Yoko Ono biography
Yoko Ono history
Yoko Ono facts
Yoko Ono video clips
Yoko Ono photos
Yoko Ono story
Yoko Ono discography
Yoko Ono photographs
Yoko Ono bio
Yoko Ono info
Yoko Ono curious
Yoko Ono images
Yoko Ono quotes
Yoko Ono films
Yoko Ono filmography

[h3]Yoko Ono was born into a wealthy Japanese family in Tokyo. Her mother, Isoko Yasuda Ono, was the grand-daughter of Zenijiro Yasuda, who founded Yasuda Bank. Her father, who was a banker and classical pianist, was transferred to California on a work placement shortly before she was born.[/h3]

When Yoko was only two-years-old, her family came to San Francisco, where she was reunited with her father for the first time. Soon afterwards, however, the whole family returned to Japan to escape the wave of anti-Japanese feeling that swept the United States following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

Yoko spent her childhood in war-torn Japan, where air-raids were a frequent occurrence, and she began studying piano almost as soon as she could walk. The young Yoko showed an aptitude for music from a very early age, playing her first public concert at the age of four. As a child she attended the highly select Jiyu-gakuen Music School in Japan, where many of Japan’s leading musical composers had studied at some time. Here she learned piano and composition, and learned to sing classical opera and German lieder. She also attended school with Emperor Hirohito’s son Yoshi, with whom she formed a strong friendship.

In the early 1950s, the Oko family moved to New York City, and Yoko enrolled at the prestigious Sarah Lawrence College. It was here that she met her first husband, Toshi Ichiyanagi, who was a music student at leading music academy, Juillard. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Yoko Ono began to explore and experiment with new approaches to performing in general, and performance art in particular. In 1960, Yoko and her close friend La Monte Young began to stage a series of loft events on Chambers Street in Manhattan, which soon attracted the attention of leading members of New York’s avant-garde artistic community. Ono also provided the loft for the renowned contemporary composer John Cage, and his experimental musical “happenings”. She collaborated with leading composers of the day, including Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, Nam June Paik, and George Maciunas and the Fluxus avant-garde ensemble.

Yoko’s bohemian New York lifestyle caused a rift with her parents and she soon broke away from her wealthy, privileged background. Life was tough financially for Yoko during this period, and she supported herself by working alternately as a waitress, a public school teacher and even an apartment building manager. Meanwhile, her first marriage had run into difficulties, and she eventually separated from Toshi and returned to Japan to live with her parents in 1962.

On returning to Japan, she became clinically depressed, leading her parents to commit her to a mental asylum. One of her American friends, Anthony Cox, had traveled to Japan to study calligraphy with Yoko, and succeeded in securing her release from hospital. That same year, Yoko married Anthony Cox in Tokyo, and he subsequently became her artistic assistant. Yoko gave birth to a daughter, who was called Kyoko, the following year; but sadly her second marriage was also short-lived, ending in 1964.
>>>
Soon afterwards, Yoko returned to live in New York with baby Kyoko and renewed her interest and involvement in performance art. One of her first artistic ventures on returning to America was to dream up the idea for a film called “Bottoms”, which involved some 365 of Yoko’s friends and volunteers agreeing to have their buttocks photographed naked and close up! When drafting her advertisement seeking volunteers for the project, Yoko wrote, “Intelligent-looking bottoms wanted for filming. Possessors of unintelligent-looking ones need not apply!” Another controversial piece of performance art staged by Yoko involved her wrapping the lion statues beneath Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square in white cloth, and tying herself to one of the lions. She also sang in a jazz concert at the Royal Albert Hall with leading jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman.

