Yoko: A Biography by David Sheff
YOKO: A Biography, written by author David Sheff, is unquestionably the definitive overview thus far of one of the most enigmatic, controversial and influential women in rock and roll history. Over the years, there have been countless unsubstantiated tabloid press articles and books written by numerous authors without firsthand knowledge that have largely vilified Yoko Ono. The worst of these have stooped to hatred, racism and misogyny, with the majority presenting her as a footnote to the Beatles’ history with little interest in exploring her own interests and achievements. Yoko translates to “Ocean Child” from Kanji characters; appropriate for one who has traveled across many oceans throughout her life.
David Sheff has dedicated this excellent work of nonfiction to the subject’s children, Kyoko Ono and Sean Ono Lennon, in appreciation of his past warm and friendly, close relationship with them. He met John Lennon and Yoko Ono as a 24-year-old novice journalist assigned to interview them for Playboy magazine. The catch was being able to secure their permission. Yoko has used astrology, numerology, psychic readings and tarot as guides for every aspect of her life. Shuffling tarot cards and randomly pulling one from the deck to read was a daily occurrence.
Thus, an interview would depend on his stars and numbers aligning. David passed the initial test and flew from Los Angeles for an in-person conversation with Yoko. She managed all business and professional affairs while John was essentially a househusband in charge of 5-year-old Sean’s welfare.
First Meetings and Lasting Impressions
They met in Studio One, her office in the Dakota apartment building, where the celebrity couple owned several apartments. Their primary residence was on the 7th floor; other units were used for wardrobes, storage and staff. The Victorian Gothic building on the Upper West Side of New York takes up most of the block between 72nd and 73rd on Central Park West. This ultra-exclusive apartment complex was Lauren Bacall’s home for 54 years. Their next-door neighbor and friend was Roberta Flack. Leonard Bernstein, Judy Garland, Rudolf Nureyev, Jack Palance and many other celebrities have also owned residences there.
Yoko informed David his numbers and astrological chart were compatible with the prophetic words, “This is a very important time for you”, and concluded “this interview will mean more than you can comprehend now.” Unlike today when a journalist might never meet an interviewee in person or may be granted a few minutes or if lucky, an hour, David Sheff spent almost three weeks in September, 1980 with Yoko and John from morning until late at night, talking to them individually and together without a single request to go off record.
They included him in their normal routines of walks, meals, and studio work, were completely comfortable and loving with each other and convivial with him. He returned to California, wrote the article which was scheduled to print in early December. An advance copy was sent to Yoko who left a phone message on David’s answering machine the morning of December 7th. He returned the call promptly and spoke with the couple for about 30 minutes. They were pleased with the article and discussed getting together when David next returned to New York.
After John Lennon’s Death
As the world knows, late on the evening of December 8th, 1980, after returning from a lengthy session in the recording studio, John Lennon was gunned down by Mark David Chapman in front of his stunned wife as they were returning home to the Dakota. Yoko was prostrate with grief, inconsolable, isolated and shut down. Along with masses of flowers and sympathy cards came a disturbing outpouring of vituperative hatred and threatening messages that law enforcement took seriously. The first year after John Lennon’s passing Yoko spent over one million dollars on enhanced security measures.
Yoko described this period as “the season of glass”; when she was “fragile as glass and almost shattered.” David Sheff became part of her small, trusted inner circle with a close, nurturing relationship with Sean. For more than two decades before gradually losing contact, he socialized, worked, and traveled with Yoko, Sean, and Yoko’s significant boyfriend Sam Hadvatoy.
Yoko and Sean had visited David and his wife and family often in Los Angeles and San Francisco. When David’s son Nic was battling drug addiction, Yoko and Sean brought him to their 600-acre farm in New York before assisting him in getting into a treatment program. The author was given permission to use Beautiful Boy as the title for his 2008 book about this harrowing time in their lives.
From Privilege to Starvation
For most people, Yoko is known primarily for being the second wife and widow of John Lennon. This work demonstrates the ambition, intelligence, business acumen and complexity of this intriguing workaholic woman who was born into great wealth in Tokyo on February 18, 1933. Her maternal grandfather was considered for a time to be the wealthiest man in Japan and a member of one of the four most influential families in the country.
Her mother, Isoko Yasuda Ono was a great beauty and gifted trained musician as well as an intellectual and early feminist devoted to her wealthy international banker husband Eisuke Ono but with a distant, troubled relationship with her three children. Yoko, the eldest, was 2.5 years old before she met her father who was working overseas at the time of her birth. In Japan, the Ono family employed a retinue of 30 servants. The years immediately following the end of WWII were starvation years for Japan and despite their wealth, the Ono family often went hungry. Her mother was reduced to begging and bartering heritage silk kimonos, fine porcelain and antiquities for handfuls of rice.
