Icon #44 - Yoko Ono: Avant-Garde Bard

0:02 Hello the internet and welcome to this spin-off episode of their daily zeitgeist yeah yeah which we're calling the iconograph instead of looking at the zeitgeist through current events uh on these monday mornings we're looking at the zeitgeist through the powerful pop cultural deities that are our icons We appreciate you all making it through October, not being scared off by our terrifying icons, Dracula. I'm not going to rename them here. I can't remember what they are. Look, I don't need to tell you guys. I don't need to name all my kids. Of course I know them. Dracula.

0:38 Chucky.

0:39 For some reason, I wanted to say Harrison Barnes instead of Hannibal Lecter. For some reason. Creepy kids and ghosts. G-g-g-ghosts. Anyways, we're back. With a non-spooky icon.

0:53 A Thanksgiving icon.

0:55 In many ways. We're breaking new ground in today's episode by covering our first icon, with the possible exception of Santa Claus, I would say, our first icon who didn't do the thing they're most famous for doing. What do you mean?

1:10 Oh, the preconceived notion about them. The thing that everybody, I say.

1:15 This person's name. What didn't Santa Claus do?

1:18 Some people say he doesn't actually.

1:19 He doesn't go down the chimneys?

1:20 Some people say that. What? He doesn't go down the chimneys? Some people say that. He doesn't go down on his wife? Oh, shit. Real DJ Khaled.

1:29 No, I think it's the opposite of that.

1:32 I'd be like, what do you need, Mrs. Claus? Oh, you like the house that you live in? You like the food that I pay for?

1:39 I disagree. I think he's like, why do you think my beard is white?

1:44 It's all quim. Shit's caked on, my guy. I can. You did it, Francesca.

1:52 I don't know. You guys started pulling out all these weird fucking terms.

1:55 Yeah, quim, sorry. What the shit? What is that? Wait, what was the first term that confused you?

1:59 Quim?

2:00 Yeah.

2:01 What's quim? I thought that was a name for female ejaculation.

2:03 Female ejaculation?

2:04 Yeah.

2:05 Could be wrong. What the fuck? I don't know.

2:07 That's kind of weird.

2:08 Yeah, I don't like it either. Why does it have to be quim?

2:10 Why is q, queef? Quim.

2:13 It's gross. Quid pro quo. Quid pro quo.

2:17 It's all a derivation of queen.

2:19 Wow.

2:20 It is a... It's a vulgar slang term for the vulva. For me and my boys when we're talking. That's crazy. We're talking female ejection.

2:29 I prefer lady cum.

2:31 Yeah. Sorry. Lady cum. Anyways.

2:35 Ms.

2:35 Cum. I can definitively say after doing the research for this podcast, as iconic as it would be to have like Helen of Troy to the Beatles, today's icon Yoko Ono, Did not break up the Beatles.

2:48 Talk about Lady Con, though.

2:50 Woo-hoo! Yeah. We've heard it on many episodes. Kind of.

2:55 She's a specific vocal styling.

2:59 A vocal styling that sounds like potentially someone coming very hard. Is that a coital noise to you? I don't know. She makes a lot of noises, Miles. Why am I on trial here? Just want to know what well you're drawing from, man. There is a pretty good argument that could be made that she's the reason we have Let It Be and Abbey Road. Since John was a very fragile person towards the end of the Beatles and was on the verge of quitting. And she, like, walked him into the studio holding his hand. Wow. Yeah. Whereas everyone was like, God, she's, like, with him all the time.

3:38 He couldn't leave the house without her. He was in a very weird place.

3:40 So she helped him write hits before she broke.

3:45 Up the band?

3:46 Thank you.

3:48 She walked him right in there to break up the band. But Jack, the English tabloids told me everything was her fucking fault. Yeah. So racist. And that she was ugly.

3:58 I heard.

3:59 My mom kept saying. It's something in Japanese culture, yeah. Get out of here. She's a, she's a minger. Was that? Yeah. Jesus Christ. That quim is minging. Got a certain ming to it. Well, throw to be joined by my co-host when asked how to break into the industry. His advice is always the same. Carry a bag of peas. Leave a pea wherever you go. It's Miles Gray. That's right.

4:27 Leave the peas behind. Is that must be a Yoko Ono thing? Oh, no. Work of art.

4:31 That's amazing.

4:33 Um, yeah. Hey, I'm here.

4:36 I called my mom, who's younger than Yoko Ono by about like 12-ish years.

4:40 Yoko Ono's not- She's like in her 90s. Yeah, she's, uh, 80s. Like late 80s, I think. Yeah, 33. Oh, shit. Okay, so then, yeah, she's older than my mom. Um, but she, my mom also moved to England in the late 60s. and was there. Also to trap and ensnare John Lennon? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She broke up the monkeys, actually. You don't know. She tried.

5:03 Japan sent many, many along.

5:05 They were like, oh, God, send our best.

5:08 Kill this white guy band. Go, Yuki. Those are your orders. And your name had to have a Y-U-K. Of course.

5:15 Yoko, Yuko, Yuki, Yoko. Anyway, but I called her on the way here because I was asking her, I'm like, Mom, what was, like, I know you were roughly in England around.

5:23 The same time. She gave me a very interesting perspective that I'm sure we'll talk about. Cause she was like, I was also a Japanese woman new to England at the time. And I was like, Is this how they are to Japanese women? Were they cool? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All my research says they were very cool, the Yoko Ono.

5:39 In our third seat, a brilliant comedian, writer, journalist, activist, you know, from the amazing podcast, The Situation Room. When I asked her to share her favorite Thanksgiving recipe, she instructed me to imagine 1,000 suns in the sky at the same time, let them shine for one hour, then let them gradually melt into the sky, make one tuna fish sandwich and eat. It's Francesca Fiorentina.

6:02 All right.

6:03 Hi.

6:03 Yama, yama, yama.

6:04 I did make a tuna fish sandwich yesterday.

6:06 Did you?

6:06 Tuna melt.

6:07 All right. Those are both examples of Yoko Ono's instructions for paintings where she gives you little jobs to do. I love that. Oh, yeah. Okay. And then you like create a little work of art in your life. Is it 3,000 suns?

6:21 I thought 1,000.

6:21 1,000 suns.

6:22 3,000.

6:22 I'm a fucking crazy Francesca. I was like 1,000 I could come up with, but it's on for an hour? Yeah, so it has to stay on for an hour, which is hard. Like, that's a lot of downtime. A lot of sun damage. Yeah, yeah. But they gradually melt into the sky, and then you make a tuna fish sandwich. And then I paint? No, you don't paint. That's the art.

6:44 The art is what just happened in your mind, friend. Hell yeah. But in addition to, like, she had a lot of shit. That happened in her life. Like she, in addition to, you know, the big one, having John Lennon, the love of her life, like murdered right next to her and crazy aftermath that included just like constant threats of assassination towards her and her son, Sean. Like this was like one of those research projects where you go back and you're like, Anytime people are like, God, look how fucked up we are and like pointing at the modern Internet. It's like, oh, no, we've been really been fucked up, been bad.

7:26 But especially for a while for women.

7:29 Oh, yeah.

7:29 Oh, yeah.

7:30 Women in the public eye.

7:31 Yeah.

7:32 And this is a woman of color. I mean, we just see the way a lot of like how we did to like white women in the 90s. And it's like. Well, you have no idea what the fuck people did to Yoko Ono in the 70s.

7:42 That's what I'm saying.

7:44 It's probably one of the most effective smear campaigns of all time because the shorthand for me as a kid growing up was, and I remember even being like half Japanese in Yeah dude fuck that lady She broke up the Beatles A band I don't give a fuck about But somehow it was like I think because so many older people And like in comedy you'd see like References to like if a guy Like an Asian woman started dating someone.

8:08 Or Yoko And I remember someone called my mom Someone called my mom Yoko once And I didn't fucking put it together until later And if I'd known then I would've beat your ass You hear me?

8:21 I wouldn't have. Um, but yeah, he, so the story is the story that I had received as like a, you know, mainstream media filter feeder who was just like getting sitcom jokes. It's not like I wasn't doing research into like how the Beatles actually broke up. I was just getting like jokes about yoko and i was like she targeted him or something or like kind of insinuated herself into their uh into the band and then like he was like brainwashed he didn't have a mind of his own and then she broke him up men are so powerful they are easily brainwashed.

8:54 Against the asian pussy right possible strong what was he supposed to do It also, around the time, like, my mom's Chinese, and I do feel like there was a little bit of a, like, Asian fetish thing that happened with Yoko also. It's like, well, you don't know their wiles.

9:09 Yeah, yeah, right.

9:10 Like, my mom, well, my mom mostly was dating. Nah, she moved on to white guys later in life.

9:15 Okay.

9:16 Started off with Asians.

9:17 Okay. Yeah. Then moved on to her next course. Yeah.

9:19 Next course. She's working through Russians.

9:21 Yeah. My mom went from an Italian to a black man. Oh, okay. I mean, so she's, she's.

9:25 Like, that's a good trade as an Italian, half Italian.

9:31 I could have been half Italian. You guys don't even know, you know, if my mom played her cards right. But they met at one of her shows. That's like something that like she was, Oh, She was already famous. So Spider caught a fly. She played Carnegie Hall. Yeah, exactly. She put this show on specifically to trap him. Like Katie Zachariah. Her show was advertised as Ono at Indica.

9:53 Like that. Like they were. It was like mononymous. Sure, sure, sure. Bono. Yeah. Ono. Yeah. or i mean oh no oh no oh no um but they met in 66 i think in 1961 she played carnegie hall and like did like artworks at carnegie hall so she was like very a famous artist before.

10:14 So are you just going to start the research at her meeting?

10:17 No, we're going to go back, but I'm just like backstory. Yeah, we have a backstory. Don't need one. Let's start from when she broke up the bed. I do think it is the thing that most people know about, but I do just like other contexts that I think is important is that They meet in the 60s, which you may know is the same decade that Breakfast at Tiffany's came out, which like. Right. You know. That's good.

10:38 Q gone.

10:39 No.

10:39 What does that mean? Mickey Rourke. Mickey Rooney. Oh, the other Rourke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Rooney or Rourke?

10:46 Are they the same person?

10:47 I think it's Mickey Rooney.

10:50 Uh-huh.

10:50 Sorry. My internalized white supremacy came out as a Japanese person here.

10:55 It's okay to do yellow face.

10:57 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like the most fucking... It's like the fucking mask version of it.

11:03 Right.

11:03 How can we really fucking blow this thing out? And people were like, pretty good. He was pretty funny, actually. Was he nominated or something? I don't know.

11:10 There was another famous actor around this time who just played Asian characters.

11:15 Right.

11:15 And he was Irish and had sort of like.

11:18 High cheekbones.

11:19 High cheekbones, thank you. Thank you.

11:22 You're welcome. Yeah.

11:25 And he was just, like, famous for being the dude that did Yellowface.

11:28 Right.

11:30 It was great.

11:31 Yeah.

11:31 That was his whole fucking Hollywood career. He made whatever the equivalent of millions of dollars doing that. I once knew his name. I, like, learned his name and.

