Imagine Yoko

IMAGINE THERE'S NO YOKO

Imagine there's no Yoko
It's easy if you try
No hell here with us
And Lennon didn't die
Imagine he the person
Living here today

Imagine there's no Yoko
It isn't hard to do
No one to die by
No naked album too
Imagine all the people
living here with John

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day she'll leave us
And the world still had John

Imagine Yoko's possessions
I wonder if you can
Her greed and wealth
from death of just one man
Imagine all John's people
Sharing him with world

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day she'll leave us
And the world still had John

~ lyrics adaptation by Jackie Jura

LENNON'S DARK FATE ONO (...At first, she appeared shy and modest. She sat with downcast eyes and mumbled scraps of her poetry....What happened that night can only be left to the imagination....Did Yoko do her hypnotism thing, as some of John's friends thought she had, or did she have a powerful new drug in her arsenal?...)

Ono: Yes, I'm A Witch: Princes William & Harry got Yoko'd. See VISITING PRINESS DIANA PLACES
"...Lennon's dark fate is entrapment by a woman who stalks him for months, desperate to exploit his celebrity and his millions. Yoko Ono is a she-wolf dressed in black and such a core of negativity that she sucked the air out of the room. Did Yoko do her hypnotism thing or did she have a powerful new drug in her arsenal? It must have been something pretty potent that made John fall headlong into a mad obsession. Overnight he no longer had a will of his own. Shortly after this John started using heroin, to which Yoko had introduced him..." See LENNON'S DARK FATE ONO

The Last Days of John Lennon, by Frederic Seaman, published December 1992
review by Joe Kenney, October 1, 2018
One day in February 1979 Seaman got a call asking if he'd consider being John Lennon's personal assistant... We already know we're in for an anti-Yoko book from the start, as the book opens in 1982 and Seaman's in the process of being beaten up by two off-duty cops who moonlight for Yoko; they want back the still-missing John Lennon diary for 1980, but Seaman swears he doesn't have it... In Seaman's book, John Lennon in the late '70s is an emaciated shut-in with pasty skin, stringy long hair and beard, and is totally under the witchy spell of Yoko, who controls everything he does down to the smallest detail. Plus she's having affairs with two different men (confusingly both named Sam) right under John's nose, and besides that she's constantly on the phone talking to her retinue of psychics, tarot card readers, mystics, business partners, what have you... John when Seaman meets him is a recluse and borderline nutcase, his muse long ago lost, content to take drugs in his bedroom, stare at TV, and simmer in his own hostilities. But after a cathartic trip to Bermuda in 1980 John is reborn, rushing to the studio to complete his comeback album, DOUBLE FANTASY. Seaman subtly implies that John was also about to free himself from the yoke of Yoko...

As the book progresses Yoko is portrayed in full-on "Yellow Peril" proportions, occasionally coming out of her Inner Sanctum in revealing clothes that show off her "ample cleavage" and alternating between a malevolent force of occult power and a person so clueless and meek that she's terrified of a mere car ride. Seaman basically implies she has John hypnotized to her will; Seaman can't undersand how a once-mighty rock star can't make a single decision without checking with "mother" first, or how Yoko calls all the shots, with John constantly apologizing for being wrong and going out of his way to make her happy... THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN LENNON reads like a rock thriller, filled with salacious details that are more goofy than anything, like Seaman's report that Yoko snorts a line of coke "in front of everyone" in the studio before doing the vocals for one of her songs... He also makes it clear that he considers her songs for the album to be terrible, and implies that John felt the same way...

After John's murder, as Seaman has it, only he, of all the people on the staff, is upset that John's gone. And this includes Yoko! Per Seaman, she's back to her old self in less than twenty-four hours, and Seaman also implies that Yoko's so heartless she takes her time in telling Sean what happened to his dad... Seaman's already come up with the story that, the year before, John instructed Seaman that, "should anything happen to me", Seaman was to give John's diaries to his son, Julian... Seaman, seeing that heartless Yoko could care less, begins filtering out John's journals, which fit in a single attache case...

The Dream Is Over, by Dan Richter
With a foreword by Yoko Ono, THE DREAM IS OVER covers a ten-year span from 1963 to 1973... London in the sixties is the main backdrop of the memoir. Richter starred in and choreographed the opening of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. With his friends Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso and William Burroughs, Richter helped produce and read his poetry at the legendary Albert Hall poetry reading, as well as publishing their poetry. A close friend of Yoko Ono's, the main focus of the memoir is the four years Richter lived and worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono from 1969 to 1973. The Beatles, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and many other figures from rock 'n' roll and the arts fill the pages of the memoir. The book reveals an intimate insider's look, chronicling everything from battles with heroin addiction, John and Yoko's concerts, their political activities, films, the breakup of The Beatles, to the making of the album IMAGINE.

MOONWATCHER'S MEMOIR; A DIARY OF 2001, A SPACE ODYSSEY by Dan Richter (Captured what it was like filming back there with Stanley Kubrick... In the scene THE DAWN OF MAN, Dan Richter plays the man-ape who opens the epic film about the origin and future of humankind...)

The Yoko Ono Document, by Trevor Kraus, Medium
Dan Richter, a brilliant American mime artist who choreographed the start of Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and played the part of Moonwatcher, was very tight with Yoko and Tony Cox. He was privy to their furious arguments as well as their financial problems. He had first met the Coxes in Tokyo, where he was studying mime. I met Dan when he came to London and hung out at Indica. He took an apartment at 26 Hanover Gate Mansions, and told the homeless Coxes when the adjoining number 25 on the same floor became available. He was a close confidant of both of them [Yoko & Tony]. He said he heard all their hopes and schemes to hook John, at first as a financial "angel", then, with dawning excitement, as a lover. What made the three of them [Dan-Yoko-Tony] even tighter was that they shared a common balcony overlooking the street and freely moved between both of their apartments. Often, Dan said, he would look down and see John's black Mini parked in the street below. He said to me, "After a while, it was always there". Eventually Dan moved to Ascot with John and Yoko and spent four years working with them on their film and music projects, including IMAGINE.

