Yoko Ono Biography Reaches for Greatness, But Slips Short of Objectivity
Biographies can be a tricky, difficult genre to pull off. The best are written from a distance and focus on a critical assessment of their subject. They’re not afraid to hold the person at the center of the story accountable for indiscretions in either personal or professional life choices. The key to a successful biography has always been objectivity, distance, and a willingness to take a stand. This is especially true when it comes to divisive artists whose legacies are rich but still questionable. In the matter of Yoko Ono, the multi-hyphenate visual/recording artist, poet, sculptor, pioneering performance artist, widow of Beatle John Lennon, any biographer who undertakes a manageable account of the nonagenarian's life and times has to make a choice. Should he cover the prolific output, the colorful life, or both?
Ono turned 93 in February, and has been retired for approximately the past 10 years. She’s living on a farm in upstate New York. She’s given over the family empire to her fifty year old son Sean Lennon, who oversees boxed set releases of work by his father (Mind Games) and both parents together (Sometime In New York City.) Early in the prologue of Yoko Ono: A Biography, Sheff discloses his access to the world of John and Yoko: It was the fall of 1980. They had been recording their comeback album, Double Fantasy, a release that alternated tracks as a sort of dialogue between each other. Sheff spent nearly three weeks with them that September, wrote the feature for Playboy, and was devastated like most of the world at Lennon’s December 8, 1980 murder:
Source: sampan.org/Christopher John Stephens
