[2 articles] Give Peace Another Chance
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Give+peace+another+chance/1410355/story.html By Mark Lepage, Special to The Gazette March 20, 2009 New York Descending the subway steps to the uptown F train, an instantly recognizable melody wafts up from below. There's a South American-looking busker on the platform whose motley collection of equipment includes the pan pipes, serenading the crowd with the instrumental Andean version of Imagine and I'm thinking: "Nah. Really?" Followed swiftly by the certainty: Yoko will appreciate this. "Really?" she says once we've sat down in a hangar-sized photo studio. "Well, it's not a coincidence, you know? It's like a message." Meaning some numinous nod to our get-together, and the occasion. Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John and Yoko opens April 2 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, running neatly through the 40th anniversary of the Bed-In at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. "There's always a reason," Ono says; or possibly, all coincidences prove is that there are coincidences. But for the occasion, we'll tweak that logic to admit the otherworld: that the New York subway spirits, or some other energy, would get involved, because even in 2009, there's fame, and there's John and Yoko. The Imagine exhibit is just the latest manifestation of Ono's life's work on the legacy of John and Yoko's life's work. She travels semi-regularly to Montreal to discuss Love, the Cirque du Soleil's Beatles show. Before we speak, she will prepare for a photo session, trying on a selection of whimsical wide-brimmed hats and yellow or purple-tinged sunglasses in the impossibly bright 15-foot-ceilinged Daylight Studios overlooking the Hudson River. Straddling a chair flashing the peace sign, she vets the photos as they are shot. We are prepared for "hands-on," given a pre-interview process that insisted on full approval of any and all published photos, as well as pre-submitted questions. This, then, may be the "Dragon Lady" of whom the ancients speak. As is most always the case, the mediation evaporates once you're sitting together. Seated at a cafeteria table, we're left in the main alone, and she answers, even when the conversation is borne way from celebration. But first, celebration. Yoko remembers that 1969 week in Montreal as "very intimate. We disappointed all the press people because they thought that we were gonna make love in front of them or something. But of course you know" she giggles " we didn't." Well, you got pretty close on that Two Virgins cover… (which showed them both naked). "Yes," she smiles. And the intimacy will be captured in the MMFA. Strikingly, John and Yoko will be heard whispering and singing to one another from gallery to gallery as visitors take in Imagine's massive collection of 140 works, drawings, unpublished photographs, videos, films, artworks and interactive materials covering the 1966-1972 period and including some of Ono's '90s work. During the planning stage, the museum dispatched two curators to Ono's apartment in New York for high-level discussions. "It was so thorough and creative and original. I was very, very impressed," she says. A stand-in for John's iconic white piano, featuring a Disklavier sound system, will allow fans to play Imagine. "Isn't that great?" she says. "And the bed will be there." Not the same bed, surely, but a replica of the one from Suite 1742. "It's just a very sweet and lovely memory. It was so beautiful, there was no problem at all." She remembers fans downstairs in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, and Suite 1742 crowded with recording technicians and media (including The Gazette's own Dave Bist) bang their way into history on guitars and doorjambs to record Give Peace a Chance. "Very nice people. They made it very easy for us. Those people were always there. If they're not nice people, we'd feel it, you know? "It was a very, very intense time in history. Don't you think? We were very lucky. We were doing something out of love, and it was a very peaceful environment and atmosphere. It was just an exchange of love with the people near us, around us, and the world." Of course, they were exchanging The Love because of The Hate, and the not-nice people in the world. "Even in those days, the generation before us were very upset with what we were doing. But the young ones understood." Some may see Ono as a relentless happy-talker, which would conveniently leave out the complete absence of self-pity. Don't forget during that period, Lennon would spend four years fighting the U.S. government for his green card. Ono had already lost her daughter Kyoko in a parental kidnapping following a custody case. They were the uberfamous couple flashing peace signs, groovily inspiring the counterculti and, in official channels, being … "treated like trash," she finishes the sentence. "I do want to mention one thing, the fact that (John) was a very courageous man. Even though he knew there was tremendous objection and pressure from higher up, he didn't want to quit. He was always truthful about it." "We were very upset about things each time, but it didn't stick to us." She describes the childlike world of instantaneous free exchange that is the most public face of their marriage. "Once we met, we were just like one