Yoko Ono: An Artful Life

by Donald Brackett

For more than sixty years, Yoko Ono has fascinated us as one of the world’s most innovative, radical artists. From a childhood of both extraordinary privilege and extreme deprivation in war-time Japan, she adopted an outsider’s persona and moved to America where, after a spell at Sarah Lawrence College, she made a place for herself in bohemian arts circles. She was already twice divorced and established as a performance artist in the Fluxus movement and in Tokyo’s avant-garde scene before her fortuitous meeting with the Beatles’ John Lennon at a London Gallery in 1966.

Their intense yet fraught relationship, reputed to have blown-up the Beatles, made headlines around the world, as did their famous bed-ins in protest of the Vietnam war, and their majestic, Grammy-winning musical collaborations.

Through it all, and for decades after Lennon’s tragic death, she remained defiantly herself. Yoko Ono: An Artful Life charts her journey of personal turmoil, artistic evolution, and activism, and at last tells her iconic story on her own terms.

Genres: Art, Biography, Music, Nonfiction

350 pages, Hardcover

Published April 7, 2022

Reviews

[*TUDOR^QUEEN* · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a lifelong Beatles fan who has read tons of books about The Beatles over the decades, I have read extensively by association about John Lennon's second wife/widow, Yoko Ono. However, I have always wanted to read a biography solely centered upon this multi-faceted artist. Not only was this a very good biography of Yoko Ono Lennon for people who don't know much (or anything) about her, it provided me, an amateur Beatles historian, with some new kernels of information. This is always a thrill- like finding buried treasure. At the same time, I found several instances where certain facts that I've read uncountable times in other books were contradicted in this one. None of them were game changers that would rock my world, and overall this author covered his subject magnificently, traced back from her grandparents through her current status as a fragile 89 year old. Yoko has been a controversial figure since the sixties when John Lennon left first wife Cynthia for this older, Japanese eventual double divorcee. Many Beatles fans ardently accuse her of breaking up The Beatles. Her evolution as an avant garde performance artist and musician, along with her struggle to be recognized as such while being branded as an appendage of John Lennon- is artfully laid out.

Thank you to the publisher Sutherland House for providing an advance reader copy via NetGalley.

[The Sassy Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐ -- LOVE the cover on this one!

I wanted to love this one more than I did. I find Yoko Ono to be such a fascinating woman and was looking forward to diving deeper into her life. Unfortunately, I didn't get the "intimate" feeling I wanted from this story. I found it to be dry and it very much felt like the author was just skimming her life story. It wasn't a terrible book by any means, and there is a lot of history of the times included I found interesting. Perhaps I was a victim of my own expectations. 🤷🏻‍♀️

**ARC Via NetGalley**

[Craig Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yoko Ono: An Artful Life by Donald Brackett was a short biography (249 pages) and, although I was familiar with the life of Yoko Ono, this was a slower read than I expected. Dewey classified the book as an artist biography (at 700.92) yet our library system preferred 782.42166 (rock musicians biography). I would say that Dewey got it right (and even the Toronto Public Library thinks so) and will let my library’s cataloguing department know about my assessment. That said, the author is from the art world and is a curator, art dealer and critic, so he came to the subject matter with exemplary credentials. I found his writing about Yoko’s early years as an artist to be slow reading, but such is the state of academic literature.

Early into the book he analyzes Cut Piece, Yoko’s most famous piece of performance art. In this piece, she sits silently on stage after inviting members of the audience to come up and cut off pieces of her clothing. She has performed this piece numerous times on three continents, most recently in 2003 at the age of seventy. Here is a woman who had no issue whatsoever with public nudity, as she was posing nude with John Lennon on the cover of Two Virgins only a few years later. Brackett’s examination of Cut Piece was poignant and spot-on:

“Now considered a classic of feminist art, Cut Piece was possibly Yoko’s most daring public performance piece ever. Her chief raw material for the act was ‘some anger and turbulence in my heart,’ she later told Record Collector magazine. The intensity of feeling generated by the piece would stay with her: ‘That was a frightening experience, and a bit embarrassing. It was something that I insisted on–in the Zen tradition of doing the thing which is the most embarrassing for you to do, and seeing what you come up with and how you deal with it.'”

