Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono sustained an enduring reputation as an innovative creator across visual media, vocal performance, songwriting, and campaigns for nonviolence. Prior to forming a personal and artistic alliance with John Lennon, she had already secured recognition within experimental art and sound circles. Having studied voice and piano in the classical tradition, she collaborated with John Cage and LaMonte Young during the opening years of the 1960s and maintained ties to the Fluxus collective. Once she and Lennon commenced joint musical projects in the closing years of that decade, she encouraged him toward greater experimentation and personal disclosure in his writing. At the same time her own recordings fused rock, jazz, and avant-garde approaches with the same iconoclastic spirit evident in her other disciplines, evident from the free-jazz leanings of 1970’s Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band through the comparatively organized 1971 set Fly and onward to the pointedly feminist deployment of glam, funk, and pop on 1973’s Feeling the Space and Approximately Infinite Universe. Her 1980s catalog extended from 1981’s Season of Glass, an unflinching portrait of loss following Lennon’s death, to the utopian outlook of 1985’s Starpeace. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Ono’s stature as a prescient musical thinker gained wider acknowledgment; Elvis Costello, the B-52’s, and Sonic Youth each interpreted her compositions, while the 1992 box set Onobox restored broader access to her catalog. Refusing to rely on past achievements, she delivered 1995’s Rising with undiminished confrontational force. In the 2000s and 2010s she also achieved notable success on dance charts and enlisted younger colleagues including tUnE-yArDs, ?uestlove, and her son Sean Lennon for projects such as Take Me to the Land of Hell. She further sustained her longstanding commitment to peace and environmental causes while preserving Lennon’s legacy through initiatives such as Strawberry Fields and the Imagine Peace Tower.

Born on February 18, 1933, into an affluent Tokyo household, Yoko Ono experienced an early life marked by separation and displacement. Her father, a banker who had once performed classical piano, relocated to San Francisco shortly before her arrival, and her mother, active in social circles, frequently hosted large gatherings. The family did not reunite until Ono reached age two, at which point they settled in San Francisco; three years later they returned to Tokyo to evade mounting anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States amid Japan’s expanding military presence. She attended the exclusive Gakushuin School, where the Emperor’s sons were among her peers, began piano instruction at age four, and commenced lieder vocal studies at fourteen.

In 1945 her mother relocated the household to rural areas outside Tokyo, enabling them to survive the Allied bombardment of the capital; nevertheless, urban elites encountered hostility, and the Ono children were repeatedly compelled to solicit food. After the conflict the family resettled in Scarsdale, New York. Ono remained in Tokyo long enough to become the first woman admitted to Gakushuin’s philosophy program, yet she departed after a few terms. She joined her relatives in the United States in 1952 and enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College, where studies with André Singer introduced her to twelve-tone composers including Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. Seeking broader musical horizons, she learned of avant-garde figures such as Henry Cowell and John Cage through Singer. During this period she also formed a relationship with Juilliard student Toshi Ichiyanagi, whose interests aligned with hers; they wed in 1956. The pair settled in Manhattan in 1957, and Ono supported herself through intermittent positions, among them teaching Japanese art and music at the Japan Society, having declined her family’s financial resources. Their Chambers Street loft quickly emerged as a gathering point for the developing downtown New York art community. Between December 1960 and June 1961 she regularly presented “happenings,” occasionally alongside minimalist composer LaMonte Young, incorporating music, poetry, and performance; John Cage utilized the space for experimental composition classes. Ono introduced interactive conceptual works such as Painting to Be Stepped On, a bare canvas completed by viewers’ footsteps, which appeared in her debut solo exhibition at George Maciunas’ AG Gallery in July 1961. That November she performed at Carnegie Recital Hall, incorporating a miked toilet that flushed at intervals throughout the program. Following her separation from Ichiyanagi, she returned to Japan in March 1962, where the divorce was finalized. After a short period of hospitalization for depression, she married American jazz musician and film producer Anthony Cox in November 1962.

Upon returning to New York the couple, Ono resumed her artistic activities and attracted notice within avant-garde circles. Maciunas had by then assumed leadership of the Fluxus movement, whose emphasis on abstraction and audience participation resonated with Ono’s own principles; although invited to join, she chose to operate independently. In 1964 she issued Grapefruit, a volume of instructional prompts recognized as a landmark of conceptual art, and premiered Cut Piece, inviting spectators to sever portions of her attire, at Kyoto’s Yamaichi Concert Hall. She repeated the performance at Carnegie Recital Hall in early 1965 and again at the 1966 Destruction in Art Symposium in London, where she was the sole female performer and one of only two female speakers. The piece established her prominence in London’s art scene, leading to a November 1966 exhibition at Indica Gallery that drew John Lennon’s attention. He responded especially to an installation requiring viewers to ascend a ladder and examine a ceiling inscription reading “Yes!” through a magnifying glass. The two exchanged writings, and Lennon underwrote a subsequent show in which Ono painted household objects white and bisected them. Concurrently, Ono and Cox produced experimental films focused on repetitive motions; their fourth effort, Bottoms, comprised 365 close-up views of nude buttocks. Ono also performed with pioneering free-jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman at the Royal Albert Hall. Her relationship with Lennon began in early 1967, and the pair recorded the radically experimental Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, issued late in 1968.