11:39 Then I forgot. Hard to know. Hard to know.

11:42 There's a lot of them. Anyway, breakfast at Tiffany's.

11:45 The... Oh, you know, because Marlon Brando has probably the classiest yellow face performance in Chai House.

11:52 That's like a compliment.

11:54 That one's actually okay. Actually, I did the research. Tea House of the August Moon. That one's all right. Yeah, that's the one time my... Tea House of the August Moon.

12:02 Tea House of the August Moon.

12:04 1956, if you will. My mom, huge Marlon Brando stan. Oh, yeah?

12:12 She spends all her Asian person capital defending that role. She goes, I mean, he said Japanese words really well in it. I'm like, Mom, all right, whatever.

12:21 He studied. Yeah. Where is she on John Wayne's depiction of? I'll have to ask. Yeah, probably. We could probably do a whole segment. We'll put stuff up.

12:29 My mom will probably be like, well, it was pretty good, that one.

12:31 I'm like, Jesus, never mind. The other thing that I thought was helpful, the podcast you're wrong about did an episode about Yoko Ono breaking up the Beatles and kind of put the Beatles in the context of a boy band like at the time. They, like, downplayed their partners. Like, Cynthia Lennon was very unpopular because, like, in the same way that, like, K-pop bands will, like, make it seem that... Oh, so they're available? Yeah, so they seem available. And, like, so the Beatles, like, were meant to, like, not tell anybody they had, you know... Part of their thing was, like, being chased by girls, like, everywhere. And we're all available to fuck.

13:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

13:11 And then, like, they changed, you know, in a way that, like, that Walk Hard, like, does kind of some funny things with this. But, like, they changed so much in such a short period of time. Right. Like, they were, like, the mop-haired, like, boy band to, like, they all had, like, long beards and were on acid, like, within, you know, five years. The power of psychedelics.

13:30 Let's go.

13:31 Yeah. But... Yeah. So like all of a sudden she's coming into a very racist world, a very misogynistic world, and she's being put front and center by John Lennon because of like what he has going on on his side. And it's just like this crazy fucking confluence of. People not dealing well with Yoko Ono.

13:56 Charlie Chan was this guy's name.

13:57 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

13:58 That's his fake name.

13:59 What's his real name?

14:00 Warner Olstead.

14:03 Oh, my God. Yeah.

14:06 Let's look it up here. Warner Olin.

14:08 It's funny. I'm looking at it. I'm looking at a picture of George Harrison's look. And it's like.

14:13 Mophead mophead mophead mophead 66 mophead 67 we're on drugs.

14:18 Yes okay harrison is the hottest he's the hottest one yeah that's hottest fucking i.

14:24 Remember after like later on being like wait dude fucking like john and They're fucking chopped.

14:30 Yeah. Chopped.

14:30 Okay.

14:31 To use dictionary.com is word of the year. Yeah. George Harrison is hot. And also on that. So Miles was pointing. So you see 61 through 65. All pretty clean cut. No facial hair. 66 is like where it starts going. Like. The mop is growing out a little bit.

14:48 The influence of Yoko.

14:49 67. Right. Exactly. So they meet, John Lennon and Yoko Ono meet in 1966. It's interesting. That's when the photos become color. We should also talk about that. Thank you. What else is going on? But that is like when the whole band, everybody evolves in a more like drug forward, weird direction. So it must mean that she was fucking the mall. What are you doing, dragon lady, to my favorite band? They did call her dragon lady quite a bit. 67, though. Yeah, it's so funny how they're like, and that summer, we did shrooms for the first time. Straight up, yeah. And then they never had clean-shaven faces again.

15:27 Why would you? You can grow a mustache like that? That's great.

15:30 Yeah, fucking George, man. Good for you. So, yeah, it was just basically. And then also she in terms of her artwork, like they are the most broadly like the songs that are charting when they meet are yellow, like yellow submarine, which is a children's song. It's psychedelic, but it is like it's very like it's down the middle.

15:51 And then she's like an avant garde artist who did things like a show where she pulled an empty baby carriage across the stage while someone says, let's count the hairs of the dead child. um heavy heavy this is why i.

16:07 Can never be fully on yoko ono's side i'm sorry there's no way yeah yeah i i want to respect it but at the time i want to be like oh my god yoko actually and like maybe by the end of this hour i will.

16:22 But yeah i'd say for them that's pretty avant-garde oh yeah you know what i mean so in i think looking back you're like all right sure but at the time people like oh my So it's more of like.

16:31 An avant-gardist and an anti-Asian racist.

16:35 Right. It was anti-avant-gardist, which also John Lennon, like the year before they met, was like, avant-garde is just a French word for bullshit. And then he met her and he was like, damn, this is cool as hell, man. You're fucking breaking the mold. But yeah, she was part of the Fluxus movement, which was inspired by John Cage and the 433 work of music, which do you know what that is? No. It's a piece of music. It's four minutes and 33 seconds long. The pianist comes out to the piano and then closes the door. cover over the piano don't and then plays.

17:15 With their hands underneath oh no okay and then magic trick and then closes it and they never play a single key see this isn't like i would have this is early i would have been.

17:25 Like no i hate yoko for real yeah Let me tell you why she sucks. I paid $ 70 for the fucking ticket, bro. You don't even play the fucking piano. That shit blew their mind.

17:35 It was like the Blair Witch Project of the time where it was like, no, you got to see it.

17:39 To believe it. Well, and that's John Cage was like, you got to like experience like being in the room with people as they get uncomfortable. And like, you can like hear the wind outside and you can. And so she's like staging these shows in like her shitty apartment and And like John Cage is like coming to those and like she's creating this movement, which she then gets credited as like being a part of. But like she puts on the first Fluxus shows. It's not an art movement until a man steals it and like puts it at his apartment. And then she broke up that movement. Yes. Yeah.

18:12 There's a good t-shirt that says John Lennon broke up the Fluxus movement.

18:15 Oh, really?

18:15 Yeah, yeah. I think I'm going to get that. The worst party conversationalist. No. What's that mean? Oh. Listen to me. Sorry, I just came a little bit. Do you know about the 433 music?

18:28 Yeah, what is this?

18:29 I see a piano over there.

18:31 I said it was this movement.

18:32 Yeah. Is that meme? It's the meme of the dude screaming in the girl's ear at the club. So the Fluxus movement. She has some films that I just want to describe real quick. There's one.

18:45 Francesca, I couldn't tell you're going to love them.

18:50 I'm trying to like her though.

18:51 Your mileage may vary. Okay. She has one, a film that is feature length and it's nothing but a series of closeups on asses of people as they're naked asses of people as they're walking on a treadmill. And then there's like voiceover miles. Eyebrows just did a little dance thing. So that one was popular. It's called Bottoms, number four.

19:12 What was Tops like? You're about to find out. Less popular was a 42-minute close-up on John Lennon's semi-erect penis.

19:21 42 minutes?

19:23 42 minutes straight. That one was called Self-Portrait. So did John Lennon take that? He didn't know it was happening. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was after. No, no, no.

19:33 I'm saying, did John Lennon, if it was a self-portrait, does that mean John Lennon captured his own semi?

19:40 Possibly. I don't know. Just saying as a. It's her work.

19:44 It's got to be her work.

19:44 Subversive title. Subversive title.

19:45 Imagine going to see that live. 42 minutes.

19:49 Of just, yeah.

19:50 There quiet It just moved, didn't it?

19:53 Wait, so it's just I haven't watched it Is there any way you can watch this? John Lennon Semi-erect penis.

20:03 No, it's got a name.

20:05 It's called Self-Portrait, I believe. I can't do John Lennon's Self-Portrait.

20:08 Okay, true.

20:10 Bottoms you can see on YouTube. Okay. And really, it does really break the screen composition up the ass and then the bottom crease between the ass and the legs. Oh, that's cute. It really breaks it up into four quadrants.

20:24 I don't understand art. And especially sort of more avant-garde art.

20:29 Yeah, because it just feels goofy. Like they're walking around screaming. Yeah, yeah.

20:34 I like I'm a little bit when I go see a lot of avant-garde art, I'm like, I'm happy for you. You know what I mean? I'm happy you had this experience and did the thing and you're able to like someone put you in this studio.

20:45 Right.

20:45 But I don't get it.

20:48 Right.

20:48 I like I get all that's cool. You did that.

20:51 Yeah.

20:51 But I don't get it. It's not speaking to me or doing anything for me, really.

20:55 Yeah.

20:55 Yeah.

20:56 So for you, you treat art like that copy pasta where someone puts like a really long thing on Reddit and you go, hey, man, I'm not reading all that. I'm happy for you, though, or I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry that it happened. Yeah, I get it.

21:10 I mean, that's I also feel the same way because I sort of look at things very literally at times and like you're walking around yelling.

21:17 Right. Yeah.

21:18 And.

21:18 As I get older and obviously like growing up around artists and things like that, even as a kid, because I got dragged to a lot of performance art because my dad didn't have babysitters or something.

21:27 So he's like, we got to go to our friend's performance art thing. And it's like 1989. I'm five years old. And I'm like, this naked guy is just screaming. And he's like, it's art. It's art. Motherfuckers naked and screaming. And I don't know.

21:40 OK, so you learned a little bit of an appreciate.

21:41 Even then I was I just learned people just do shit. But I couldn't tell you what the intent was at all.

21:47 And so in this time, right, that was all it was a backlash against like it doesn't have to mean anything. It doesn't have to be impressionist. Doesn't have to be high art. Doesn't have to be this.

21:55 Sure.

21:55 Doesn't have to.

21:56 So you're just breaking out of their sort of democratization of art. You don't even have to be good at painting.

22:01 Yeah.

22:01 You just put a painting. She could put a painting in your brain.

22:04 I think also Yoko Ono is very interesting because of where she's from and her family.

22:09 Yeah, she's very she's our first icon who has an extremely wealthy background. Yeah. But all right. So we'll get to that. I do just want to say one work of art that I think does is fucking really cool. Um, her most famous work is something called cut piece where she, have you ever seen like, uh, the, uh, artist is present where the artists Marina Abramovich would like sit across from one person. And like, so this was Yoko Ono, like in the six, like this started in the early sixties before she met Lennon would like kneel on the, uh, stage at Carnegie hall and like put a pair of scissors in front of her. And then people were invited to come up and cut off, like, a small piece of her clothes until, you know, the show was over,

22:55 which is, like, terrifying. Like, people, like, some, like, frat guys, like, found out about it and, like, came up and, like, cut the whole thing off of her. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.

23:05 Oh, so they were like, hey, bro, we can go cut a lady's clothes off at Carnegie Hall.

23:09 Yeah.

23:10 Okay. But, like, you know, it's... Basically, the artist is present.

23:15 I mean, that was consensual, right?

23:17 Yeah. That's a step up for them. But more so like demonstrating something.

23:22 I just think it's consent.

23:23 This is actually crazy. It's part of it. Yeah. It's actually crazy. She was like letting us do it.

23:28 Yeah, she let us do it.