Brackett provided a history of Ono’s early performance pieces, happenings, gallery shows and written works. Readers who were led to believe that Ono only started to get into art and music after she met John Lennon would be shocked to learn how far back her art history goes. Lennon was still a teenager when she was starting to make a name for herself.

However when he examined Ono’s musical oeuvre his writing was less inspired and, his alleged facts, at times, were unfortunately incorrect. He often got dates wrong (the photos insert was rife with anachronisms) and he assigned songs to the wrong albums, however two specific errors ruined the overall academic tone of the book, such as referring to Gibraltar as an island, and the misspelling Ghandi (embarrassingly, twice).

If Brackett was more qualified to critique Ono as an artist, at least he sought others to evaluate her as a musician, and even then sometimes erred when he himself was praising her. For example, in his critique of what I consider to be Ono’s single best song ever, “Why” (from her debut album Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band), Brackett is mistaken in claiming that John Lennon is playing, of all things, a slide guitar:

“The first song on the album, ‘Why,’ is an extended vocal exercise in which Yoko screams, cackles, howls, and laughs the title word over and over, with John playing a haunting slide guitar in the background. ‘Even we didn’t know where Yoko’s voice started and where my guitar ended on the intro,’ he shared. ‘It became like a dialogue rather than a monologue and I like that, stimulating each other.'”

Brackett quotes a musician who does know a lot more about guitar playing in his own review of “Why”:

“Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas was most impressed with Lennon’s musicianship on the album: “[He] was always able to make his guitar talk. He was one of the most visceral from-the-gut rock guitarists of all time. But never more so than on ‘Why,’ where his guitar spits lovely, processed shards of metal to inspire Yoko Ono’s uninhibited caterwauling. This is some of the most radical guitar soloing of the era, rivaling Lou Reed’s ‘I Heard Her Call My Name,’ Syd Barrett’s ‘Interstellar Overdrive,’ and Robert Fripp on ‘Cat Food’ for sheer conic bravado.’ But Yoko’s voice is without a doubt the star of her album.”

Cashbox magazine reported:

“Yoko Ono sums up the philosophy of the age as succinctly as anybody yet has in her first two sides here, ‘Why’ and ‘Why Not.’ Mrs. Lennon’s voice is the most interesting new instrument since the Moog Synthesizer and she uses it throughout.”

Duncan Fallowell reported in the Spectator:

“The first track is the most ferocious and frantic piece of rock I’ve heard in a long time and sets the pace for much of the rest. The most extraordinary feature of all is Yoko’s high-pitched voice which she uses not for singing but for producing stream of vocal effects. This produces a whole new territory of sound which, in pop, she is alone in exploring with any thoroughness, and unless her voice has been fed through electronic modulators she has quite remarkable tonsils. But I doubt this album will receive the attention it deserves, such is the antipathy toward Yoko Ono that she can do no right. Yet why she should be the object of such derision and plain insult I have never been able to understand. A couple of odd films and odd records hardly explains it.”

In 1970, when this album was released, these few critics responded to it favourably. Most of them treated it as a curiosity and shrugged if off as another example of Ono’s banzai banalities. But even now, 53 years later, it is still way ahead of its time, and has grown in public appreciation by both critics and the public. I find that I can never listen to the one single song, “Why”. I am drawn to listen to the entire album. Follow the instructions on the label of the original UK LP: PLAY IN THE DARK:

Ono has remarked facetiously that she already knows what the newspapers will write about her as an epitaph. She has lived through more negativity in the press than any other artist or entertainer, and sadly the hate levelled against her was often tainted with racism and misogyny. However I believe that the public opinion of her has changed since she made that prescient statement about her own demise. I like the way Brackett ended the book:

“She has been both a brave individualist who lived her life as art, and a sometimes savvy, sometimes naive creator of a Warholian public image that has taken on a life of its own. If recent years are any indication, she will be appreciated in both dimensions as an enigmatic, gifted, generous, quirky, surprising, thought-provoking, paradoxical, and thoroughly mesmerizing presence, and a mirror not only of her own times but of times to come.”