Ono and Cox divorced on February 2, 1969; she married Lennon in Gibraltar on March 20, 1969. The couple leveraged honeymoon publicity for “Bed-Ins for Peace” in Amsterdam and Montreal, the latter yielding the single “Give Peace a Chance.” Lennon, prompted by Ono, pursued more autobiographical material such as “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” and together they formed the Plastic Ono Band. Its debut, Live Peace in Toronto 1969, captured at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival, featured Eric Clapton and Klaus Voorman alongside rock standards and avant-garde segments showcasing Ono’s free-form vocals. The second Lennon/Ono release, Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions, followed soon after their wedding and highlighted Ono’s raw vocal expressions while addressing her first miscarriage. It was succeeded by The Wedding Album, one side devoted to further Ono improvisation and the other to the couple reciting each other’s names. In subsequent years they sustained peace activism and underwent primal-scream therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov, an experience that shaped both artists’ individual work. In 1970 each issued an album with the Plastic Ono Band; Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band proved the more radical, incorporating free-jazz passages and contributions from Ornette Coleman and Ringo Starr. Ono continued with the double album Fly in 1971, balancing experimental pieces with more conventional songs and including “Don’t Worry, Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow),” a tribute to her daughter from whom Cox had gained custody and vanished in 1971; Ono did not reunite with Kyoko until 1998. The couple relocated to New York City in September 1971. Influenced by activists including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, they released the protest-oriented Some Time in New York City in 1972, which drew criticism for its directness. Ono returned in 1973 with two assertive solo statements, the fiercely feminist Feeling the Space and the stylistically diverse Approximately Infinite Universe, both featuring reduced involvement from Lennon. Fatigued by constant proximity and immigration disputes surrounding Lennon’s potential deportation, the pair separated for roughly eighteen months late in 1973. Ono recorded the more accessible A Story in 1974, though it remained unreleased for two decades. Reconciliation occurred in early 1975, and their son Sean Taro Ono Lennon arrived on John’s birthday, October 9. Lennon withdrew from public life to raise the child while Ono managed his affairs.

Although she supplied several of her most radio-friendly compositions to Lennon’s 1980 comeback Double Fantasy, she did not resume solo recording until after his murder on December 8, 1980. The anguished Season of Glass appeared the next year to strong critical acclaim, and the single “Walking on Thin Ice (For John)” became her first chart entry, reaching number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1981. She followed with the more optimistic, pop-inflected It’s Alright (I See Rainbows) in 1982, gaining airplay for “Never Say Goodbye.” Milk and Honey, her final collaborative album with Lennon, emerged in 1984 and juxtaposed her polished studio recordings against his demos and rehearsals. With 1985’s Starpeace she addressed President Ronald Reagan’s proposed missile-defense initiative. Partnering with producer Bill Laswell and fellow downtown New York musicians, she secured another charting single, “Hell in Paradise,” which peaked at number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100. That same year the Strawberry Fields memorial to Lennon was dedicated in Manhattan’s Central Park, its creation and upkeep financed by Ono.

During the 1990s she returned to visual art, producing installations and exploring photography, while several retrospective exhibitions surveyed her earlier output. Her profile as a musician bridging pop and experimental domains expanded following an Option magazine interview with Mark Kemp and the 1992 release of Onobox, a remastered anthology that also restored the previously unavailable A Story. Her off-Broadway musical New York Rock, drawn from her life with Lennon and incorporating many of her songs, opened in 1994. She adapted several new pieces from the production for 1995’s Rising, a severe, experimental album featuring her son Sean and the band Ima; the subsequent Rising Mixes EP incorporated contributions from Cibo Matto, Ween, and Thurston Moore.

Blueprint for a Sunrise, revisiting feminist themes from Feeling the Space and including additional remixes from Rising, appeared in 2001. Beginning in 2003 Ono collaborated with dance producers on reinterpretations of signature tracks, achieving substantial chart success. That April “Walking on Thin Ice (Remixes),” featuring versions by Pet Shop Boys, Danny Tenaglia, and Felix da Housecat, became her first number one on Billboard’s Dance/Club Play chart. She repeated the accomplishment with 2004’s “Everyman ... Everywoman …,” 2008’s “No No No,” and 2009’s “I’m Not Getting Enough,” accumulating five number-one dance singles during the decade. Alongside V2 reissues of earlier albums, she issued Yes, I’m a Witch Too in 2007, presenting her songs reworked by Cat Power, the Flaming Lips, DJ Spooky, Jason Pierce, and additional artists. In 2009 she reconstituted the Plastic Ono Band with Sean and further collaborators including Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto and members of Cornelius, releasing Between My Head and the Sky on Sean’s Chimera label. The same year she mounted the exhibition “John Lennon: The New York City Years” at the N.Y.C. Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex, incorporating music, photographs, and personal artifacts. Throughout the 2000s she also helped establish Lennon memorials such as the John Lennon Museum in Saitama, Japan, and the Imagine Peace Tower, which emits a vertical beam of light from an island near Reykjavik each year between October 9 and December 8.

In the 2010s Ono maintained an active schedule of musical and visual projects. She continued topping dance charts with 2011’s “Move on Fast,” 2012’s “Hold Me (Featuring Dave Audé),” and 2014’s “Angel.” For the improvisational YOKOKIMTHURSTON she joined Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore. That year she also established the environmental group Artists Against Fracking. In 2013, marking her eightieth birthday, she published Acorn, a follow-up collection of conceptual prompts to Grapefruit, and opened the career retrospective Half-a-Wind Show at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. She further released Take Me to the Land of Hell, produced by Sean Lennon with appearances by tUnE-yArDs, ?uestlove, and Beastie Boys members Ad-Rock and Mike D. Yes, I’m a Witch Too arrived in 2016, featuring covers and remixes by Sparks, Ebony Bones, Death Cab for Cutie, and Danny Tenaglia, among others. The same year her first permanent U.S. installation, “Skylanding,” was placed in Chicago’s Jackson Park. In 2017 the National Music Publishers Association awarded her a songwriting credit for contributions to Lennon’s “Imagine.” She included a fresh rendition of the song on 2018’s Warzone, comprising minimalist reinterpretations spanning her entire catalog.