23:29 I don't know if I like this. This actually kind of ruins it for me. They just stab her. That's better. Somebody did mime stabbing her at one point, which was a hilarious joke. Were they doing the psycho music? Right. Nah, I'm just kidding. Cut your socks off, though. So, yeah, yeah. We're going to go back to the beginning. Let's take a quick break and we'll come right back. And we're back.

24:09 Miles has a question for the audience. But what is a quim pro quo? And now that is art. Thank you. Thank you. Learned from the best. All right. She was born 93 years ago to the Yasuda family, who were among the wealthiest, most influential families in Japanese business. She was a media... So... we, this is our first icon who is from immense wealth. Uh, we've taken that to mean that being from immense wealth fucks you up and makes you incapable of being iconic. Um, I will say she, so she's not from American immense wealth and she was completely cut off from her family once she married her first husband who was a musician. Yeah. Japanese guy, right? Yeah.

24:53 Japanese musician. And so she, you know, was not, did not have a life of privilege during her adult years.

25:01 She's not famous for going into what her parents went into.

25:04 Right. No, no, no.

25:04 But she had a tremendous platform to do a lot too because, I don't know if you're getting into this part, but when I was talking to my mom, she was always saying how fascinated she was with Yoko Ono because for that generation of Japanese people, like, they were not encouraged to do anything creative.

25:21 Right.

25:21 They were not encouraged to do anything remotely, like, self-satisfying. It was like, You're going in the family business or you get a job that doesn't dishonor our family's name.

25:30 Yeah.

25:30 Right. And my mom is.

25:32 Lucky, too, because her dad was a professor and like a philosopher. And he was much more headier and let my mom explore her interests. But she always said the way like with for Yoko Ono to come from that family and be she was like encouraged. She was able to sort of do a lot more. She said, like, to her, she's like, that has always been the super fascinating part. Because to break out of that and, like, really lean into self-expression like that is just so fucking unheard of for Japanese people of that generation.

26:01 So, like, she's very fascinating to that generation, specifically.

26:04 For, like, the level of, like, sort of creative freedom that and, like, creative or freedom of expression that she was exercising all the time.

26:11 When did she leave?

26:13 So first of all, she survives the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945. And according to her biography, she had a fever during the firebombing and they weren't able to move her into the bomb shelter. So she saw the whole thing. So she's just like another person. historical figure who's probably living their whole life with PTSD. How does that work?

26:36 They go, Oh, you're sorry. You're going to have to get front row seats to this thing. Yeah. I don't know. That's, uh, That's what they say.

26:46 Well, we could either not traumatize you or traumatize you to the fullest extent.

26:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

26:51 So we're going to do the latter.

26:52 What do you think? Which one do you want?

26:54 Yeah, which one? Pick one.

26:56 She goes to Sarah Lawrence and quits to join the Greenwich Village art scene and elope with her first husband, Toshi Ichiyanagi, who's like a concert pianist and her parents are like, Fuck no, you're cut off. That point. Like, that was enough for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

27:14 A pianist? You get cut off from wanting to marry?

27:17 Yeah, like a prodigy. Pianist. Could have been a lawyer.

27:19 Yeah.

27:20 Yeah, he was not a... I wonder if they were hoping that they would maybe, like, maybe she'll meet someone who's got their shit together.

27:26 I don't know.

27:26 They met at a party where she was supposed to meet someone who was, like, a banker. Right.

27:30 I was going to say.

27:31 He was the pianist. Oh, that's how... Oh, so, of course, her parents, like, you have to fucking help. It was the other guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a service provider.

27:39 It was the guy who was, like, entertaining them.

27:40 Yes.

27:41 Um.

27:42 So that's where she moves to New York helps found the fluxes movement. Um, and then is, is like kind of written out of it.

27:51 She's Sarah Lawrence grad. Okay.

27:53 Not a grad.

27:56 Oh, now she's gotten an honorary degree.

27:58 Yeah. Where's that show? The dropout about her. Uh, this is when she like starts doing the democratization of art stuff. Um, and like putting paintings in your mind. This is where, where, uh, the, uh, tuna fish, you are tuna fish painting. Um, she did something called painting to be stepped on, which was literally a canvas on the floor that people were just walking on, which sounds less interesting until you like find out the explanation, which she said it was inspired by 15th century Japan.

28:31 A stepping painting was used to distinguish Christians from non-Christians and a person was asked to step on a portrait of Christ, and those who could not were immediately taken away to be crucified. Wait, that you could not? So they'd crucify the Christians? So they'd paint a picture of Jesus, put it on the floor, and if you wouldn't step on it, that would prove the Japanese government in the 15th century. Oh, like when missionaries were coming? Yeah, yeah.

28:59 They're like, all right, bro, step on that. Yeah. No? You know what happens if you don't step on it, right? All right, my boy. Is that that's such.

29:08 A weird thing. Nowhere in the Bible does it say you can't step on a picture of Christ.

29:12 Some people are so weird about stepping on stuff. Yes. Like there's like football teams that have like gotten into full team brawls because somebody stomped on their logo. It's like that happens in like soccer to children.

29:25 Like where like with like Real Madrid, Real Madrid and Barcelona playing each other.

29:29 Like they'll have full size crests on the side of the pitch.

29:32 And a lot of times the players like respect it, like no matter, like most matches, but sometimes when they go full trot on it, people like oh damn right you want to step on the little poster on the ground they.

29:43 Don't even step on the line.

29:44 To get into the pitch yeah some people got all kinds of yeah superstition Yeah, a lot of superstition happening. Writing's on the wall. So she has this show where she's doing a painting to hammer a nail with a whiteboard with a hammer and a bucket of nails attached so participants could hammer it in. There's also this ladder with a magnifying glass on the top. And when you like climb to the very top of the ladder and look at the magnifying glass, the word yes is written in tiny print.

30:18 Well, that's great. I like that.

30:19 Yeah. That's actually the one that made John Lennon fall in love with her. Oh, look at you. Yeah.

30:26 I don't know about that.

30:28 Oh, okay.

30:31 See, that's great.

30:32 Yeah. Um, yeah. And he was, he was legitimate. He was like, yeah, like I, I need an artist who will say yes. Like everybody's so cynical. Like he wanted like somebody who was going to be like, But.

30:43 She had to work for it.

30:44 Yeah. Kind of a foreshadowing, right? She also... So he came the night before it opened and he was like, let me hammer a nail in. Or, you know, however he talked. And... Nailed it. And she was like, no, because this hasn't opened yet. And he... Let me hammer a nail in.

31:03 What was it?

31:04 Come on, Yoko. Let me hammer a nail in. There it is. There it is. And. The person who had like invited him, it wasn't even her. It was like the person who was, you know, investing in the show was like, fucking let him hammer the nail.

31:17 And she was like, I don't give a shit.

31:20 Who? She eventually was like, all right. Give me 10 bucks and I'll let you hammer the nail in. Fuck yeah. And he was like, I'll give you an imaginary 10 quid and then you let me hammer an imaginary nail in, which I'm like, ugh. But she was like, God damn. Ugh. Yeah. I love that John Lennon Yoko's meet cute is so like, it's so, it's like scripted like that too. Give me, what if I gave you an imaginary, an imaginary.

31:48 I don't know, like, yeah, who's, this is, I don't know, is it Lena Dunham coded?

31:52 Like, whatever. It's all very, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. But that's, I think that's where we get that magic pixie bullshit from is, like, the 1960s art scene.

32:01 Oh, God. Which, you know, look, I will, I'll give the first person, i.e. Yoko Ono, the pass of, like, all right, you invented this shit.

32:09 This was a cool enough idea that people have. We did it, though.

32:12 Like, we did it.

32:12 I don't always... now we're fine iterate on that yeah yeah don't just be like I think art is if I do this right because that's not.

32:20 What if it what if there was nothing to see I mean it yeah it does feel a little bit like yeah a Seinfeld what if.

32:26 You went to an art show but there was no art there exactly there's only mirrors on the walls oh um that that uh show also had an apple that was just supposed to like get old and rot there uh over time and he walked up and took a bite out of it which that's kind of fucked up apple like Like the record label, you know. Wait, he really just ate one of the art pieces? Yeah, he took a bite.

32:47 She's like, what the fuck?

32:48 Damn. Yeah. Wait, what happened first?

32:49 Flexing on her.

32:50 The imaginary nail, and then he immediately fucked it up by eating the apple? I don't have the time frame of all of the... I could feel like.

32:57 He's just trying to mack on her, like eating this apple.

33:00 Like Brad Pitt and shit, just always eating it in a movie. And she's like, uh, that's... Hey, that's the fucking art, you asshole. That's all right. So am I to my cool. I've been cheeky as well. Damn. What the fuck? Um... So this is where people start to say that like she started insinuating herself into his life and into the band.

33:21 I got a question.

33:22 Yes.

33:22 Is he married?

33:23 He is married. Is she? To Cynthia Lennon. She is married. They both have one kid at the time.

33:28 Right.

33:30 She's on her second husband who she had a daughter with. That second husband was like the person who was like putting on a lot of her shows. American? American guy. Cox is his last name. Oh, shit. Yoko Cox. Things could have ended so much differently. Um, and so they're both married. They're both like kind of coming to the end of their marriage. As far as John is concerned, he's coming to the end of his marriage. His wife, his wife says like, so he's like a psychologically fucked up person, kind of for good reason. His, uh, dad just like abandoned him. And then his mom, uh, his mom's sister was kind of this weird sociopath who was like, I don't like how you're raising him. And so had John taken away and given to her and then was like,

34:18 wouldn't let him like have relationships with other people was like really like kind of domineering. And then people who psychoanalyze him say that like that's how he is, where like nobody can be like he has to be number one in the lives of the people around him. Like he has these like super intense relationships with people. So that's how he was with Cynthia. And then that who is his first wife. And then she has Julian Lennon, their their son. And he's like, wait a second, I'm not number one anymore. And so like just drops her.

34:50 Who is this parasite? It's your son.

34:52 I think that's just what we call being a man.

34:54 Yeah, yeah.

34:56 Just like, that sounds like my dad behavior straight up.

34:59 Right.

34:59 Like, left every woman he had kids with.

35:01 Right, yeah.

35:02 Because it was like, I'm the kid. I'm number one.

35:04 I'm your husband, though. Bye. Like, that kind of thinking. But these are our kids. Yeah, but what about me? I'm your husband.

35:09 What about my needs?

35:10 We're starting a... What?

35:11 But, okay, sure. It's because his.

35:14 Yeah.

35:14 Auntie was too possessive.

35:15 Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Or he's just a sociopath. You know, it's.

35:21 Yeah, exactly. It's a lot of behavior. Again, when there's like a child involved.

35:25 It's like, hmm.

35:27 I mean, this is annoying. I think it's really a blessing when people are like, uh, like I know some men who are like, I don't have kids. And then I'm like, yeah, you shouldn't have kids. I think that's so perfect for you. Don't ever do because you can see the way they are in relationships, like really consuming and they need to be like babied and coddled and like supported and. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

35:48 I'm so glad you came to that conclusion. I was going to throw a baseball at your nutsack right now to try and just dead that. But I'm glad you know, so we don't have such a violent conclusion to this conversation.