[AnnieM · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book! I absolutely loved it and this book finally gives Yoko Ono the respect she deserves. She has been a vastly under recognized artist in her own right and I learned so much by reading Donald Brackett's comprehensive biography of her. Some of the things I did not know - her fascinating family background and history for example and the fact that she had a daughter from another marriage who she spent years trying to find and reconnect with. I did not know that because of her artistic background in film and Avant-Garde art, Paul McCarthy had originally asked her to film the documentary footage but when she turned him down, they hired Michael Lindsey Hogg and ultimately this is the footage Peter Jackson used for the Get Back - his recent documentary of the Beatles studio recordings. What is interesting is finally we get to see Yoko by John's side in the documentary which the myth was always she caused the tension and led to the break-up of the Beatles -- but not only does the footage contradict that myth, we also learn in this book that John was battling a serious drug addiction at the time and actually Yoko became his rock and anchor during that time. A couple of eerie moments -- when John saw a portrait of Yoko's great grandfather, he saw his own reflection and said that he was John in a past life -- Yoko immediately said "no, don't say that" because he had been assassinated -- gave me chills reading this. I also learned that the song "Imagine" was Yoko's concept and lyrics and it took until 2018 for her to finally get credit for co-authorship. There are so many factors why Yoko was underappreciated (from the Beatles popularity even though they were already on the way to breaking up when she came on the scene, and sexism/racism). I highly recommend this book and have started to listen to her music and explore her art (the book has a great and detailed reference section to all her work in the appendix).
Thank you to Netgalley and Sutherland House for a preview copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

[Nathaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised by the writing here—warm and beautiful, yet simple and easy to follow. The author clearly has a great understanding and appreciation for Yoko Ono, whose life and work is thoroughly discussed before any mention of The Beatles or John Lennon; they do, however, take precedence in the middle of the biography. This is completely understandable, and I wouldn’t have even minded if the albums she created after John’s passing were given equal exploration as the ones she created with John, or during his lifetime. This is unfortunate, because it is very hard to find information about the creation of her later albums, or even how critics received them. So to have the author rush through them in the last few pages was a slightly disappointing end to an otherwise expertly paced and detailed biography.

[J Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yoko Ono by Donald Brackett is a well-researched and even-handed look at Yoko's life and her place in history. I mention even-handed mainly because, even this long after the break-up of The Beatles, she can be a polarizing figure.

While this isn't as intimate as a biography of a celebrity who is more approachable, it is also not a distant and cold narrative either. I found it presents her in as intimate a manner as I would expect from an artist and public figure who has always relied as much on mystery as on talent, they go hand in hand.

While, like many likely readers, I am largely interested in the book because of her connection to John Lennon and The Beatles, I think it is a disservice to both the book and Yoko to put the Beatle aspect front and center. She is and was so much more than just another part of Beatle history. I am not so arrogant as to call myself a Beatle historian I have probably read as much about and met as many of The Beatles as most others. But if that was all I was interested in as far as Yoko goes, then I would be limiting my own knowledge by viewing everything through that one lens.

Maybe because once she and John became a couple her life became, even when they didn't want it to be, more visible I found the first part of the book most rewarding. It contained a lot of interesting information about the many strands that went into making her who she is. I have always been one of those few who neither loved her nor hated her. I could appreciate some of what she did artistically and found some to be of less interest. Such is art in any form. The first part of this book sheds a lot of light on why she made some of the choices she made, which by extension gives new avenues into understanding and appreciating it.

