"Yoko, I love you!" sang out one guy in the audience. "Why the f--- does John put up with this crap?" the guy sitting behind complained bitterly. And there you have it. It's Yoko Ono's fate to forever polarize people's attitudes. Even if she and Lennon hadn't spliced the marital knot, Yoko would be a divider. There's just a quality in her character that acts as a violent catalyst.
Me, I think she's great. She was there on Sunday night at the Town Hall, just off Broadway. White suit, white shoes, white tee-shirt bearing the "Approximately Infinite Universe" emblem. Slightly nervous at first, but charmingly hesitant in her imperfect English.
"You probably know me as the actress who married a public John, or as Mad Jack the screamer, or something." Black hair flying, struggling with the microphone. She's only a tich, you know, all on her own, her first public performance without Lennon. Post-Approximately Yoko. Ono the straight, commercial artist, not the avant-garde banshee. It was quite an occasion.
The news came last week, all of a sudden. It was announced she was going to do a benefit concert for WBAI, the New York public radio station. A lot of us press even paid five bucks a ticket for the privilege (although we got it back later when Capitol Records agreed to sponsor the event). That's love for you. But maybe we did it, maybe we were there, out of some kind of compulsive respect for her old man, who has now become something of a venerated Albert Schweitzer figure.
Certainly, a good many in the audience were anxious only to see an ex-Beatle bowing his legs in front of a microphone once more. Somehow, though, I don't think Yoko warrants an excuse any longer. These days she has all her three records, and more, together. She can write real songs that can even be recorded by other people. What's more, she can sing about real things, about feelings that matter. So sit down, John, and take a back seat for once.
She was the bill-topper, WeatherReport on first, and what a ragged, disgruntled set that was, and then Elephant's Memory with a couple of numbers I think we can forget about, but after all, it's for charity.
Now, something's happening. A chair is brought on, draped in a large white sheet. Too small to hide in that. Oh yeah, this is she, striding out like a little judo artist. Gonna knock 'em dead. Silence pregnant as a maternity ward.
"You probably know me as.." Laughter tinkles like broken ice. White teeth, natural sense of rhythm. Woman is the nigger of the world. Truly. That's what she's all about. She sits down at the piano and plonks out those melancholy bars on "Looking Over From My Hotel Window", the saddest song I've ever heard, as emotionally painful as the last chapter of "Catcher in the Rye" or "Farewell to Arms" or the whole of "Bonjour Tristesse."
Her singing is amateurish, but it has a charming nakedness of the ingenue. No matter that she crams too many words into her lines: so did Bob Dylan. It's the effect that counts. Communication.
Looking around me, I can see there are others who feel a little sheepish and embarrassed by it all at first, nervous at all this honest pouring out. Don't balls it up and make us feel sorry for you, luv. But that's stupid, really, because she's more in control than any of us. "Age 39. God's little dandruff floating in the air"...After that one, just sit back and take it all in.
Out come the Elephants in their black Yoko Ono tee-shirts and she's on her feet doing "What a Bastard the World Is", giving that microphone hell. What pigs and arseholes men are! These sentiments get a lot of good-natured laughs. By the prophet's beard, she can make male chauvinism a subject for mirth, which is something beyond Jill Johnson or Kate Millett. I always think of this song as a Donald McGill seaside postcard, with the wife in her curlers, rolling pin in hand, waiting for him as he appears on the doorstep.
Next there's "Catman (The Rosies are Coming)." She spits it out, like a mouthful of loose teeth. She has the presence not of a musician, but of an actress who's had to learn how to sing. Okay, she then announces,we're going to have an auction "starting with the little things and then ending up with my shirt."
She tugs at the white sheet. "This is the sheet that John and I slept in on our honeymoon." Lying baggage. "Five dollars? Nooo, it's worth a lot more than that! It would cost you ten in the shops." Haggles like a French peasant on market day. "Oh, come on! John and I slept in it so it's got our autograph, too." Stan Bronstein the hefty tenorist, all chest muscles and biceps, smiles in disbelief. A bit of mischief, auctioning off the relic of a nuptial knockabout.
"All right, yours for ten dollars!" And so it goes. A pair of her panties is next, and then the shirt. "No, I don't come with it - I'm too experienced for you." Take it off first! "Okay, if you give me the $30," and the guy does, and she does, only to reveal another white singlet underneath. Ha! The joke's on you, male pigs. "You've seen me nude before, haven't you, on the 'Two Virgins'?" Into "Death of Samantha," a slow, drifting song, her single. Cool chick, baby.
She brings out two young girls from the wings, has them blindfolded, then tells them to go search in the audience for a guy who's had a tail pinned to his bottom. What's happening is a happening of sorts, and though there are several who happen to the exits, most of us like our ass pinched. A brush with nubility. So two unseeing girls, touching us up, while she does "Kite Song." Sits on a stool, legs akimbo,for "Is Winter Here to Stay?" There's only three lines to it, but she's screaming and moaning in the old routine - it's like a trip to the Wailing Wall - and the sax is raspberrying and the lead guitar has a lovely break. Slow blues. East meets West. Is winter here to stay? You never know, but "Is Winter Here to Stay?" and that's it. It had only lasted an hour.
It's all right if you don't like Yoko because there's enough of us who do. She's a good larf and a good cry. One of these days she might even have a hit. John Lennon is married to her, you know. You remember him?