person. Before I met John … there were so many ideas that I couldn't realize all of them. When I met John, we were both that kind of people. So can you imagine the speed of the things coming out? We didn't even have to finish a sentence." One sentence they finished, in their own write, will surely be represented in the exhibit. WAR IS OVER! (If You Want It), the 1969 billboard/newspaper ad blitz, was that rarest of occasions when idea and wealth met advertising not to sell product, but concept. Which, pace John, is a theory/conviction running through Yoko Ono's work up to that time (see sidebar on her career). "It's a bit tacky to sell people, you know, 'peace'," she says. "In our case, we were so much in a hurry, we just did it." Once again, we enjoy interesting times. Obama's election was "kind of like we won a war or something. I believe in grassroots movements, definitely, and the people's power. And I'm not that much into institutional politics, you know. But still once they're there, it's much better that we get some support and patience and love. But we have to have belief that we can do it, too, you know." "Imagining it's like a meditative thing. When you're imagining peace, you can't kill someone. By imagining peace, you are peace." We speak briefly about the two of them discussing Imagine, the song, before it was completed. There is more talk of how each person is "like a superpower" and "an oasis. We're like 90-per-cent water, each of us, so before we fight with each other, the water is already connecting." All of which is as on-message as a peace sign, but certainly there is another side. A private sense that "I was laying my whole self to the world, dedicating myself to the world. And John … lived … and died from that." And so there is risk involved. "Well I didn't think about the risk. Every risk is a blessing." And some of this must be painful? To revisit? "No. Because we were sitting together, and we're still sitting together. And now we are returning to Montreal. We're not visiting, we're returning. And so I know that John is very happy. Our memories were so good. So we're just sort of jumping with excitement!" "Especially with Montreal, I know we are going back together." Back to the subway, where the busker has been called to his next gig. -- Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John and Yoko runs from April 2 to June 21 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Free admission. -------- Six of Yoko Ono's greatest hits http://www.montrealgazette.com/Entertainment/Yoko+greatest+hits/1410495/story.html By Mark Lepage, Special to The Gazette March 20, 2009 Hubby called Yoko "the world's most famous unknown artist." These are some notable reasons: Cut Piece (1964): Variously interpreted by reviewers as feminist act, peace protest and striptease, it also now feels presciently "rock star." The performance-art piece had Ono kneeling on a stage, fully dressed, with a pair of scissors in front of her. Audience members would cut off bits of her clothing which they could keep as souvenirs until she was virtually naked. The themes intimacy, vulnerability, inhibition, threat, martyrdom have been echoed in every female experimental installation you've seen since. Grapefruit (1964): Haiku challenges or zen gags? Ono's book appears to demarcate the artistic line between liberating concept and scam. Features John's review blurb: "This is the greatest book I've ever burned." Nail and "Yes" (1966): Lennon (self-described as "The Millionaire") is brought to London's Indica Gallery where the famous unknown artist is putting finishing touches to her unopened show. He wants to try the Hammer A Nail In piece. She says no. He offers her an imaginary 5 shillings to hammer in an imaginary nail. Smart boy. He climbs a ladder to read a tiny word written above. The word is "Yes." Smart girl. Live Peace In Toronto (1969): Is there a better word for "caterwaul"? Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann and Alan White are the Plastic Ono Band, and on side one of this album (with its iconic cover), they crank through dystopic, druggy and altogether raw versions of Money, Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Yer Blues and Cold Turkey. It's great. On side two, well, anyone who's heard it will remember their first time. Among the moments captured in D. A. Pennebaker's footage is the finale John, John (Let's Hope for Peace), when Clapton briefly rolls his eyes at her screeches. Find it on YouTube. Walking on Thin Ice remix tops dance chart (2003): "I think we've just got your first No. 1, Yoko," said John after finishing up the guitar on her Walking on Thin Ice. As usual, he was 20-odd years ahead of the earthlings. Although the original version of the song brought Ono her first chart success in 1981, that meant No. 58. In 2003, remix efforts by, among others, the Pet Shop Boys (bless their little disco hearts) took the song to the top of Billboard's dance chart. "I enjoyed it like I enjoy the weather," Ono told me last week. Great line, but perhaps a little coy. It may have felt especially sunny that day. That guitar, incidentally, was the last thing Lennon recorded, on Dec. 8, 1980. It still feels unearthly to write that. Ono will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement on June 6, 2009, at the Venice Biennale. . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