I would recommend this to anyone who has wondered who Yoko Ono really is. And yes, for those of us whose first album we bought with our own money was a Beatles' album (Rubber Soul in my case with my father just shaking his head at the time), this rounds out a bit more of our understanding of the band. I would suggest, if you're coming to the book from a largely Beatles perspective, to read with an interest in Yoko Ono the person and not just Yoko Ono as an appendage of The Beatles.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Joanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s not everyday you find a book which covers Yoko Ono in a positive light and one that acknowledges the Zeligesque aspects of her fascinating life. She was a WWII survivor, a privileged scion of a banking/musical family dating back to Japanese Imperial warriors. She hid in a mountain after Hiroshima. She co-founded an art movement, and developed an operatic singing voice. She hung with London’s Fluxus avant-garde art scene as its pioneering feminine presence. She endured more pain than a mother should have to, and developed amazing business acumen building a $100M+ publishing and real estate empire. She witnessed the cold, public murder of her husband. And she, as the New York Times wrote, “still sounds like the future.”

Oh, and she married a Beatle.

Much overdue respect is paid within these pages, as well as the delivery of an eye-opening read of the misogynistic and racist barbs behind the decades-long blame she has endured for breaking up the Beatles. As is finally revealed in Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary, many men and female partners also would hangout at recording sessions, but only Yoko is accused of driving that fatal wedge.

So much in this book was new to me-I learned a lot about both Yoko and John. Her art background was well-researched and woven beautifully into her story. When I wasn’t reading it, I wanted to be…which is really one of the best things you can say about a book.

[Kitty · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author deserves an award for their uncanny ability to take every fun, heart-wrenching, interesting, or thought-provoking things the subjects of his book did and omit them altogether. Yoko's work has a deep sense of humor about it (this is the woman who had a picture of herself holding a giant printed F at the Musuem of Moder (F)Art after all), but you'd never know it reading this dry, humorless, factually inaccurate account that reads like a summary of whatever articles the author could google.

Think I'm joking about that last one? Look at the resources in the back of the book. It's just a list of various articles. Whatever books Donald did read were all on John. Which makes sense because as soon as the two of them meet in this book this becomes a JOHN LENNON book. Listen, I'm not niaeve - I know that he plays a big part in her story, and if the author wanted to write about the two of them that's fine - but Yoko shouldn't all together disappear from the pages of her own book once he arrives. There are years in this book where I know everything John and Paul did but couldn't tell you what Yoko was doing.

There's a reason why good biographies take years and years to write - because it requires the author to do actual leg work and do interviews, look through archives, visit special collections, and track down out-of-print material. The author couldn't even do the basics. There's a part in this book where he quotes Pang's book Loving John and then immediately turns around and gets the most basic facts about the start of their affair wrong. I found this weird, so I turned to the back and found that he hadn't even listed her book as a reference, implying that he didn't take the trouble of reading her book at all (or Cynthia's). This would make sense because that book had so much more information that it didn't even get included in this book. One gets the impression that the author simply grew tired of googling Yoko for dry, dull facts to put together and decided to wrap things up.

Something else that infuriates me is that for someone who writes about art and music for a living, he shows no aptitude for writing about any of the art or music in this book. There are pages where he lazily copy-paste other people's reviews of various works. Why pick a subject to write about if you have no knowledge, appreciation, ability, or qualifications to talk about what they've made?

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A John Lennon biography written through the eyes of Yoko - sort of. While reading this book, there was a constant feeling of looking at a Beatles member through the eyes of an outsider. There really is a lot of John in this work. There is a lot of what Yoko didn't do to the Beatles (repeated often enough that you get the point). There is a lot of pity for Yoko.

Perhaps that is a spoiler. But despite the title and the oft followed bits of Yoko, this really feels like a John Lennon biography. After they reconnect and have Sean, we follow John's life at home and reflect on Yoko's absence. Honestly, once John dies - so does the story. It becomes a litany of what Yoko has published and leaves off any real feeling or association.

Read this if you need to be filled in on the events between the two (Yoko and John). Skip it if you feel Yoko is misunderstood and had nothing to do with the Beatles break up.

