Yoko Ono: Destroyed The Beatles or Was She a Muse? (11 photos)

We hear John Lennon and then Yoko Ono echoes. But she was quite famous even before she met one of the world’s most famous musicians. Lennon himself called her "the most famous unknown artist."





Let's start with Yoko Ono's family.

She was born into a Japanese family, and a very wealthy one at that - the artist’s mother’s family was the second wealthiest Japanese family. The girl’s father was a banker and therefore Yoko, along with her parents, two brothers and sister, often visited the USA.

But behind the expensive picture there is always a wrong side: Yoko recalled that her parents constantly criticized her and she received neither care nor love from them. A typical example: Yoko’s father loved music very much, but when the girl wanted to learn to play the piano, he immediately told her straight away that her hand was too small for this instrument and that she would never play an octave in her life.

After some time, Yoko wanted to write her own music, to which her father and mother hastened to remind her that history does not remember famous female composers. The girl's mother never called her beautiful, or even pretty.



Yoko Ono in childhood

Little known fact: Yoko Ono has ancestors. The artist's paternal aunt Anna Bubnova - she and her sister fled to Japan after 1917. And there were girls for a reason: they had aristocratic origins, the girls studied literature, music, and art in general. Anna's sister Varvara was one of the best violin teachers in Japan.

Everything changed during World War II. Yoko, her mother and brother were in Japan, and her father was in the USA. After Tokyo was bombed they had to exchange things for food, the family lived from hand to mouth.



Yoko has never been an ordinary, run-of-the-mill girl. This is how I grew up. It was she who became the first woman who was able to enter the Faculty of Philosophy at Gakushuin (one of the most prestigious universities). She decided not to continue her studies and transferred to the New York School of Art. But she did not complete this education either, because she did not want to achieve academic achievements, but to engage in real creativity.

Yoko loved art in the industrial genre, but the public did not understand or accept her strange and phantasmagorical works. Well, what kind of picture is this that you need to step on? And people knowledgeable in art said that this was too progressive. Yoko was not led by critics and continued to do only what she liked.

Before Ono met Lennon, she managed to get married twice and divorced both times. The artist's first husband was Toshi Ichiyanagi, a Japanese composer. The parents, of course, did not approve of this choice of their daughter, they say, he has little money and has not achieved much. They tried to get their way by threatening that they would stop considering Yoko their daughter if she did not leave Toshi.

Ono fled to New York with her beloved, and then divorced him, but of her own free will.



Yoko, after the divorce, collapsed into depression, so severe that she attempted suicide. Relatives were so concerned about Yoko’s condition that they admitted her to a psychiatric clinic, from where the girl emerged not only cured of depression, but also on the arm of her new husband, a jazz musician.

His name was Anthony Cox and they were together for several years, during their marriage they had a daughter, Kyoko, and when the couple decided to separate, Anthony took the girl with him. Moreover, the breakup was so terrible that Yoko did not see her daughter for 23 years. From Kyoko's 8th birthday until her 31st birthday.

She was looking for her, being already in a relationship with Lennon. They looked for Kyoko in Denmark, Spain, England, America... They even achieved custody of Kyoko, but Cox simply took her first to Texas, and after that he simply disappeared from the radar.



He met John Lennon in 1966, at Ono’s exhibition “Unfinished Paintings and Objects,” held in London. Moreover, the musician turned out to be an ideal participant in the exhibition, in which the active participation of the viewer was assumed - he first decided to eat a piece of an apple, which was an art object, and then climbed the stairs in the installation “Picture on the Ceiling”.

Then Yoko approached, they exchanged a couple of humorous phrases and in her diary Ono wrote that same evening: “Finally, I met a man whom I could loveb".



At first they met occasionally, and only in 1968 did their relationship develop into real passion. Lennon at that time, by the way, was still married to Cynthia Powell and, taking advantage of the fact that his wife had gone on vacation to Greece, John immediately invited Yoko to his house.

Cynthia suddenly returned home the very next day and found her lovers lying on the floor. Lennon didn’t make stupid excuses, but he wasn’t in any hurry to file for divorce.



Yoko and John began to appear in public more often, which, of course, aroused the righteous anger of fans. Once the lovers recorded the album (in one night) Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins. There was no music, only moans, screams and noise. Few people remember the record, but the legendary cover, where Ono and Lennon were completely naked, is still one of the most famous.



At that moment, Yoko became pregnant. John, having learned about the impending descendant, wanted to divorce Cynthia, who filed a counterclaim accusing her husband of treason. Furious and humiliated, Cynthia kicked John out of the house, so he and Yoko had to temporarily live in Ringo Starr's empty apartment.

It just so happened that the police came to the apartment, suspecting that drugs were stored in it. Since before the couple, Jimi Hendrix, who was known to be an addict, lived in it, but 14 grams of hashish and half a gram of morphine were found in the home. But who cared?

Lennon took the blame on himself, since Ono could otherwise face deportation. The musician was given a fine with a warning, but Yoko, unfortunately, due to stress, experienced one of the most serious experiences in the life of any woman - the loss of a child.



John eventually divorced Cynthia and began to listen to Yoko more and more often. She never ignored political events in the world and involved John in this. When he was nominated for an OBE, he returned it as a protest against colonial intervention in Nigeria.

But the rest of The Beatles strictly adhered to the position of “out of politics” and such actions of John unsettled them. The musicians began to quarrel more and more often, and by 1970 the band ceased to exist. Fans immediately organized a boycott of Yoko, blaming her for the breakup of The Beatles. But, of course, the essence of the conflict lay much deeper than just a difference of views on the situation in the world. But Ono steadfastly withstood all the attacks against her and later admitted that this time was very difficult for her. She was lucky that at that time there was no Internet yet and multimillion-dollar cyberbullying did not fall upon her.

She rarely spoke about the breakup of The Beatles, but Paul McCartney once forever defined Yoko’s role in this conflict, publicly supporting her in an interview for Rolling Stone magazine: “She’s cool. If John loved her, then there was something in her "He wasn't stupid."



But the dreams of her own musical creativity remained in Yoko Ono’s soul. Some called her creations terrible, while others found unique poetry and philosophical thoughts there. Ono always dreamed of music - both before meeting John and after his death.

Yoko's unusual musical style caused both ridicule and misunderstanding. But, as you know, music, like almost any creative work, is a matter of taste.

Therefore, Yoko had and still has fans both in the artistic and musical worlds. Lady Gaga, for example, not only talked about how much she liked Yoko, but also recorded a song with her.

And Marina Abramovic, a true performance legend, has said more than once that when she was young, she drew inspiration from the works of Yoko Ono.



Today she is already 90 years old and continues to be active, dress stylishly, and when she was once asked what the secret of her style and youthfulness is, Yoko replied: “My beauty secret... nothing! I don’t drink too much water. I don't eat very well. Sometimes I cheat and take a chocolate bar."