In Yoko: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, Apr.), the bestselling author traces Yoko Ono’s artistic career and personal life with John Lennon and beyond.
What prompted you to write this book?
I was kind of in awe of John and Yoko when I was growing up. I was aware of Yoko’s art, and I was listening to her albums. In 1980, I did the last interview with them before John died. Because she and John were so isolated at that moment, it was meaningful to Yoko that I had seen her, and we got to be close friends. After finishing my last book I was figuring out what to do next while listening to Yoko’s albums on vinyl, and I checked if anyone had written a definitive biography of her. There were none. By that time, Yoko had stopped giving interviews—she’ll be 92 in February. I connected with [her son] Sean, and he felt comfortable with me; he agreed to be interviewed, and connected me with his mother’s friends and with family. Yoko’s daughter, Kyoko, who had not done interviews about her mother and family until now, talked with me. Nobody had told Yoko’s story before.
How has Yoko’s art and music evolved over the years?
In the art world, she is seen as the pioneer she was. Her art got deeper throughout her career, and after John died it got chillingly darker. But there’s lots of humor in her work, and she liked connecting with people. She did a series of paintings in which she’d give the viewer very brief instructions—such as “listen to the sound of the earth turning.” She wanted viewers to be active participants in completing the piece.
The story of John and Yoko has been so often told; what new information will readers learn from your book?
There has been lots of cynicism about Yoko, and the assumption that she came on the scene and targeted John and manipulated him. John, though, felt that Yoko was the person he had been looking for his entire life. They were both very hurt people who suffered pain and trauma. They healed each other. When they were apart for an hour or two, they were genuinely delighted to be back together. Yoko inspired John to make art that was completely unconventional. The two wrote “Imagine” together—though Yoko wasn’t credited as cowriter until 2017—and it was a distillation of Yoko’s philosophy. Her art had always been imagining a positive future. There’s no cynicism around her belief in these ideas.
What impression of Yoko herself do you hope to convey?
Yoko was so positive in spite of the fact that she suffered so greatly. She emerged from trauma—her difficult childhood, the death of her husband—and continued to make art. She wasn’t naive. She chose to try to convince people to envision a better world.