Whilst living and working in London, Yoko met her third husband, musician [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/794:0/John_Lennon.htm]John Lennon[/urlnew], at the preview for her own art show in November 1966. John and Yoko were instantly attracted to each other. However fans of the famous Beatle musician were outraged and the liaison was not a popular match in the public eye - Yoko Ono soon acquired the nickname “Dragon Lady“. John and Yoko discovered that they had a great deal in common: Lennon had been an art student before becoming a professional musician, and still retained a keen interest in the avant garde art movement. He and Yoko Ono began to formulate a range of musical and artistic projects, which soon began to bear fruit. Yoko Ono’s work was not widely popular because it was frequently so abstract - indeed, many of John Lennon‘s fans dismissed her as a fake and charlatan. For example, most of her art pieces were white, which she claimed allowed the observers to imagine whatever colours they liked - even a painting entitled “Blue Room” was actually white.

Lennon’s fans were even more dismayed when the famous [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/1515:0/The_Beatles.htm]Beatle[/urlnew] began taking part in Yoko’s controversial public events. The couple appeared together dressed in black plastic bin-liners; this was intended to be a statement about the drawbacks of “judging by appearances”. John and Yoko were married on Gibralter in the spring of 1969, shortly after Yoko’s divorce from Anthony Cox was finalised. The couple was never far from the public eye, and took advantage of the publicity surrounding their wedding to hold “Bed-ins for Peace” in their hotel bedrooms in Amsterdam and Montreal: the Montreal event led to the writing of the hit single, “Give Peace A Chance”.

However the couple’s newfound happiness was soon to be blighted. Yoko’s mentally unstable second husband, Anthony Cox, applied for custody of their daughter Kyoko, claiming that Yoko’s drug taking and psychiatric history rendered her an “unfit mother”. Cox was awarded custody of Kyoko by the courts and then disappeared with her into a Christian fundamentalist community called The Walk. Tragically Yoko was not to see her daughter for another 25 years, until they were re-united in 1998.

Soon after their wedding, John and Yoko’s album Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With The Lions” was released, which featured Yoko’s lengthy improvisations. This was swiftly followed by The Wedding Album, one side of which featured nothing but John and Yoko calling out each other’s names! In 1970, both John and Yoko each recorded an album backed by the Plastic Ono Band, of which Yoko’s was the far more avant garde of the two.
>>>
In 1972, the couple released their protest song, Sometime in New York City, which was widely criticised for being too simplistic in its sentiments. Meanwhile, the couple’s relationship was beginning to flounder, against the antagonistic background of Lennon’s ongoing battle with the immigration authorities. Despite his fame and fortune, Lennon was constantly battling threats of deportation and this put quite a strain on his marriage. For her part, Yoko suffered a great deal of stress on account of her repeated miscarriages. John and Yoko separated for eighteen months or so, but got back together in early 1975, when Yoko was finally able to bear a child. She gave birth to baby Sean, who shared a birthday with his father; Sean Taro Ono Lennon was born on 9th October, 1975.

Following the birth of his son, Lennon dropped out of show business in order to spend time being a father. In essence he became a house-husband, whilst Yoko devoted herself to taking care of the family’s business affairs. Meanwhile, John was also working quietly on a comeback album, “Double Fantasy”, which was released in 1980. Yoko made a substantial contribution to the album, which featured some far more accessible songs than John and Yoko‘s previous collaborations. However tragedy struck on 8th December 1980, when Lennon was shot dead by a deranged fan outside his apartment building in New York.

Following John Lennon’s tragic and untimely death, Ono continued her solo musical career, as well as exploring new directions in her art and her life. She expressed her grief in music with the release of the disturbing album Season of Glass in 1981, which she followed with a more upbeat and optimistic musical offering, It’s Alright (I See Rainbows) in 1982. Over the years Yoko resumed her former career as a visual artist, and returned to creating art installations as well as pursuing a newfound interest in photography.

In 1995, she recorded a new album entitled Rising, in which she played alongside her son, Sean Lennon and his own band, Ima Rising. She also explored new directions in performance, and wrote a musical play called New York Rock, which was launched off-Broadway. In 2005, she published a book of autobiography called “Memories of John Lennon”. Following Lennon’s death, Yoko has not re-married, although she was reported to have been romantically linked with Hungarian antiques dealer Sam Havadtoy for a while - but the couple split up in 2001.