According to Dan, Tony Cox actively encouraged the affair between John and Yoko as a means of survival. He said that Cox would tell Yoko to "go get Lennon". When John proved elusive, as he was at first, Cox told Yoko she wasn't trying hard enough. For her part, when Yoko saw how close she was to capturing their prey, Yoko told Dan that they'd soon be rich beyond their wildest dreams. Often, when Yoko made love to John in their apartment, Cox would bring Kyoko along the balcony and they'd wait in number 26 with Dan. At some stage, Cox began to feel fragile, thinking he might get cut out. In all seriousness, he drew up an agreement that he insisted Yoko sign. This single-page document -- which was drawn up and signed at Dan's kitchen table -- stated that when Yoko hooked John, they would split any cash she got from the endeavour.

John Lennon/Yoko Ono -- Unfinished Music No 1: Two Virgins
Back Cover; Cover Sleeve; Label Side 1; Label Side 2

Yoko and "Imagine" at Opening Ceremonies, Officer Outlook, Feb 11, 2006
The 2006 Winter Olympics opened in the Northern Italian city of Turin Friday night under a nearly full moon. The Olympic theme which is Passion Lives Here, was reflected in the opening ceremony's mixture of pageantry, pyrotechnics, music and the lighting of the Olympic cauldron...The musical highlights of the show included an appearance by the late John Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, and his song "Imagine" sung by Peter Gabriel...

9/11 ADDS UP AGAIN (...I notice as well that 72nd is the same street as the Dakota building is on, which is where John Lennon lived and was shot in another New York dastardly deed. John Lennon would have turned 66 on Monday October 9th, 2006. And the news of his alleged assassin's parole verdict was announced on Wednesday, October 11th, the same day as the airplane crashed into the 72nd Street building....)

When John Lennon met Yoko Ono (On 9 November 1966 [9/11/1666], after he had just finished filming How I Won the War, Lennon visited an art exhibit of Yoko Ono's at the Indica gallery in Mason's Yard, London. There, John asked if he could be the first to 'interact' with one of her installations by hammering a nail into a blank wooden block. She tells Young she refused because the exhibition had not opened to the public and then relented. John on meeting Yoko: She handed him a card with the word "breathe" on it and I said "you mean (panting)?" She says "That's it, You got it". And I'm thinking "I've got it it!" But I'm all geared up to do something". It was another piece that cemented his feeling for Yoko.)

On December 8th, 2005 - the 25th anniversary of the assassination of John Lennon - the coverage of the event in one of Canada's national newspapers, the National Post, consisted of a two-foot by 1-foot full page picture of Yoko Ono's display of John Lennon's blood-spattered glasses. I was shocked when I turned the page and came across this cruel visage and wondered why the space hadn't been taken up with pictures and stories of John Lennon. Ideally I'd have liked to have seen a chronological list of the Beatles songs, along with photos of them and the albums. That would have been informative, interesting and would also have provided a trip down memory lane for people who experienced Beatlemania. ~ Jackie Jura

Lennon had no desire to be a leader (because, in his words, "leaders get killed"). Roanoke Times, Dec 8, 2005. "I read the news today, oh boy."

Ono joins Dakota vigil for John (murdered there in her presence). CNN, Dec 8, 2005
Ono, dressed in black and wearing large sunglasses...escorted to the memorial by New York City police...spent several minutes looking at flowers and messages placed at the "Imagine" mosaic that is the centerpiece of "Strawberry Fields," a section of Central Park across the street from her apartment building. "That's the first time I've seen her come" said one man who had visited Strawberry Fields every year since Lennon's death....Friends of Lennon remembered the person, not just the legend. "You couldn't approach John at the end, and looking back it was from the moment he met Yoko Ono," former friend and fellow musician Billy Kinsley told Reuters...)

JOHN'S DAKOTA HOME OF ROSEMARY'S BABY The Dakota Building on Manhattan's Upper West Side was renamed The Bramford for the 1968 film Rosemary's Baby. It was on the set of this film that Mia Farrow received divorce papers from then-husband Frank Sinatra. There is a popular rumor that Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey gave technical advice and portrayed Satan in the impregnation scene. This is false - LaVey had no involvement with the film. Directed by Roman Polanski, whose pregnant wife, the actress Sharon Tate, was in 1969 murdered by Charles Manson and his followers, who titled their death spree "Helter Skelter" after the 1968 song by The Beatles, whose leader, John Lennon, who would one day live (and in 1980 be murdered) in the Manhattan apartment building called The Dakota - where Rosemary's Baby had been filmed...

Ballad of coolest Beatle. Telegraph, Dec 3, 2005
I decided to major on things that Lennon wrote and recorded while he was still a Beatle. The solo stuff seems less interesting in what it says about John Lennon, either because, as in the case of the ubiquitous Imagine, it feels a bit too Yoko (he wanted to give his wife a credit for her contribution to the lyrics) or because many of the other solo works sound so artlessly personal as hardly to need unpacking in a speech radio programme...

Yoko denies musical hi-jack (the cast were upstaged by the final scene, in which the audience see video footage of Lennon singing Imagine with Ono at his side). London Times, Aug 16, 2005

Yoko chose mistress for John (later married Paul's producer). London Times, July 24, 2005
In Broadway musical about the life of John Lennon "There is too much Yoko telling John, 'I told you so'. It makes you think Yoko really did break up the Beatles."...