35:59 Yeah, I never want to do this.

36:00 I'm about to hammer a nail through his.

36:02 An imaginary one.

36:03 An imaginary nail.

36:04 What if it was imaginary? What if it was a nail in a dream? So. He he's out on Cynthia, moves on to the Beatles and has this like really intense relationship with the Beatles and their manager, whose name I'm forgetting. But he dies of a drug overdose. Anybody?

36:25 All the Beatles fans.

36:25 Brian Epstein, maybe Brian.

36:29 Wait, so he leaves his first wife before he even joins the Beatles.

36:32 No no no brian epstein you're right yeah brian so not a joke no no they're still married and he's doing the terrible thing of he's like right up to yoko he's like.

36:42 No we're gonna work things out what are you talking about i'm just on the road like i'm just on the road no she's just a friend and then like she finds out through their business manager that he's preparing divorce papers like at the time that he's being like.

36:55 What are you talking about 42 minute video of his dick what.

37:01 That looks semi-erect. It was a prop, my love.

37:07 She put a chopstick behind it to make it seem rigid.

37:12 A chopstick? John, that's racist. Yeah, I'm sure she was really worried about that. Like a drooping plant. You have to tie it to a stake to get it upright.

37:25 That's one of Yoko's poems.

37:26 Like a drooping plant.

37:29 Tie a stake to it.

37:30 Tie a stake to it. Bind it to a stake and give it life.

37:34 Then make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

37:38 And eat it and consume it. There are a couple things from this time that indicate that she was not like pursuing him. One is that he invited her to the Beatles recording session, then took her to a nearby flat where he tried to have sex with her. And she was like, no. Then he invited her over to dinner with Cynthia and the family. What the fuck? No, no. Dude, this is so funny. Not the same night. No, no, no.

38:05 All right, then I'll take you to introduce my family. You don't trust me. I'm a family man.

38:12 But it's like everything you're saying, I'm like, Oh, man, John Lennon is such a piece of shit.

38:16 He's like secretly breaking up with his wife, then bringing the woman, the mistress, to dinner.

38:22 You got to respect her a little bit more than that, right? I mean, she's not a fangirl, right? She's not just like a fan out there. No, no.

38:29 She's out here. I don't think he knew how to deal with that. No, exactly. And that fucked him up, probably. Right. It's crazy because it's like the exact opposite of what the story is about. her right it's like she the thing that he seemed to really like respond to was that she wasn't that into it like she knew who the people were.

38:47 When you're like a guy who can basically just fall down into any kind of sex whatever meeting random people yeah then the first time someone's like I don't know, dude.

38:56 No, not really. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

38:57 And she's got her own thing going on, totally doesn't need you.

38:59 Yeah, exactly. That you think, that he thinks is cool, too.

39:02 Yeah.

39:02 Let's, yeah, fuck boy Lennon, activate.

39:06 Yep.

39:07 No, for real, though.

39:07 Yeah. There's a meet cute, like, story from their courtship that, you know, Cynthia didn't realize was a courtship where, yeah, she comes over for dinner. The family's there. He's like, we're friends. He is like, I saw you, like, writing about this, um, lighthouse that you're building. And like Cynthia and I were actually talking about building a lighthouse in our garden. Could you. if you built that? What if we hired you to come work at the house for, I don't know, two months maybe?

39:37 That's like cheater behavior.

39:39 Yes, yes. But she's like... So it's a house made of light. It's like a light house. Like it's a imaginary... It's not using wood and nails. Yeah, yeah. It's made of prisms of light, which would be.

39:52 Well, that's what we wanted to do, too.

39:54 Which would be technically impossible. I know you're asking, love, are you insured and bonded? Otherwise, we can't have you do work on the property. Very concerned about that.

40:05 It's in your mind.

40:06 Oh.

40:07 Could you spend some time in my mind, then?

40:08 Yeah. My wife will be gone. That would have been a good... It's just... It's just funny to me. We kept talking about Ethan Klein, like, earlier. And I'm like, is he... Are we about to find out that he was like, I'll be the cat in the hat, and you be thing one, and thing two, and we'll all go together. It just feels so, like, die-up. Like, I don't know why... I see this pattern all the time where some dude is like, I'll bring the mistress up in here. Yeah. Unbeknownst to everybody. That's kind of what I get.

40:36 I wasn't a fan though, but yes, of course I, my mind has gone to Ethan Klein in the last 30 minutes as well.

40:42 It's all, we're all H3 brain. I mean, in many ways, he's our John Lennon, you know, um, spitting on the mic even more. He, uh, she does finally come around. They, uh, There's an album called, like, Two Virgins that's, like, a very influential experimental rock album. It's, like, the album that they recorded together the first night that they hooked up.

41:08 They were on acid. And, like, you can hear a record that they made the first night that they hooked up. I could if I, I don't know. If we had money. I don't.

41:20 Know.

41:20 Can you?

41:20 So is she like, like screaming, like squawking and doing her little like. No, it's not.

41:26 It's like a lot of bird song and then like looped vocals. I didn't listen to the whole thing.

41:31 So this is what I also love about, you know, the Yoko John drama is that I do think in some ways people not understanding avant-garde art or like eye rolling the way I've been. I think it just felt like she was making him cringe. Like that, like, They might have been the first, like, cringey fucking couple where it was like, are you going to sit around and, like, record yourself making bird calls?

42:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is awful.

42:02 This is bad. This isn't art. Right? And then we have to all suffer through it.

42:06 Yeah. Yeah. I think there's some of that. They did do this thing called Bed In For Peace. Yeah. Which was then, after they got married in 1969, they, like... lay in bed and like had a press availability while they lay in bed for.

42:19 Like oh yeah that's that's 12 hours yeah yeah very famous for that was for a cop yeah that was the war in vietnam people did not like it though yeah but also people don't have as good as sex as yoko and john did so that was the other thing i think it was like jealousy because they were clearly.

42:34 Just like oh you'd like to talk.

42:37 It's like oh please just all the sex.

42:41 Well, like people are immediately shouting racist shit at them together, like in public, just constantly. Oh, really? Yeah.

42:47 Yeah.

42:47 Just like right away. Say some of them. Are you recording? Go ahead. Loop this. Telling Yoko to go back to her country would be one of the less extreme.

42:59 They met in New York.

43:01 Met in London.

43:02 Oh, they met in London.

43:03 Okay.

43:03 Okay.

43:04 Because my mom, so like my mom was in London around, she moved there around 67.

43:08 Yeah. And she was saying at the time, everyone, they were all, she kept, she said the thing she remembers the most is people saying how ugly Yoko Ono was. Right. They're like, she's so ugly.

43:19 Yeah.

43:20 Like she's ugly. She shouldn't be with John.

43:22 Like it was very like hater shit, like just attacking her because she was John Lennon, but saying she doesn't look good.

43:28 This isn't right.

43:29 And at the time my mom was, she said she had sort of like internalized this thing of like, is she a bad representation for like women who are Japanese?

43:37 Like, because this is the one.

43:39 She's not our hottest or whatever.

43:41 Yeah. My mom was even like what? And then she remembers. Cause my mom worked as like, well, she just moved from Japan.

43:46 Like, like with a letter to get a job as an au pair basically and got there. And the au pair family was like, is a, she's like, they're all like, are all women like Yoko Ono in Japan?

43:57 Like, is she ugly?

43:58 Like they would ask my mom, they're like, As a Japanese person, do you agree with this assessment that she's.

44:04 Like, fugly? What a mindfuck. Yeah, and my mom was like, what? No, she seems like a normal Japanese. What do you say? What do you think?

44:10 And my mom would say, she said, my mom, because she's not very confrontational in that context, she just said, oh, she pulled a Mariah Carey.

44:17 She said, oh, I don't know her. I'm not familiar with her. I'm just like, what the fuck? What the fuck are they asking me? I don't know the Beatles, actually.

44:24 That is such a fucking white person get out moment of like, so is everyone, does everyone look like Yoko?

44:30 Give me a glimpse into your oriental world.

44:33 But you're just like, no, I think that's the other superpower that Yoko Ono had was that she clearly wasn't like, grooming herself to be some sort of male gaze.

44:42 Fucking sex doll.

44:44 She's just an artist.

44:45 Yeah.

44:45 Got this long black hair.

44:47 She doesn't wear makeup. She says the Bottoms film is about like showing... a non-male gaze for the first like she's thinking about the male gaze.

44:54 She's thinking about that and she and John loves her you know and it's like John's not that hot you know.

45:01 What I'm saying like what are we.

45:03 Doing here you know they're talented for all these other reasons but for sure that played into like well he's a superstar you know he's a pop star whatever he's gotta be with whatever fucking I don't know Jane Fonda?

45:15 I don't even know who they'd want to be. That would have been a great little combo. He should be with Brigitte Bardot. She should be with me.

45:20 Yeah.

45:20 Is what everyone's thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

45:21 Well, certainly she shouldn't be with a Japanese avant-garde artist.

45:25 Feminist artist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a, whoa. Like everything that makes everyone uncomfortable at that point. She's got bloody armpit hair.

45:30 Right.

45:33 That's John Lennon advertising her that is the other thing take a look at me wife she's got bloody armpit hair do.

45:41 You think but like.

45:44 Did he do that no but I do think like that is kind of the energy of him presenting her as like this amazing thing yeah look at this that's gonna fucking flip your wig they were.

45:55 America's first hipsters, right? They were the first fucking, but that's the other thing, like, how self-aware. I don't think it's self-aware. I think now maybe it's like, yeah, look at her, you know? But I think, you know, I think that's a really reductive way to see maybe their love. Like, I think he actually was captivated. It wasn't like, oh, I like her because she's against everything that is popular now or whatever. Like, she's going against the grain. I think that was.

46:20 Well, I think that's the thing about performance art that is I think people are interested in because if you're not used to it, you're going to go, what the fuck is this?

46:29 Right. And that's already, it's already.

46:31 Achieved what it's supposed to do because it's already subverted, whatever your expectation about what art is or is not supposed to be.

46:38 So I think for him to see that cranked up to Yoko Ono.

46:41 Level, it's like, Oh man, Paul, look at Linda. Now look at Yoko. Bloody armpit hair. Linda's got clean-shaven armpit hair.

46:51 I mean, he's part of one of the most popular bands in the world. It's all about getting the next commercial hit. That's, you know. Right. And so I think there is something freeing about seeing somebody who's not totally outside of the music industry.

47:05 You dressed like a schoolboy for 11 years. Right. Fucking weird. Why? Fucking pervert.

47:11 I don't know, to appeal to 10-year-old girls?

47:13 No, just the label just told us to... Dressed like kids? Going to school?

47:19 Yeah.

47:19 All right, bro. Anyway. Don't have a girlfriend? Okay.

47:24 Are you a virgin?

47:25 All right, virgin.

47:26 Yeah.

