about other changes, too."

     At the moment, John and Yoko each have a record coming out. They're making films, two of which, Apotheosis and Fly, were chosen for the Cannes Film Festival this year, and they will probably perform Yoko's work in public.

     Again, it is all work towards revolution. As far as they're concerned, you can no longer consider John Ono Lennon, apart from Yoko Ono Lennon. (He has even taken her name by deed poll.) They are, if you like, one person. Despite their luxurious lifestyle, money and material things seem to mean little to them. 

    Their ideal is the non-violent revolution, and their time and energy go to all that. John Ono Lennon is far removed from the callous scruff who once bawled out in the Cavern with every appearance of feeling, "Money, that's what I want!"