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Imagine Yoko Ono, living life in peace
The Observer
|March 30, 2025
John Lennon’s widow is finally being hailed as an artist in her own right. But will she ever stop being pilloried for breaking up the Beatles
More than 50 years after John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1969 bed-in, protesting against war, Ono finally gets her love-in. David Sheff's biography Yoko, published last week, seeks to put the record straight about her stellar achievements as an internationally renowned artist.
In recent years, there have been retrospectives, including at Tate Modern. Kevin Macdonald's docufilm, One To One: John And Yoko, is released in the UK next month. Ono, 92, is seeing reputational rehabilitation on a global scale.
Still, is the great mellowing starting to obscure the truth of what went before? For decades, Ono was the ultimate rock'n'roll misogynist's dartboard, blamed for breaking up the Beatles, for dragging Lennon away from his true calling and ruining popular culture for ever. Yoko became shorthand for the romantic partner who overplays their hand in the recording studio or on the tour bus. After her husband was shot dead in front of her, it was notable how none of the public sympathy seemed to flow towards Ono. How, even at that devastating point, she remained goodwill-resistant.
This story is from the March 30, 2025 edition of The Observer.
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