47:27 It's like that SNL sketch, Mean Girlfriend. Did you see that? Uh-uh. It's just like, get you a mean girlfriend, and it's... Dakota Johnson. And she's just like, Oh, what? Like it's her boyfriend's leaving. And she's like, why are you dressed like a pedophile on vacation? And he's like, Oh, I went and like goes back in, but it's like, he loves her every time she's mean to him. Um, anyways, they fall in love. They, to your point about like, they're going in a more adventurous musical direction. People are like, uh, there's a song revolution number nine on the Beatles white album that Like, I've always found kind of annoying.

48:07 No, never skip.

48:08 Never skip. Never heard it. No. By the 28th, number nine. Number nine. Oh, that's what's going on in the song? What a great album, though. Oh, great album. I mean... The gray album. Well, the white album, which was called The Beatles' White on White, which was her aesthetic. So she didn't design the album cover, but.

48:28 But there was someone in the margins who was definitely white on white with it.

48:32 Yeah, yeah. Um... And she.

48:36 So I have to look at the Beatles discography because it seems like after her, things start getting real good.

48:43 Things get interesting. But it's also like Lennon, like McCartney starts becoming the lead songwriter after like 66, essentially. And Lennon, who had written all their hit, like most of their biggest hits up to that point, kind of takes a. Backstage. And so he's super insecure about that, which is where a lot of people who don't have the Yoko thesis think like the breakup came from. And the reason they think that is because when they broke up, John Lennon sat everyone down and said, I'm breaking up the band.

49:15 Here's why. And it was because he said, and he said that yeah he was like because you guys like Paul better than me and nobody appreciates.

49:22 Me because Paul's writing you fucking self-absorbed right piece of shit like.

49:27 You're naked and laying down all the time um but Paul was also trying to do he made this song carnival of light that was like you know, experimental music. He was really into the experimental art scene, but, like, it just, like, wasn't good enough to put on the album. But people are like, well, John made Revolution No. 9, so that proves he's just, like, listening to Yoko. Interesting. Yeah.

49:51 But it's like, they were all going in the same direction. The one that she helped Lennon make actually made the album, but McCartney was also trying to do it and was also interested in all that shit. He....

50:07 So, oh, it starts to get so good.

50:09 Yeah. Yeah.

50:10 Pepper's white album, yellow submarine, Abbey road. Let it be.

50:14 Yeah. I mean, she's around for Abbey road. Let it be basically. And that's also when he like stops wanting to be in the Beatles and she, right. So like people are like, why is she, why is he bringing her to the studio? And it's like kind of her bringing him to the studio. Like also he brings her everywhere.

50:31 He goes, he brings her to the bathroom with him because he's so possessive and jealous and like, He's like, I think.

50:37 Why were people kicking dirt on her fucking name?

50:41 Yeah.

50:43 He was like, I, she was like, he told me that if I, uh, if he left me alone, he was afraid that I would like go off with one of the other Beatles. Oh my God. Yeah. Like he was really like a fuck boy.

50:56 Yeah.

50:58 Um, you're going to, Didn't he fuck around on.

51:02 Like, McCartney's... Well, I know that he, like, raised... No, I know that McCartney raised, like, his first kid, helped raise Lennon's first kid.

51:10 He wrote Hey Jude about... So when he left Cynthia for Yoko... And McCartney like went over and performed a song for Cynthia and Julian called Hey Jules, which ends up being Hey Jude. Like that was a song written for. Bro, you know you're an ain't shit dude when your homie has to go console your newly broken up with family. Right.

51:36 Damn, I wrote a hit straight up. serenading your family that.

51:40 You left bro they were so fucked up i was like are you gonna go say something right well then.

51:46 Uh i gotta serenade yeah like the more the time goes on uh my brother was a huge is a huge beatles fan so i sort of learned through him and whatnot he was obsessed with lenin man lenin lenin lenin but the more you kind of learn it's like yeah McCartney might be like seen as the commercial success but he was also the stand-up guy he was also the person who was working the hardest he was writing he was trying to keep shit together I watched some of that Beatles documentary Yoko's in the studio clearly like babysitting John's emotions yeah um and that Lennon was just kind of like a mopey little little whiny fuck boy I guess and like McCartney like helped actually a lot and also carried the Beatles name.

52:32 Sure. Right. Yeah. It's the, it's interesting when you watch that documentary about, Like Yoko's there, but like, so like George brings through a bunch of Hare Krishnas, like Paul's.

52:42 Everyone's bringing their people.

52:43 Yeah, everybody's bringing their people through, but it's just like Yoko is the one that people are like, what the fuck is she doing here? What about the dudes with the top knots, bro? They're cool. They're cool.

52:53 Ringo just has like children.

52:55 Yeah.

52:55 What are they doing?

52:56 No, no one's paying attention to that. He has a birthday clown doing magic for him. Like, who's that? Exactly.

53:02 Why is there a seagull?

53:03 Ringo's bored. Um, there is a person. So like the rap on her that like, she basically targeted John, like researched him, pretended not to know who he was. Somebody did actually do that. So when their, uh, manager died of a drug overdose, uh, and they were like trying to figure out like the path forward, the Rolling Stones manager, uh, Alan Klein was like, all right, I'm going to read a bunch of biographies about Lennon. I'm going to figure out which songs he wrote. Oh, shit. I'm going to have dinner with him. And say those are his favorites.

53:39 And say those. Be like, I'm not that big into the Beatles. Like, I only like, like, a handful of the songs. And then just list it all. Just reading from a list. Reading John Lennon. What are you reading from your napkin, mate? And then. Nothing. Being like, and, you know, some of the songs, some of the other songs are good. Like, I really like this guitar solo.

53:56 And like, that would be John, you know. Oh, interesting. So he did exactly what people accuse Yoko of, like, scheming it out guess who did it a white man yeah yeah exactly um and it worked john was like where do i sign oh dude this is his.

54:12 Like seminal like biography no what what.

54:15 Is this What is what? Like, what did he source for that information? Or he was just looking at anything?

54:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

54:21 Okay.

54:21 He found out, like, who wrote what and read a biography, like, did research, came in, acted like he didn't really know who he was, and then used the information he had to.

54:32 This is their new manager?

54:33 This is the guy who was trying to be their new manager.

54:35 I see, I see.

54:36 He signed three of the Beatles. Paul was like, I would rather my father-in-law be our manager. And so that also created like a massive, that's the other like theory number two of like what broke them up, which was like this breakdown between, uh.

54:55 Who was going to be the manager.

54:56 Yeah. Like they were really close with the guy who was their manager, uh, and died of a drug overdose. Um, some people claim that Paul or John had an affair with him, uh, at one point. Uh, but it's like, that is once there was that power vacuum, um, Like, Paul stepped in and was like, we got to work.

55:14 We got to, like, do all this stuff. Everybody else was like, get fucked. Like, you're a workaholic. Hold on, Paul. This lad says he likes my guitar playing. Right, right.

55:22 No. No.

55:23 We need to do a business decision. Wait, so I don't understand.

55:25 This new manager was trying to isolate Yoko from everybody. Like, trying to break them up.

55:29 No, no. Trying to break the trying to sign John to him because they needed.

55:34 A new manager. I see.

55:35 We're bringing that up as the point of like everything that was that Yoko Ono was accused of this fucking guy.

55:40 This guy actually did. Right. You want to find an example of someone. Yeah. Sort of disingenuous. I get it.

55:46 Right.

55:47 I get it.

55:47 Thank you. Time in. Time in.

55:50 Time in. We're here.

55:52 There is one instance of the Beatles actually getting mad at Yoko Ono, and it was when she ate one of George's cookies. Did it have weed in it? No. As if that was it. As if that was justified. I don't even know why. I was like, would it have weed in it? Right. Can you just.

56:09 Imagine George Harrison freaking out? Those are for the Hare Krishna. I bake those especially.

56:16 Are you Hare Krishna? Yes or no? Yes or no? Harrison stared bug-eyed at Ono through the window. Curious, I looked over his shoulder. Yoko had gotten out of bed, because they brought a bed into the studio, which was cool, and was slowly padding across the studio floor. Fucking job. Who the fuck is this? Why do you have a bed? Yeah, I don't get it. Finally coming to a stop at Harrison's Leslie cabinet, which had a pack of McVitie, McVites. Oh, McVitie's digested biscuits. Digested biscuits on top. Oh shit, not even cookies. Those are fucking.

56:48 They're, they're so good.

56:48 They're good. I mean. Idly, she began opening the packet and delicately removed a single biscuit. Just as the morsel reached her mouth, Harrison could contain himself no longer. That bitch. Um. What? Dude. She's taken one of my biscuits. These guys are all little fucking.

57:04 My biscuits.

57:04 This is what, this is the description of an incident that happened at preschool. Like, how the fuck is this a group of grownups?

57:13 Or like these, but also, I think that's also like, when you watch the documentary, you also see like, there is so much tension. What's mine is not yours. They are not sharing.

57:23 Right, right.

57:24 This is like.

57:25 And John is like, you're going to take her. Right. Oh my God. Exactly. Totally.

57:30 This is like angry roommates, like delineating their portion of the fridge, you know, a line.

57:35 In the apartment. Yeah. That sitcom episode. Yeah. Lennon began shouting back at him, but there was little he could say to defend his wife who oblivious was happily munching away in the studio. Fuck. Yeah. Because he shared exactly the same attitude towards food because he was fucking four years old. Oh, that Lennon was like, nobody better touch my digestive biscuits. Yeah. What is going on? Yeah. I mean, yeah, they're cool, man. They sound like a bunch of cool guys.

58:02 It's also, I think, they suffer from the same, like, yeah, like, which one is, which one's the front man?

58:07 Right.

58:08 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they all think that they're the front man.

58:09 Except for Ringo.

58:10 Except for good old Ringo, a fucking team player.

58:13 Good for him, bro. He also quit the band during the White Album. George quit the band during the making of Let It Be. Oh. Like, John finally, like, did break up the band, but it was, you know, they were all constantly quitting the band and mad at each other, and it was all falling apart at this point. Sure, sure.

58:28 Yeah.

58:29 The White Album does suffer from a lack of whimsy. Ringo could rock.

58:34 And really good drumming. I only know the Grey Album. Yeah. Ringo is a no-play motherfucker. I know that. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back and talk about the post-Beatles life of Yoko and John. And we'll be done. And we're back. We're back. I will just say, closing out the Beatles side of it, Paul has been like, definitely wasn't Yoko. Yoko was great. He said about her, she's just herself and determined more than other people to be herself. And I think that's a pretty good description of Yoko Ono. She's just like, yeah.

59:20 But that's also probably what he saw in her, right? Because you're someone who kind of is unsure about who he is.

59:25 Oh, Lennon? Yeah, Lennon.

59:27 I mean, it's like just constant kind of like, yeah, I think he doesn't know what role he plays in the band. He's insecure. He's traumatized, whatever. And then here's.

59:39 Yoko's like, I don't give a fuck. I'm going to do me.

59:42 And he's like, what do you mean?

