EXCLUSIVES

Ono Says 'Oh Yes' to Gay Marriage on New Single (Available on iTunes)

Words by Joshua Rotter
Photo Credit: Michael Levine

Yoko Ono is the most controversial woman in rock-n-roll history.  The former great wall of hair, the avant-garde experimental performance artist with the primal, screeching vocals, blamed for everything from Lennon's leaving the Beatles to his changed political views and musical sound, has reinvented herself since his tragic death as a brave survivor, savvy businesswoman and gay icon.

The Mac G4 user's iconic status among the disenfranchised is no surprise, since Ono has, herself, been victimized for years, battling everything from sexism to racism and now at 71, ageism.

"I was an outsider, now not so much," she said. "Racism and sexism are getting to be over, and just when I thought it was OK, there comes ageism. So I'm still an outsider, and ageism is just an ism. So with all that, I feel sympathetic and close to people's suffering."
 

Of late, the political outlaw has turned her attention to the struggle many of her gay friends and fans are facing in trying to marry. She aims to do her part to sway popular sentiment in the direction of legalizing gay marriage. "Of course this thing about an objection to gay marriage was ridiculous," she said. "I got angry and it was a human rights issue for me. All my good friends needed support, so it was a tribute my friends. I just wanted to make that statement to give encouragement to people who want to stay together and love each other.”

To tackle the same-sex marriage issue, Ono released "Every Man Has A Man/Every Woman Has A Woman" (The Remixes) last month. Taking the original song "Everyman Has A Woman Who Loves Him" from the Lennon/Ono multi-platinum two disc set “Double Fantasy” (1980), Ono re-cut the vocals to include the new incarnations "Every Man Has A Man Who Loves Him" and "Every Woman Has A Woman Who Loves Her.”
 
As with her previous remix releases including the number one Billboard Club Play smash "Walking On Thin Ice" and “Hell in Paradise”, "Every Man/Every Woman…" has been brilliantly re-worked into a series of searing and euphoric pop and dance floor anthems, courtesy of an international line-up of pop, dance, and electronic music innovators including Basement Jaxx and Blow-up, among others.

"It came to me and they came to us," she said of the electro remixers. "They're the beautiful, big people now, the edgy kind of people and musicians, and I'm very pleased that they wanted to do it."

Mac users can even download the single off iTunes. And arrangements are being made to donate a portion of the “Every Man/Every Woman” proceeds to organizations supporting equality and human rights.

Looking back on Ono's childhood, it is no surprise that the singer/artist would grow into such an unwavering campaigner for equal rights. Born in Tokyo to a wealthy Japanese family, her childhood was somewhat lonely and isolated, since her pianist-turned-banker father often worked abroad and her socialite mother was often busy entertaining.

After facing the U.S.'s anti-Japanese backlash of the early 1930's following a brief move to the states, and the anti-aristocratic backlash back in Japan following the allied bombings of 1945, Ono's most devastating discrimination came from her father.

As the young girl followed in her father's footsteps, playing classical piano at a young age, and later taking operatic vocal lessons, she soon decided – to her father's dismay – that she would rather compose music than interpret it, even though the former, a child of his generation, believed that men were meant to create art and women merely to reenact it.

"It sounds crazy," she said. "My father had intelligence. It had nothing to do with intelligence. It was the times, when it was unheard of to think about women being successful, and he was concerned about my future. I was already creating and I thought, 'OK.' I felt I was not very close to people who were just singers, so I thought, 'Maybe forget it, and go to university to study philosophy, which was more interesting.'" Ono moved with her family to New York in the early 1950's, studying philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College, where she became interested in classical avant-gardists like Schoenberg, Webern and Cage, and created her earliest demos. In 1956, she married her first husband, like-minded art student Toshi Ichiyanagi. Ono, along with her husband, moved to Manhattan, and staged “happenings”, featuring art, music and poetry at their downtown loft.

Ono's art was largely conceptual, sometimes existing only in the mind's eye. Her first work was a series of instructional pieces suggesting nonsensical activities, later published as the book “Grapefruit” in 1964.
 
As her marriage broke up, Ono held her first solo show in mid-1961, and later that year she performed at the Carnegie Recital Hall, an event that featured a miked-up toilet flushing at various points throughout the show. Receiving negative reviews, Ono returned to Japan the following year, seeking a resolution to her marriage.

Becoming lonely and depressed in her native country, Ono attempted suicide, and was committed to a mental institution, where she was kept under abnormally heavy sedation. Fortunately, she was rescued by Anthony Cox, a jazz musician and film producer, who secured her release. The two became romantically involved. When Ono became pregnant, she formally split from Ichiyanagi and married Cox. Their daughter Kyoko was born in 1963, but Cox's volatility put a strain on the relationship. They separated the following year, reconciling in New York a few months later.

Once back in New York, Ono resumed her art career to considerable attention from the avant-garde community, thanks to the new “Fluxus” art movement, which prized abstraction and audience interaction. Ono performed at the Carnegie Recital Hall for a second time in early 1965, and debuted her seminal "Cut Piece," in which audience members were invited to cut off pieces of the performer's clothing with scissors.
 