[Margogo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny how most of the book still felt like a glossy magazine story of John-Yoko relationship (middle part reads really quickly because of that) even though the author tries hard to impose greater emphasis on Yoko. She is amazing and a “tough cookie” as Julian put it but I’d prefer to see more about her art ideas, philosophy and wisdom towards managing her life with John (the relationship decisions she made, the ways she coped with all she was through including addiction), something deeper and more profound than “she deserves to be recognized, so we recognize her as great but listen how John and Paul didn’t like each other and how John slept around while being a total baby unable even to travel on his own”.

[Mark M · Rating 4 out of 5]

A handy Yoko quickie bio, but I largely just read the John parts.

The book is rather date-challenged dating some John and Yoko photos as 1966 (I've never seen any photos of them together from 1966, the year they first only met) when the photos are clearly 1968, which is when John first romantically paired off with Yoko, leaving first-wife Cynthia, first parted his hair in the middle which the photos show, etc.

Also, the author says estranged-daughter Kyoko phoned Yoko "out the blue in 1998," p.207; on the next page, however, it says, "In 1994, Kyoko telephoned Yoko, leading to a tearful reunion and her first meeting with half-brother Sean."

[Andrea]

After viewing Yoko Ono's exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery in the spring of 2022, I was interested to read more about her artistic inspiration and relationship with John Lennon. The most funny part of this book is the description of Beatle member George Harrison inviting some Hells Angels friends to a Christmas party. Drinks flowed and the Angels were soon out of hand. Instead of waiting for the largest turkey dinner in Great Britain, "a huge turkey came in on a big tray with four people carrying it". Instead of reaching the table which was ten yards from the door, the turkey never made it when the Angels ripped the turkey to pieces, trampling young children underfoot to get to it.

[celiathepoet at StoryGraph]

I enjoyed accessing a new and updated level of detail about Yoko’s life, which no journalist had attempted since Jonathan Cott in 1981 or so, I felt. But I was amazed at the number of typos in this book! Also confounded by Tony Cox being described as a jazz musician in the Preface and back of the book text, which is not borne out in the narrative. I was also disappointed that the book had no index (as a librarian, I expect this in a biographical book). These issues made me feel somewhat distrustful of the new things I learned. I understand the book as an appreciation of Yoko .Ono as artist, which is well-deserved, but am wary about trusting its detail.

[Nick Van · Rating 3 out of 5]

A disappointing read. Ono herself is covered in a very cursory way. So much of the book is dedicated to her relationships and effects on Lennon and McCartney — Yoko’s story cannot be separated from theirs, of course, but so often in this book Yoko is not the focus of her own biography. When she is given that rightful spotlight, the attention given her is all too brief. This book is a competent introduction, but a fitting and worthy biography lies elsewhere.

[Maya Holt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok yeah it’s fine but it felt immensely biased.


Some mundane moments of her life were explained in immense detail while some pieces entirely left out. I didn’t appreciate certain pieces of work or moments in her life were so vague that I felt as if I wasn’t let in some weird inside joke of understanding Yoko.

I learned some new things about her and John’s relationship, but overall felt like I wasn’t given enough.

[Kaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yoko revealed as fascinating, fun and real

A balance to the truths we thought we knew.

Eleven more words are not needed and I don’t have them

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A biography that reads like a novel. A must for any Yoko Ono fan!

[Anya · Rating 1 out of 5]

The cover and typeface are stunning, definitely the reason I picked this up.
Sadly I didn't enjoy the biography. It was incredibly dry and I felt held at arms length. It didn't feel very personal, just extremely matter of-fact-put-together from articles.
Yoko Ono certainly had an interesting life, but I still feel like I don't get it (and probably never will). To support the reading I watched a lot of YouTube clips of her performances and there's no denying that she has done a lot for the art world, but I find that altogether I'm not a fan.

I'd recommend this to Yoko Ono fans. If you're just curious (like me), maybe watch a documentary instead.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.