59:43 But I have to dress like a little boy, Yoko, or they won't buy the records. Nah, that sounds fucking dumb, bro. You should just. You should not do that. Do whatever the fuck you need to do, man. Wouldn't be me. So immediately after they break up, Yoko's daughter, Yoko, is kind of taken by her husband, kidnapped, essentially.

1:00:03 Oh, when you said taken, I thought you meant like, most like, oh, impressed by. Literally was kidnapped. Was kidnapped by her husband, you know, the father. And like they were, they spent a bunch of time like trying to track her down. They found her in America. A judge in America was like, you know put it like sentenced him to jail oh yeah put her back he left the country with her she didn't see her.

1:00:30 Daughter for 30 years so like she's going through that the whole time it well george harrison's like my biscuit she's like my fucking daughter yeah yeah and like you can hear uh the song happy christmas war is over begins with ono whispering happy christmas kyoko so like she's like sending these messages in their songs all throughout what a piece of shit that guy he took so where they were is like the worst part they were in a cult the whole time like that's how they were able to hide they were in a cult and then.

1:01:03 She could do anything Hi, Nicole.

1:01:07 Call it art. Yeah. She eventually, this was actually an artistic. Performance art. But, you know, she was kind of brainwashed by her dad, joined this cult, was there, eventually went to Wheaton College, which is like a Christian college.

1:01:23 This Mr.

1:01:23 Cox? Yeah, this is Mr. Cox. And then met her husband. And eventually her husband was like, uh, her, she eventually like reunited with Yoko and they were cool again, but it was, um, 30 years, 30 years, like a true nightmare. So they moved. That's why, how they end up coming to New York is because they think the laws are more favorable in America for them to like get, control back and like they had heard that she was in America.

1:01:55 So that's why they're there instead of, uh, England. Um, they become like this fixture of American entertainment. They co-hosted the Mike Douglas show for an entire week. Um, the actor, the guy who like was a talk show. I think, isn't that the 60 minutes guy, Mike Douglas? Yeah. Yeah. So he had like a late night show and was out for a week and they were like in his place, uh, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Hold on to your butts, America.

1:02:21 I gotta watch this.

1:02:23 This is where we get the famous scene of them jamming with Chuck Berry and she's vocalizing. Actually, could we play that real quick?

1:02:34 Someone's on tambourine, I remember, too. Maybe not.

1:02:38 It's also the clip I feel like most people use to just point a finger at her and just discredit her at any level.

1:02:43 Yeah, they're like... And they go, look at Chuck Berry. He fucking hates this shit. I'm like, yeah, he was also taking pictures of people peeing in the bathroom. Okay, so let's not worry about what Chuck Berry is into. Yes. The Leonard and Chuck Berry era. Hell yeah. That's called pure freedom. Yeah. She doesn't give a fuck. That's called pure freedom. Guess how little she gives a fuck.

1:03:09 She has no respect for the jam sesh.

1:03:15 I'm on an instrument too. Okay.

1:03:16 You play guitar and I go, it was like me in the.

1:03:20 College dorm too high with like, you know, a bunch of dudes and everyone's just jam. I'm like, cool. I don't play an instrument. Hell yeah.

1:03:27 Your voice is your instrument.

1:03:32 Straight up though. I think when, I'm just laughing at that. It was right up.

1:03:38 Right up.

1:03:39 You know, sometimes women are always left out on the outside of the jam circle. The drum circle, the jam.

1:03:45 Hop in, girl. Hop in. Get free. Get free. They also had on as guests people like Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale.

1:03:54 Fuck yeah.

1:03:54 Which, like, on the Mike Douglas show. Hell yeah. Fucking 1970s American network television. This is when the U.S. government decides that they're going to start to put the FBI on his ass. Uh, and they're like doing all the, they're like sending raids to their house to like catch them with weed so that they can deport him.

1:04:14 Of course.

1:04:16 And did he ever have weed? They came close. Oh yeah. They came close to deporting them, but never quite, you know, he had good lawyers too. Yeah.

1:04:23 Yeah.

1:04:23 Yeah. Uh, I think there's a do the thing like that same thing happened to Fela Kuti and he ate the weed. Oh yeah.

1:04:29 Yeah. To get so, and then they waited for him to take a shit. Oh, really? To find it. That's why he wrote a song about it called Expensive Shit. Yeah. Pretty good.

1:04:38 I love Bella Couttie so much.

1:04:40 I didn't know that. This is also the time of the Lost Weekend. Do you guys know what the Lost Weekend is? Hell yeah, bro. When I was taking Xanax in college, bro. Basically. Everybody's had a Lost Weekend here or there. Just a memory wipe?

1:04:52 The Lost Weekend. There was a store in San Francisco called Lost Weekend Video.

1:04:57 So this is actually an 18 month period in which John Lennon goes to L.A. Suppose like the thing I had always heard is he left Yoko Ono and like went and partied for 18 months. She basically kicked him out at this point. She was like, it's too much. I will say this is an important detail. When they have the meeting to break up the Beatles and are like leaving the meeting, Yoko Ono said like her only thought was like, fuck. This guy was like, those three guys were who were entertaining him most of the time.

1:05:30 And now it's me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then John Lennon was just like, it's just you and me, babe. Yeah. So it was like, it was too much for her. And eventually she kicked him out. This is not the best moment for her. They have a personal assistant named May Pang. And she basically tells her that she has to become John Lennon's girlfriend for this lost weekend. Um, and May Pang is like, what? Like, oh boy. Yeah. And, but then she is.

1:06:00 No, don't worry. I, I super, I, I'm okay with it. No, I'm really okay with it.

1:06:05 Yeah.

1:06:06 Yeah.

1:06:06 Are you okay with it? Doesn't matter. Uh, Pang was stunned at Ono's proposal. Are you kidding?

1:06:10 And film it. Film it.

1:06:12 Film it. But after when it's only half hard. I can't. It's hard. It's hard. Um, she said, are you kidding? I can't do that. He's my employer. He's my boss. He's your husband. I was 23 years old and my first boyfriend was John Lennon. So.

1:06:27 Whoa.

1:06:29 Yeah.

1:06:30 H3.

1:06:31 What is she?

1:06:32 I know the intern, literal intern, except Hila wasn't in on it.

1:06:36 Right. Like this version. Right. Yeah.

1:06:38 Of course.

1:06:39 What is it?

1:06:40 Also, I mean, look, the people I dated at 23, I mean, that's an upgrade.

1:06:44 You wish. I'm just kidding. John Lennon.

1:06:46 That's not 17. That's legal.

1:06:48 Right. Okay. I wish it was John Lennon. She got purple hair. She's doing it. What?

1:06:52 Really?

1:06:52 Just looking at a picture of Mei Peng now. Yeah.

1:06:54 Oh, nice.

1:06:55 I love Mei Peng. She did write an all, uh, kind of tell all, which, you know, very, very well earned. I'm sure. Um, but, uh, yeah, Yoko at this time went on tour in Japan and was like treated like she had not been very popular when she would do her art in Japan prior to that. But like this time people were like, fuck yeah, you are, uh, it was, she said she was treated like she was the Japanese Elvis.

1:07:20 All right. Um, But then she eventually, they get back together. He has to, like, kind of court her to get back together. They have four happy years. Sean is born. Their first kid. Yeah, their only kid.

1:07:36 Their only kid.

1:07:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:07:38 I knew that.

1:07:38 And then he's assassinated. And, like, the shit that... Like, I... Yeah, like I said, it's, like, crazy how, like, they were getting multiple people, like, writing her, you're next, with a picture of a gun signed to the Mark David Chapman fan club.

1:07:55 Jeez.

1:07:55 Like, at the... In the immediate aftermath. Yeah, just, like.

1:07:58 Was there... Was she ever actually in any danger? Like, where she had an incident, or this was all just, like, fucked up violent trolling, basically?

1:08:05 I think it was a lot of trolling, but, like, there was also... Like, they had constant security around them, which was, like, the real, you know, she's a pacifist. And now, like, her and Sean, who's, like, four or five when John Lennon's assassinated, are, like, constantly surrounded by people with guns. He had to be, like, carried out of the Dakota in a black bag to, like, hide him because there were, like, all of these, like, credible, you know, threats on them. Wait, who was carried out of a black bag? Sean. To, like, get just, like, out of the apartment. Oh, so no one would see it.

1:08:36 But they leave New York once somebody.

1:08:38 America's... One of America's most famous hoppa.

1:08:40 Yeah, right.

1:08:41 One of the first.

1:08:41 Truly. Yeah.

1:08:42 Famous Waysians.

1:08:43 Yeah.

1:08:44 Let's go.

1:08:44 Do you think he was out... Is he out here on that Waysian thing?

1:08:47 I don't think he's on the Waysian thing.

1:08:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:08:48 But he... But I remember, like, seeing.

1:08:51 He's a musician that you like, right?

1:08:52 Yeah. He was part of the band Chibomato.

1:08:54 Yeah.

1:08:54 And I like that band. I remember just, like, seeing him. I was like, oh, yeah. He looks like my brother.

1:08:59 Yeah. Huh. We have a look. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:09:03 It's gray, mostly.

1:09:05 Gray?

1:09:06 Yeah, like Hop, sorry if you're Hop, I'm listening. We're very evil. There's a lot of evil Asians out there.

1:09:11 Well, there's like a Hulk, yeah.

1:09:12 They also kind of have like a gray, there's like a, you don't have brown hair, you don't have black hair, or it's like gray. Yeah, kind of. I see.

1:09:20 Right in there. Right in there. And a whole thing, too, like the Waysian obsession right now. There's a lot of people are talking about that. Yes. Like, interesting how you're really into being Waysian right now.

1:09:29 Yeah, yeah. Focus on the wah.

1:09:31 Mm-hmm. Can we just bring the wah out a little bit more? I'm Waysian.

1:09:35 I'm Waysian.

1:09:36 Me and my Waysian wife. My Waysian wife. My wife is Waysian. But I will say, like, she also has a very... you know, underrated music career. I think a lot of people, I going into this thought like, Oh, she's just, you know, somebody who was like kind of coasting off of John Lennon's coattails. She puts out an album like within a year of his assassination. That's like this really raw thing. That's like very critically acclaimed. She, you know, Kurt Cobain has said she's like the first female punk artist. A lot of like Sonic youth say that like her recordings are incredibly good. influential on them. Yeah.

1:10:19 So she's, and then she's had this.

1:10:21 So she births movements.

1:10:22 Yeah. Yeah. And she's like also had this kind of resurgence recently where in the 2000s, a bunch of dance remixes of her songs have hit number one on the dance chart. Like many of them.

1:10:36 Yeah.

1:10:37 Really? Yeah.

1:10:38 But I always wonder whether they like add the Yoko later. I mean, I don't know how it remixes.

1:10:42 They're like, hey, yoke it up. Yeah. Now you got a hit.

1:10:46 You know what this means?

1:10:47 It's missing something. Yeah. Little Yoko scream. But yeah, so.

1:10:51 Just the scream.

1:10:52 It's just, again, the iconic part for her, it feels a lot like Bjork, but just being born in the complete wrong time.