In September 1966, she traveled to England for an art symposium, and "Cut Piece" was so popular, that by November, she got her own exhibition at the famed Indica Gallery, often frequented by John Lennon. Lennon, a former art student who had long harbored an interest in avant-garde art, was impressed by Ono's work, particularly a piece where the audience was meant to climb a ladder and hold up a magnifying glass to read a small placard on the ceiling that read "Yes!" Lennon was so impressed that he backed an exhibition in which Ono painted everyday objects white and cut them in half. But Ono dropped from popular favor with her "Wrapping Event," in which she wrapped the lion statues beneath Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square with white cloth, tying herself to one.

Although an affair with Lennon that spring brought the artist wider attention, her art still remained inaccessible, mostly because it was grounded in ideas rather than visuals. From the all-white chess set "Play It By Trust" to the all-white “Blue Room” to her 1971 imaginary art exhibit at New York's Museum of Modern Art, where the spectators acted as the real works of art, Ono dealt mostly in concepts.
 
While many saw her as talentless, Lennon recognized her as musically inspiring. Lennon and Ono's first musical collaboration on the experimental “Unfinished Music, No. 1: Two Virgins” (1968), with its strange snippets of noise, faint dialogue, and environmental sounds, led to Lennon's participation in Ono's odd public displays. One such display, appearing together in black plastic bags as a statement against judging by appearance, was personal to Ono, who had long suspected that Lennon's fans true hostility towards her was due to racism.
After Ono's divorce from Cox, the couple married in Gibraltar in 1969, soon holding "Bed-Ins for Peace" in Amsterdam and Montreal, which produced the single "Give Peace a Chance." Cox attained custody of Kyoko and disappeared with the child.

Between the second Lennon/Ono album, “Unfinished Music, No. 2: Life With the Lions”, showcasing Ono's cathartic, wailing vocals to the equally mystifying “The Wedding Album”, Lennon and Ono continued their peace activism. Ono next released the double-LP “Fly” (1971) which featured more conventional music before the simplistic Lennon/Ono protest-song album “Sometime in New York City,” and 1973's brutally feminist “Feeling the Space” and “Approximately Infinite Universe.” But exhausted from their constant time together and Lennon's deportation battle, the couple split up in late 1973.

After reconciling almost two years later, the couple had a son, Sean, in 1975.   Lennon devoted his time to raising his son, while Ono took charge of their business affairs. Although she contributed some of her most accessible songs to Lennon's comeback album “Double Fantasy” (1980) five years later, she did not return to solo recording until after Lennon's assassination that year with the harrowing, grief-stricken “Season of Glass” (1981). Ono followed it in 1982 with the more optimistic “It's Alright (I See Rainbows)” and had a minor success with the single "Never Say Goodbye." 1985's “Starpeace” continued that optimistic trend, but reviews were not as positive.

Ono gradually returned to visual art, creating installations and trying her hand at photography. Interest in her previous work led to several retrospectives over the course of the 1990's, and in 1992 her complete back catalog was issued on CD along with the six-CD box set retrospective “Onobox.” Three years later, Ono recorded “Rising,” featuring son, Sean, which was more reflective of her early experimentalism, followed by 2001's “Blueprint for a Sunrise”, which updated the feminist tone of “Feeling the Space.”

To commemorate the events of Sep. 11, Ono recently released the top five dance single “Hell In Paradise”, which synthesized her views on serious issues with the more bacchanalian energy of contemporary club culture.

This Fall, Ono contributed “Give Peace A Chance 2004”, featuring a new set of lyrics, delivered in spoken word by Ono and remixed for a contemporary audience, to the star-studded “Wake Up Everybody” compilation to mobilize support for progressive candidates at all levels of government. As Ono prepares for several peace-promoting art exhibitions in Europe and Asia, she refuses to predict whether she will be celebrated more for her art or her music a century from now.

"What if they don't remember me?" she asked. "Whatever we do as artists and musicians, if people can enjoy it, great, if not, it's their loss. But maybe, they'll be inspired and encouraged for something else. But I have to get it out. It comes out casually from my head, and I don't have to drag it. I feel more like a channeler than someone struggling to create. I see myself as a conduit of a message that comes into my mind."

But it is her message on “Every Man/Every Woman...” that Ono seemed most concerned with. "I think this issue could be resolved," she said. "But with this being an election year, there is not too much support from our government. But not much later, sooner rather than much later. You know how it will happen? Someone in the world will allow it to happen, and they'll all go there, and then people will say 'We want it here.' Meanwhile they need our support."

But would John Lennon, a staunch supporter of equal rights in his lifetime, share Ono's view on legalizing gay marriage? "I think he'd be all for it," she said. "I think he'd be angry for me. As you know, we were both quick in being angry. He'd see the incredible injustice and say, 'What's the problem, man?'"

Visit: www.apple.com/itunes to download a select number of the "Every Man/Every Woman..." remixes.