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| Photos by Susan Wood |
Beatle John's Bossy Girl
By Betty Rollin
Daily Express
March 13, 1969
What sort of effort does John Lennon's girlfriend Yoko Ono have on one? Frankly, she gives me a pain. Not for moral reasons and not because I don't respect her art. I do. It may not be art, but whatever it is, it is creative, and she has integrity about it. Besides, it's great just to be silly sometimes, don't you think?
But the thing about Yoko is that when she's being silly, she doesn't think it's silly. John has infinitely more humor about what he does. Also, he is not pushing so hard, and that's not only because he is already there. I doubt if John ever pushed.
Actually, Yoko is pushy-- ambitious is a nicer word. The way 20-year-old actresses are pushy, but Yoko is 34. Yoko is bossy, too. She is bossy with the people in the Beatles' Apple office, and they resent it.
And she is bossy with me. "Say it this way!" she shrieked, trying to dictate the story to her specifications. I decided I didn't like her.
On this particular day of the interview, she seemed particularly irritable. She began the conversation by telling me that I had spilled some sugar on the tablecloth the previous day and forgot to wipe it off. And then later, she explained herself by saying, "We are really very difficult people."
As time went by, she eased up a bit. She began her cooking, standing in the kitchen as if deserted by the two other witches, hovering over a pot and stirring constantly. She held her hair back against her bosom and kept leaning forward with a wooden spoon to taste whatever she was cooking. And she began to speak about the subject that totally engrosses her--- herself.
"My parents were close with each other", she said, still stirring, "but not with me. My father was very distant when I was a child. If I wanted to see him, I would have to call his office and make an appointment.
"My mother had her own life. She was beautiful and looked very young. She used to say, 'You should be happy that your mother looks so young.' But I wanted a mother who made me lunches to take school and didn't wear cosmetics.
"I was terribly lonely at school. I was ahead mentally, but I never had any friends."
Yoko's parents came from a prominent Tokyo banking family. When she was young, they went to New York, and she grew up in Scarsdale, that affluent, intellectual, and pretentious suburb which is the nearest thing to Hampstead in New York. She went to a smart college, Sarah Lawrence, and while very young, married a Japanese violinist .Her parents disapproved and cut her off financially, since he was of the middle class. The marriage soon ended.
Yoko moved to Greenwich Village and became a kind of darling of the underground art world. She married an American, Tony Cox, and they had a baby girl, Kyoko, now five, who lives in America with her father. She speaks of Kyoko approvingly but distantly. When I asked her about being separated from her child, she said, "It must be." Then she reminded me that psychologists say that people usually treat their children the way they were treated themselves.
She talks about her art, "My art is social," she says. "I don't believe in examining the navel." Indeed, not. She achieved a theme of sorts with her film, which shows 365 naked humans behind -- not a single navel among them. "That," she says, "is concept art."
To find out what this meant, I went to an art critic who, she said, would explain it to me. He was a fan of hers. "You can get such a variety in the human behind. It's fantastic!" He said. "Concept art is a work of art that exists in your mind. Take Yoko's work, Cut Piece. She sat in her best dress and invited the audience to cut it up with scissors. At first, there was an awful silence. Then, well, it was terrible. Once they started, they couldn't stop. She was left naked, of course."
Thus, this is the extraordinary woman that John Lennon loves and whom he wants to marry. "At first, I didn't want to get married", he said. "Yoko and me just get such a kick out of it, out of just being in love, changing the food in the larder, like young married kids, you know?
"But then, when we thought a baby was coming, we thought it over." The baby was lost when Yoko had a miscarriage; she blames the miscarriage on the strain of her two divorces.
Now, they both say they are intensely happy. This happiness they attempted to show on the cover of a record on which they are both naked. Said John, "I just thought it would be nice. A nice cover for her to be naked --alone. Then, after we got friendly, it seemed natural for it to be us both. I took the photograph myself. I didn't think there would be such a fuss, but I guess the world thinks we are an ugly couple. "
Yoko has no doubt. "Now that we love each other. We showed that love to the world. Love is an art, too, and we are both artists."
The End.
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