1:10:59 Yeah. Where she was just singular. She just died.

1:11:03 She only felt responsible to herself as an artist to not compromise her own vision or what her direction she wanted to be in, in a time of such conformity where you're like, oh my God.

1:11:14 No, but in a time where also people were looking for someone like Yoko Ono to be different, you know what I mean?

1:11:18 Sure, sure.

1:11:19 And the Beatles were, I mean, they were following the culture too, like their hairstyles, their music styles. I mean, they weren't on the cutting edge of that, but they represented the mainstreaming of, You know, the hippie era and the psychedelic era and being more experimental. They were just blowing with the wind. They were good. They were like good politicians as musicians in some way. And amazing musicians.

1:11:43 Sure, sure. But they knew. Yeah. But like kind of have to be if you're going to be that popular.

1:11:47 Of course.

1:11:48 You got to follow.

1:11:48 They're like, OK, the hits keep fucking coming. They're not going to dress like schoolboys and do, you know, she loves me. Yeah. Over and over and over again. But yeah, I kind of think about this and I'm like, does Yoko regret? meeting and like you know I don't know are they are they really like if they were super in love yeah you know.

1:12:08 That's I mean probably not because no one can say nothing together yeah yeah.

1:12:11 But I mean for her career her life she was so tarnished right she seemed like she was doing a-okay or did it help spotlight and springboard the work that she wanted.

1:12:20 I'm sure being married to John Lennon completely brings a new level of attention but yeah totally it's like it doesn't sound like it wasn't without costs.

1:12:28 It was, yeah, it was beneficial, but then with huge costs.

1:12:31 Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's a good way to sum it up.

1:12:34 Or did she orchestrate the, right.

1:12:36 You know, she was all over. She was the most tarot cardedly and like psychically tapped in person in the world at that point.

1:12:46 Like she was like, cause she knew it was going to happen that day. Right?

1:12:48 No, no. She was making all her decisions with like tarot cards and psychics and stuff. Like, yeah. Like had like four of them on retainers. Ooh, I know.

1:12:57 So I was like, this is not mystics beware.

1:13:00 Uh, Chad GPT, should I go outside today?

1:13:05 After this photo shoot, should John and I go outside after this photo shoot?

1:13:10 No, hell no. Do not go outside. Didn't he get killed right after that photo shoot?

1:13:14 Yeah.

1:13:14 Yeah. Yeah.

1:13:15 Yeah.

1:13:15 So like, yeah. So all the, all the like psychics and readers were like, um, this doesn't represent our community.

1:13:22 Well, then she like went even further into like psychics afterwards. And her, uh, like boyfriend after John Lennon, like was like, these people are lying to you. Like they're, you need, you need to stop listening to them. And finally he had like their call tapped. So, uh, you could like hear them hang up with her and then call each other. Oh, and be like, get their story straight. It's really not a good.

1:13:50 So her next was like, now I have to actually create receipts for you to understand that these people are fucking scamming.

1:13:55 And she like still, She was still like, okay, yeah, I'll stop talking to them.

1:13:59 Yeah, the power of being a celebrity psychic.

1:14:02 Yeah, yeah. And then some of them wrote tell-all books. Of course. Yeah.

1:14:09 I was Yoko's psychic.

1:14:12 I was Yoko's pizza guy.

1:14:15 What is this?

1:14:15 She came in for a slice once.

1:14:18 It's the Trump administration over here.

1:14:20 Yeah, right. Everyone's got a book. I knew. Yeah, right, right. The shit that was thrown at her, like, but, you know, the crazy fans and all the, you know, before he died and also after he died. And then, like, a lot of people, like, robbed them of, like, John Lennon's journals and all this, like, terrible shit. And she just, like, kind of kept creating art, which I think is, you know, If we're going to know her for something she actually did, I'd say that would be like the thing, not breaking up the Beatles since she didn't actually do that one. But, you know, being a real one who just kept creating weird art.

1:14:54 Despite a year later.

1:14:55 Yeah.

1:14:56 You can come out with a whole album.

1:14:58 She wrote like one of the most popular songs, like within 24 hours of him just being like, that's how she worked through shit.

1:15:05 Yeah. Yeah.

1:15:06 See, they treat her like MSG. You know what I mean? Lying on her name. You know what? She was making everything delicious.

1:15:14 Absolutely.

1:15:16 Francesca, thank you so much for joining us.

1:15:18 Thanks for having me.

1:15:19 Where can people find you, follow you?

1:15:21 Listen to the Bituation Room podcast.

1:15:23 Do it.

1:15:23 Watch it on YouTube at Franny Fio, F-R-A-N-N-I-F-I-O.

1:15:27 There you go. Hell yeah. How about you, Mom? Just, you know, Daily Zeitgeist, Ain't It Footy, and 420 Day Fiance, and Don't Touch My McFitty's Digestive Biscuits, you crone. All right. I'll be right back with the Notebook Dump. Dump.

1:15:45 It's a biscuit, bitch.

1:15:47 Took me biscuit again. She took me biscuit. She took me biscuit again. I'm not standing for this, mate. She took me bloody biscuits again, bruv. Oh, shit. Ate the chips as well earlier. All right. That was the episode. Thanks to Francesca and Miles. This is the No, no, no, no book dump. There it is. Wait a second. Who's that?

1:16:17 We're joined for this one by Brian, the editor, who makes these episodes sound good. Handles the engineer, the edit. Hello, Brian. Thank you for joining. Thank you, Jack. Hey, thank you, Brian. This is where I go through my notes and tell you the stuff I forgot or didn't get to. And Brian, when we joined the record with Francesca, you were quizzing us on the best Yoko Ono songs. So in addition to, you know, me taking this opportunity to get to everything I forgot, I want to give you a chance to talk about some of the stuff you like about Yoko Ono or think is iconic or don't like. I don't know, man.

1:16:55 I don't know what I'm walking into here. Could be a fucking shootout, you know?

1:17:00 Well, my history with Yoko Ono runs the full gamut of, you know, editing the episode. I'm like, yeah, I had all of those experiences with her of, sort of having misogynist friends point at her and be like, look at this fucking weirdo.

1:17:19 She broke up the Beatles. And I was like, I don't really like the Beatles that much. I just kept my mouth shut though.

1:17:25 But, um, and then I also had Yoko Ono introduced to me through like my avant-garde friends, like people who were into like ambient noise and drone and obscure stuff. And, um, Yeah, I got it from both angles and I got to see the derision and the appreciation. And then I got to see her. She was like a special guest for Yellow Magic Orchestra, one of Probably one of the most legendary Japanese bands from the 70s.

1:18:01 They do like electronic music. And that was a nice surprise.

1:18:05 And she came out and she did her signature shrieking.

1:18:10 It was at the Hollywood Bowl. And I was like... She both sings and does shrieking. But she came out and she's like, I'm only going to do the hits. I'm only going to do the hits. I'm going to yowl and shriek. And on sometimes she does some songs, she does both, but.

1:18:26 But I love how it's irrespective of the song or the genre.

1:18:30 She will just, she'll whip that out. And it was, I wonder how many cuts of happy Christmas war is over. They were like, okay, so you did that one for you with the shrieking. Let's try it without on this one before they got the version that we've all heard. but it was cool to get to see her for me by the way yeah she's a true ledge which you know why we're doing this and of.

1:18:56 Course the iconic look too like she's got she's got a look.

1:19:01 Yeah she's been full sunglasses all the time since I think Lennon's assassination like Anna Wintour Yeah. She created the Anna Wintour. That's a really good point that I did not bring up, but she was doing Anna Wintour before, or probably, I guess, around the same time Anna Wintour was doing Anna Wintour because, uh, you know, just because Anna Wintour came out of her mother with sunglasses on, it seems like, uh, she has, she had that bob since then, but Yoko Ono, I, you know, was not wearing sunglasses on the cover of the, uh, Two Virgins album, but I think did kind of ease into a very iconic look. I don't know if it's iconic enough. She doesn't have the three-factor authentication where it's like sunglasses, pipe hat.

1:19:57 It's just the sunglasses. But she used.

1:20:01 To have like this more distinctive hair. I think of her with longer hair. I don't know what her hair looks like now.

1:20:07 I've always thought of her as having shorter hair later era Yoko Ono being shorter hair, but I'm not again. Like I'm, this is why I wanted to have you on picturing her when she was with Lennon and they both had the same haircut, basically. They went to the same barber. Give me the Lennon. He sat down and said, give me the yoga. Um, all right. Uh, some stuff from my research that I did want to get to. Uh, I do always think it's funny. We talked about this on the Selena episode, but I think it's funny when there's a genre of music that is like, sorry, I need my pretty songs that make me tear up sung to me by boys, not girls. Girls are gross. Um, and that came up a lot in this, like we talked about it because Tejano music, when Selena came along was, uh,

1:20:59 very much like, no, girls aren't allowed to sing these pretty songs. So weird. So weird. And because I mainly know it as the Selena genre, I was like, that's so silly that they were ever like that. But the research for this episode made me realize that rock music was exactly that for like the entire period known as classic rock. Girls were not allowed.

1:21:25 I mean, you can notice like a distinct lack of, especially like, late sixties and seventies stuff. Like you started to have like Fleetwood Mac. I think they started in the late, late sixties, like 67 or something. But like all of them, when you think of classic rock, there are no women in there.

1:21:44 And it's weird. Yeah, Fleetwood Mac was like, all right, we're going to let a girl do one real quick. And, you know, through the booze, you know, she was able to belt one out before people were like, all right, she actually is fucking awesome, Stevie Nicks. But yeah, I mean, the movie Almost Famous, I was thinking about just in terms of trying to picture the world of rock and roll that Yoko Ono was stepping into. where like girls are allowed to play one role that is groupies. Groupies were traded like cards. There's like a famous story of, I think it's the character that Kate Hudson's, or the person Kate Hudson's character is based on being traded from, I think it's like the Eagles to Led Zeppelin. And

1:22:29 so for Yoko Ono, an accomplished performance artist to step into that, And, you know, you start to realize just the sheer cultural anaphylactic shock that America went into when they encountered Yoko Ono and in the context in which they encountered her and, you know, England also, obviously. But their first solo album cover, like I had seen the picture of them standing just full frontal nude holding hands.

1:23:03 I had seen that. I didn't realize that was essentially how they announced themselves to the world. Like that's their first solo album. It is the, the album is recorded the night that they first, uh, have sex. Um, that's why it's called two virgins. Uh, the pictures taking in, uh, Ringo's basement with a like timed camera, just them in Ringo's basement, completely naked. Um, but it came out, that album came out before, uh, the last Beatles album, you know, they're not all going to be four quadrant hits, right?

1:23:40 Like she, she was, uh, do doing things that not everybody was going to appreciate. Like fairly recently, she didn't, uh, art installation in Liverpool, uh, you know, the working class town where John Lennon was from, uh, where he met his first wife and Yoko Ono put photos of naked boobs and vulvas all over, all over town, um, including in front of a church. when she was asked about the backlash to putting vulvas and boobs in front next to a church, she was like, I didn't understand the response at all. I was just trying to do something beautiful.

