Yoko Ono talks about the art of John Lennon on the eve of his Valentine’s Day ‘All You Need is Love’ exhibition in Pasadena

By Kevin Uhrich

For all his fame as a recording artist and founding member of the Beatles, many might not have imagined that John Lennon started out as a writer and an artist, one who sketched and painted up until his death in December 1980. Lennon actually studied at the Liverpool College of Art as a teenager in the late 1950s, well before the skiffle-rooted band that he helped form first went on to fame in England and then exploded onto the global pop music scene in 1964. Even after the Beatles broke up in 1969, Lennon is said to have picked up his guitar in only two of his last seven years of life, preferring instead to express his creative impulses through other mediums.

“John was an artist before he met me,” Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, told the Pasadena Weekly in a recent interview from her home in New York City.

Lifelong Passion
Beginning Friday, many of Lennon’s works — nearly 100 limited-edition lithographs, serigraphs and copper etchings, along with song lyrics — will be on display in the lower level of the Melting Pot Restaurant, 88 W. Colorado Blvd., in Old Pasadena, to help raise funds for the Los Angeles Food Bank. Over the past 25 years, Ono and Legacy Fine Art & Productions have been taking exhibitions of Lennon’s works to cities across the country to help worthy nonprofit organizations raise money.

“When John passed away, there was a tremendous focus on him, of course, and it is still continuing” explained Ono, who will not attend the exhibition, “All You Need is Love,” which is running Friday, Saturday (Valentine’s Day) and Sunday. “I was always caring about what to do about it. People always said, ‘We don’t have John anymore,’ and I said, ‘OK, I am going to give you one of John’s works every year.’ And I said to myself, ‘How could I do that?’ but I did. It sort of made people feel good, like he was still alive as well.”

Born in 1940, Lennon played with the Quarrymen, the skiffle-rock band that evolved into the Beatles, while attending the art institute in his hometown from 1957 to 1960, the year the Beatles were formed. An aspiring writer, Lennon published his first of three books in 1964, “In His Own Write,” a collection of stories, poems and line drawings. A second book followed the next year, “A Spaniard in the Works,” described as a darker version of the first book, also accompanied by drawings by Lennon. And, in 1986, his third book, “Skywriting By Word of Mouth,” subtitled “And Other Writings, Including the Ballad of John and Yoko,” was published posthumously.

“When I saw his artwork it gave me chills,” Ono said of her first encounter with Lennon’s work in 1964, the year her own book, “Grapefruit: A book of Instructions and Drawings by Yoko Ono,” was released. “When I first saw it, I was at a bookshop to check out how well my book ‘Grapefruit’ was doing. It was Yoko Ono, ‘O,’ and John Lennon, ‘L,’ so it was very close. There was John Lennon’s book, ‘In His Own Write.’ When I saw the inside … beautiful, beautiful, beautiful drawings. I said, ‘My God, I thought he was just a pop star.’

“When you go to his house, his childhood home, which I kind of restored, people go there, even from Japan,” explained Ono, who purchased the home on Menlove Avenue in South Liverpool, then donated it to the National Trust, which at first refused to recognize the middle-class dwelling as a national treasure. The home was opened to the public in 2003. “When John’s house came up for sale I wanted to preserve it for the people of Liverpool and John Lennon and Beatles’ fans all over the world,” she told the Associated Press at the time of the opening.

“When [people] see John’s bedroom, they start crying,” she continued in conversation with PW. “I cried many times. Even now when I see that room I can’t help getting choked up. It’s a very small bedroom, and in that room, John, as a little boy, was dreaming of … whatever. But he did it, you know.”

Ono reached out to Pasadena once before, in 2008, to host one of her visual art ventures, the Wish Trees, a project in which people were invited to write their desires on small paper tags and then tie them to one of 21 crepe myrtle trees installed at the One Colorado shopping complex in Old Pasadena. Those wishes were then joined with others from Spain, England, Israel, South Korea, Brazil and Tokyo and shipped to Videy Island, located off the west coast of Iceland. There they were buried near the Imagine Peace Tower, which Ono unveiled in 2007 in memory of her beloved husband.

‘Full-on Reappraisal’
Ono is going to be 82 years old on Feb. 18. It is as though, at least in the portion of the brain where memories of unfettered youth still reign, her iconic visage and intriguing persona — avant-garde artist, political activist, John Lennon’s bride, “the woman who (allegedly) broke up the Beatles,” and keeper of Lennon’s legacy since his murder in 1980 — are frozen in time.

What’s probably even more remarkable is the fact that a Senior Olympics athlete might find it difficult to keep up with Ono, who is still recording, still writing and creating, and still inspiring younger artists and audiences.

As Elvis Mitchell wrote in a recent Interview magazine article, “Ono is in the midst of a remarkable late-career renaissance, if not a full-on reappraisal.” As of December 2013, Mitchell wrote, “she has twice twirled and slinked her way past such artists as Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Daft Punk, Katy Perry, and Justin Timberlake to the top of Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play Chart, scoring her 10th and 11th such placements there since 2003, when a remix of 1981’s ‘Walking on Thin Ice’ made it to No. 1.”

In 2013, Ono guest curated London’s Meltdown festival, which included performances by her and John’s son, Sean Lennon, and artists Patti Smith, Siouxsie, Peaches, and Lene Lovich. In addition, Ono and her Plastic Ono Band released an album, “Take Me to the Land of Hell.” And, Mitchell wrote, Ono “has continued to flex her muscles as an activist, among other initiatives, helping to lead a campaign of Artists Against Fracking.”

Later this year, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City hosts its first exhibition of Ono’s work since 1971. That year, Ono advertised her one-woman show. “However, when visitors arrived at the museum there was little evidence of her work. According to a sign outside the entrance, Ono had released flies on the museum grounds, and the public was invited to track them as they dispersed across the city,” according to a story at moma.org. This exhibit, “Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971,” instead will feature works on paper, installations, performances, recordings, films and rarely seen archival material.

One of Ono’s keys to success is staying healthy, and her ideas for good health are as simple as they are sound.

“I’m not drinking and I’m not smoking. It was so hard to quit eating sugar. Eating sugar was something I loved very much. But we have to conquer a few things to stay alive, and that’s one of the things. I really think I’d like to live as long as I can,” said Ono, a once-privileged child who survived the firebombing of Tokyo as a pre-teen, made her way to the United States, studied at Sarah Lawrence College and then found herself at the epicenter of the New York modern art revolutions of the early ’60s. “It is getting so exciting to be alive. Scientists are finding all sorts of things. There might even be planets similar to ours. Or maybe that’s just something people say. Or maybe people can go to other planets and leave us alone,” she said with a giggle. “It is a very exciting age.”

On this Valentine’s Day, has Ono given any thought to another romantic involvement? She didn’t answer exactly. But she did say, “I think most women are scared of having an involvement. It’s too complicated. It is a very complex age. We want to keep our independence and also be able to have a good friendship. It is a very difficult time, for men too. We have to sort of somehow, with our intelligence, get over it.”

Intern Michael Saakyan contributed to this report.

The “All You Need is Love” exhibit will be open from noon to 8 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday at 88 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena (below the Melting Pot Restaurant). A $3 donation is requested. For more information, visit lafoodbank.org or call (323)234-3030, ext. 163.

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/imagine_love/14151/