[i]Jane Bowles[/i]
Yoko Ono biography



- Is born under the astrological star sign of Aquarius.

- Translated into English, her name means “Ocean Child”

- Sir Elton John is the godfather of her son Sean.

- Is ranked no. 84 on VH1’s list of 100 Greatest Women in Rock N Roll.

- In 2003, at the age of 70, she topped the US dance music charts with a reworking of “Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him”.

- Is Honorary Ambassador of Peace for the Harvey Ball Foundation.

- After her husband John Lennon was shot dead, she took a photograph of his bloodstained glasses lying on the pavement; in 2002, this photograph sold for thousands of dollars.

- Is portrayed by actress Linda Ko in the bio-pic, The Linda MacCartney Story, made in 2000.

- Attended the same U.S. college - Sarah Lawrence College - as Linda McCartney.

- Is the main beneficiary of the John Lennon Estate, estimated to be worth £390 million.

- Set up the Imagine Appeal in 2005, and financed the complete rebuilding of Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool.
Yoko Ono biography



Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon (2003)

Singing in the Shadow: The Children of Rock Royalty (2003)

Bowling for Columbine (2002)

Heartbreakers (2001) (song "Oh My Love")

I Am Sam (2001)

Chelsea Walls (2001)

Kiss My Grits: The Herstory of Women in Punk and Hard Rock (2001)

Gimme Some Truth: The Making of John Lennon's Imagine Album
(2000)

Grass (1999)

Lola (1997) (song "Just Like Starting Over")

The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (1996)

"The Beatles Anthology" (1995)

Jonas in the Desert (1994)

The Revenge of the Dead Indians (1993)

The Misfits - 30 Years of Fluxus (1993)

Murderers, Mobsters & Madmen Vol. 2: Assassination in the 20th
Century (1993)

Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990)

The 1960's: Music, Memories & Milestones (1988)

Michael Jackson: The Legend Continues (1988)

John Lennon Live in New York City (1986)

The Complete Beatles (1984)

Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol: Friendships and Intersections (1982)

Eat Me (1975)

Imagine (1973)

Erection (1971)

The Museum of Modern Art Show (1971)

Ten for Two (1971)

Apotheosis (1970)

Let It Be (1970)

Freedom (1970/I)

Up Your Legs Forever (1970)

Honeymoon (1969)

Diaries, Notebooks and Sketches (1969)

Keep on 'Rockin (1969)

No. 5 (1968)

Two Virgins (1968)

Pink Floyd London '66-'67 (1967)

Eyeblink (1966)

No. 4 (1966)

No. 1 (1966)

Satan's Bed (1965)

Ai (1962)
Yoko Ono biography



Open Your Box (2007)

Yes, I’m A Witch (2007)

Approximately Infinite Universe (Bonus Tracks) (2007)

Yes, I’m A Witch

Look Up Sing Out …Power (2204)

Yoko Ono: The Rhapsody Interview (2004)

Everyman….Everywoman (2004)

Ferpectamente (2004)

Moment Of Truth (2002)

Thought We Could (2002)

25 All-Time Favorite Kids’ Songs, F - L, Vol 2 (2002)

25 All-Time Favorite Kids’ Songs, A - F, Vol. 1 (2002)

Blueprint for a Sunrise (2001)

A Story (1997)

Rising Mixes (1996)

Rising (1995)

New York Rock (1995)

Walking on Thin Ice (1992)

Onobox (1992)

Starpeace (1985)

Milk and Honey (1984)

It’s Alright (I See Rainbows) (1982)

Season of Glass (1981)

Double Fantasy (1980)

Approximately Infinite Universe (1973)

Feeling The Space (1973)

Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970)

Fly (1970)

Hollywood Justice: Sean Penn Sat 30th Aug - 1:30PM

Tina Turner: One Last Time Live In Concert Sat 30th Aug - 9:00PM

Diana Sat 30th Aug - 6:00PM