1:24:16 So like she has that mentality and yeah. Do you think.

1:24:19 That's genuine or do you think she's trolling?

1:24:22 I don't know. I think she's trolling a bit to be honest, but cause it is, I don't know.

1:24:26 She doesn't make it easy to like tell like if she's how much she's fucking around.

1:24:31 Yes. But like that, that album came out before Let It Be, before, I think even before Abbey Road. Like, so it's like, this is the first chance that people have to see a John Lennon album that is not a Beatles album. I thought you were going to say a John Lennon wang. Well, and yeah, and it comes with a full, a heavy dose of full frontal nudity, you know? Yeah, they're really out there. It's really out there.

1:25:01 They're like, here is... No fig leaf or nothing. Here is some noises we made. It's an experimental music album that has been... deemed very influential by a lot of important artists, but was not a, again, not a four quadrant hit, was not huge with the under 25 male and female and over 25 male and female demographic. I did look up because I found myself saying they're not all going to be four quadrant hits a lot in the research for this. Looking at her work, that is what the four quadrants are. And I feel like some of them might not have wanted to encounter John Lennon, the biggest pop star. Like they were putting out nothing but four quadrant hits. A decade long four quadrant hit is what the Beatles were. And she steps in and

1:25:50 is like, well, have you ever wanted to know what his dick looks like? And then here's some bird chirping and whistling. Jack Nicholson from the party. There it is. Very, uh, a handful of very dedicated fans were like, finally. Um, but yeah. And so the people and the media just locked arms and we're like, we will never, never forgive this woman. I feel like, like I, and, and the racism, like I, like to give you a sense of just how knives out and knives sharpened the media was for her, uh, papers described her as someone who takes her clothes off on stage for a living when she's first being introduced based on that work of art where she like kneels with a pair of scissors and, And lets people, like,

1:26:45 cut her clothes off. Like, a very brave, you know, at the time even, well-respected work of art. And they're like, so basically a stripper who's coming in and trying to break up the Beatles. There's a profile of Lennon and Ono with the title... that's so racist, I'm not going to read it on this podcast. It's an Esquire profile.

1:27:10 You can go Google it. But then there's also a profile in Cosmo that got scrapped because the journalist who was, like, hanging out with her and doing research into her, like. You know, basically refused an order from her editor to take the angle that Yoko Ono had abandoned her child. Um, the editor was like, well, again, this is when her daughter had in fact been kidnapped. So they're like, amazing work of performance art. That's very brave. She's a stripper. Uh, she's abandoned her child when her, she's in the midst of her daughter having been kidnapped. Um, just the most intensely racist shit you've ever seen. Also everywhere, constantly in the media, the Esquire headline is like really infuriating. Um, but,

1:28:00 the media was just focused and intent on doing harm because that's probably what their audience wanted. You know, um, I was trying to think of a corollary for anyone who has been this despised by, uh, the mainstream media, Monica Lewinsky is a good one.

1:28:19 As far as like being just so openly disrespected, my mind immediately went to like, Yoko is the proto Monica Lewinsky. Wow.

1:28:27 That is a really good one.

1:28:28 She hooked up with the wrong white man and got her whole life fucked up by everyone. Like it was just opens. I remember how open season it was on this.

1:28:39 Very young woman. under. Yeah. Very young woman who is like having a much older, most powerful man on the planet boss. And everyone's like, oh, you suck. They didn't even really like Hillary that much. But I was thinking the thing that it made me think of just in terms of inexplicable hatred is the animosity towards like the.

1:29:05 three most recent Star Wars sequels, just the way that the Star Wars fan base responded to having a woman be the lead character. Not in terms of like, and those aren't challenging movies by any stretch. They're not Yoko Ono's, but like that is the closest I could get. I think Monica Lewinsky gets there.

1:29:25 And it was this particularly interesting It was like the beginning of these really exceptionally irrational takes from Star Wars fans.

1:29:35 Yes.

1:29:36 Because all the things they complain about with Rey can equally be applied to Luke, I feel like. And they just hated her.

1:29:48 Yes. Specifically.

1:29:50 And I can't remember the actress's name, but there was an Asian woman. in one of those sequels.

1:29:57 Right.

1:29:58 And she, I think she might've quit acting or something because like, yeah, she, she.

1:30:04 Really got to have it. But like, that is the sort of like star Wars, I think is the closest thing that, I've seen in my lifetime to the popularity of the Beatles where it was just like everybody fucked with Star Wars. And then like the reaction was just kind of hard to even fathom. Unless you're in like a weird bikini. Right. Yeah. Exactly. You can't. No one wants to see you, I guess. Sexism. Yeah. So all in all, we're probably not going to be getting the most accurate picture of Yoko Ono is what I'm trying to say. And we did not. And yeah, I'm glad her career, like her solo stuff is getting a second sort of a reappraisal and getting used and like she's become this. hit machine for electronic music, uh, you know,

1:30:59 in the past 20 years. But like, I, I really think like grapefruit, the, the book that had like all those, you know, little cones and, um, you know, works of art that was like, listen to the sound of the earth turning is like, I feel, I feel like that should have done million sold millions of copies in urban outfitters for years. But, You know, it just feels like she was done so dirty. One of my favorite things that she did is one of the albums she made during Lennon's last weekend. She listed the measurements of the men in her liner notes like they were Playboy bunnies.

1:31:38 And she did that like in the 70s, which is very funny to me. By measurements, any specific measurement or just all of them? I think, like, the way that men measure women, which I've never understood. Like, when men are like, oh, yeah, she's 33, 45, 22. Like, I don't know what they're talking about. Oh, that's bust, waist, and hips. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And I think she did the same thing for the men who she worked with in the album, in the liner notes, which I think is very funny.

1:32:10 Yeah.

1:32:11 Did she, I wonder if she's surreptitiously acquired these measured measurements.

1:32:16 I think she probably just asked them and they were like, you're Yoko Ono. Hell yeah.

1:32:19 I like the, I like the image of Yoko Ono sneaking around with a tape measure, just secretly measuring people.

1:32:26 Yeah. Hey, could you just hold still for a second during this next session? Um, but I do think like she kind of functioned as a Trojan horse for like smuggling avant-garde impulses and ideas into the mainstream, um, you know, through her husband and the Beatles and the very many popular artists she was friends with. Um, as it like Paul McCartney had a work of experimental music called carnival of light. I forget. Did we end up talking about that on the episode? No, I don't think so. So he was like, we talked about revolution number nine, which was John Lennon's like experimental thing. So Paul McCartney had his version of revolution number nine called carnival of light.

1:33:07 And he was always trying to get it on Beatles albums towards the end and like never quite made it because I think he didn't feel confident and nobody else really liked it, uh, in the band. Whereas I guess everybody fucked with revolution number nine. Um, yeah.

1:33:22 Hello.

1:33:23 But anyways, he has only ever performed carnival of light twice. None of the other Beatles have been present. Yoko Ono was present at every performance and like her contribution to the work was substantial. She like is part of the, like she dimmed the lights, instructed the audience members to touch the person next to them during the guitar solos. Um, so she was like part of the idea and like part of creating the vibe for this Paul McCartney thing is like, Even McCartney is like, yeah, she's kind of who you go to for experimental music, which I think is cool. I love that. Yeah. I like that he kind of... It's like Yoko's the only one that showed up.

1:34:06 She gets to be a part of it. But yeah, I think we, I think we covered like most, we talked about how like during everybody's like, she went everywhere. He went, she just demanded to be with him. And it was actually like him being like, she has to go to the bathroom with me and I have to go to the bathroom with her because otherwise she she's going to like try and have sex with somebody else because I'm such like, he, he just had the craziest low self-esteem and weird jealousies. I will say the warping of Yoko Ono. Have you heard this rumor that she made Julian Lennon purchase letters? He wrote to John Lennon at auction. I've heard this rumor. Yes.

1:34:47 I have heard this rumor and I have no idea if it's true or not.

1:34:51 Yeah. So this is like the continued warping of her, um, And it's basically, like, there's no source for this story. It seems like our writer and researcher, JM, went and tried to find sourcing for it. Because I wanted to be like, look, if she's an asshole, like, that's fine. We've done people who are assholes, too. Like, let's do it. And, like, you can't really find sourcing for it being true. It seems like a mixing up of, like, he... Julian Lennon has become a collector of John Lennon memorabilia. Um, and he did have to like purchase some things that she had donated, uh, that were like, I think instruments. Um, but it was not like the letters that he wrote were not things that she had donated. It was, you know,

1:35:44 And that's just like a thing he's, he's purchased things that were donated by Paul McCartney too. He's donated or he's purchased things that were donated by like rock museums too. But like people, you know, try and find a, like the worst possible light to shed on that, that like she made him buy back these letters. So yeah, it continues to this day, I would say. All right. We did cover that. She wrote, imagine, right. Uh, you did mention it briefly. Yes. So that, that's not like a, first of all, if you read the book grapefruit, like a lot of the, you know, things of like, uh, listen to the sound of the earth turning, uh, imagine a thousand suns in the sky at the same time. uh, let them burn for one hour and then melt away

1:36:36 and then make a tuna sandwich and eat it. Those are the sorts of things that are in that book. Grapefruit, which again, she wrote like in like years before she met John Lennon, like that. It's a lot of imagine this, imagine that. Uh, so it's not, but it's not just that John Lennon has specific, he has specifically said that, you know, she, uh, wrote it. Lennon admitted she deserved the credit, but claimed that he wasn't man enough to give it to her. He specifically said that if it had been like David Bowie or, uh, who's the guy?

1:37:10 David Bowie will beat the shit out of you. Exactly. But he, uh, he said he would have given Bowie credit if he had co-written it, but because it was his wife. He could get away with keeping her name off of it. But he said that like right at the end of his life. And it took a while for people to like restore her credit. Wow. What a dickhead.

1:37:31 What a dick.

1:37:32 There's a straight line path between Yoko Ono and one of the world's other most persecuted women, Gal Gadot.

1:37:40 Ha ha ha. And they're not ready to have that conversation right now, Brian. So that's where we're going to have to leave it. That's going to have to be a whole series. Well, that leads directly into next week's icon. No, it actually doesn't. No, next week's icon is probably the most sainted icon that we've covered, with the possible exception of Dolly Parton. um, probably number two behind Dolly, but, uh, a very fun and the top three white people for sure. Yeah, definitely top three white. Anyways, you can guess on who that is, but you'll find out in one week. Uh, but that's going to do it for this week's episode.

1:38:23 This week's iconograph. Thank you to you, Brian, the editor, as always for putting it all together. Uh, thank you to Francesca Fiorentini for being a wonderful guest. Uh, thanks to miles as always. Uh, and yeah, back next week with a very heartwarming episode of the iconograph coming on Monday until then more zeitgeist. And we'll talk to you all then.

1:38:46 Bye.

1:38:47 Bye. The Daily Zeitgeist is executive produced by Catherine Law. Co-produced by Victor Wright. Co-written by J.M. McNabb. And edited and engineered by Brian Jeffries.