Yoko recalls this period as a possible beginning for her conceptual art theories as she would encourage her little brother Keisuke to vividly imagine consuming grand banquets of all their favorite foods.
Education, Marriages, and Artistic Awakening
She was educated in an elite private academy in Tokyo as well as in an American elementary school while the family resided in Scarsdale, New York. Piano lessons began at age 4. Her father’s illustrious international banking career took him to long assignments in several countries, including Vietnam, and often to the United States, where Yoko rejoined her family in New York in 1952. She began college at Gakushuin University before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College, but dropped out in her junior year to focus on her art. She married Juilliard scholar, avant-garde pianist and composer Toshi Ichiyanagi in 1956, but they divorced in 1962 when he returned to Japan.
Later that year she married Anthony Cox, a film producer and fellow conceptual artist and promoter. This marriage was annulled as her divorce was not yet final. They married again in 1963, shortly before their daughter Kyoko Ono Cox was born. Both Yoko Ono and John Lennon were married with one child each when they met at an art show of her work in 1966.
Following divorces from their respective spouses, the couple married in Gibraltar on March 20, 1969. Anthony Cox was awarded custody of Kyoko, claiming Yoko was an unfit mother, citing drug use. After joining a cult, he disappeared with Kyoko who would not see her mother again until 1998.
Life with John Lennon and After
Yoko and John Lennon were nearly inseparable from the time they met, with the exception of his 18+ month relationship with their former personal assistant and later music executive, May Pang. They lived in Los Angeles with full knowledge and apparent consent of Yoko, with young son Sean as a frequent visitor. After reuniting with Yoko, Lennon would refer to this as “the lost weekend.” Following his death, she was privately and seriously involved with Hungarian-born interior designer and painter Sam Hadvatoy, whom she had already known for several years as he assisted her in decorating the various Lennon/Ono properties.
They lived together in several locales, including Geneva, Switzerland, where Sean Ono Lennon attended boarding school. The relationship ended abruptly when, in 2001, Hadvatoy returned from a short trip to discover the locks had been changed. Little wonder Yoko Ono was said to have a core of steel harder than any samurai sword.
Legacy of a Force of Nature
Whether reviled or admired for her many and varied works as an experimental conceptual performance artist and avant-garde composer, musician, atonal vocalizer and peace activist, at 92-years-of-age she remains a force of nature. She achieved considerable stature as a musician and concert performer who sold out large venues worldwide, particularly when she began performing with her son, musician Sean. Her art has been shown in major retrospectives such as the Tate Modern in London and MOMA in New York.
Yoko Ono is barely five feet tall with a tiny frame but is formidable. After her marriage to John, Yoko fired his advisors and assumed control of his business affairs including negotiations with Apple Corporation as well as their real estate acquisitions and investments. When Lennon died, his estate was estimated to be valued at about 150 million. When she handed the reins of managing The Beatles and family legacies to son Sean Ono Lennon in late 2020, the estate had grown to approximately half a billion.
In retirement, although conceptual artists never really retire, her son Sean Lennon has said she is content to be “listening to the wind and watching the sky” at home on her 600-acre upstate New York farm.
A Balanced, Deeply Personal Biography
YOKO: A Biography does not shirk from reporting on the perceived co-dependency of the relationship or the unpretty aspects of drug use, including heroin and a methadone addiction, as well as John’s heavy consumption of alcohol. Beatles fans will be gratified to read about the continuing relationship between the band members and learn more about the interactions between John, Paul, George and Ringo.
As a couple, John and Yoko worked and performed together on multiple albums after the Beatles’ breakup. Their musical collaboration included the belated acknowledgement of her significant inspiration for and contribution to the classic song Imagine. In 2017, she personally accepted the Centennial Song Award from the National Music Publishers’ Association with a clip of John Lennon stating she deserved co-writer credit for this now iconic hit.
Author David Sheff has written a balanced, commendable biography of a friend he has long admired that should attract and please a large audience.
About David Sheff:
David Sheff is the author of multiple books including the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Beautiful Boy, which was turned into a movie starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, WIRED, Playboy, and elsewhere. His piece for The New York Times, “My Addicted Son,” received an award from the American Psychological Association for Outstanding Contribution to Advancing the Understanding of Addictions.
