Remember Love: The Yoko Ono Appreciation Thread | Page 6 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Who are those voices talking? A couple of them sound American.  I recognized John a few times, but not the other voices…

Expert Textpert said
I’m not saying anything about Cynthia. I am imagining what those who dislike Yoko might think. And my guess is that they would prefer John to be with a nice, white Englishwoman who will stay behind the scenes (as Cynthia in fact did) instead of someone like Yoko, who is always outspoken and challenging others.  

It doesn’t take much “imagining”…  When John first appeared with Yoko Ono in public, apologies for I can’t remember if it was during the ‘Yellow Submarine ‘ premiere or, when they “declared the balloons high” but, they were apparently grilled by the press demanding to know “John where’s Cynthia?  Where’s your wife?!”  The racism, all ready brought up herein, was very evident at the time and it’s a testament to both John & Yoko that they weathered such behaviour wherever they went without lashing back at those who kept slinging…  People can laugh at all the crazy ways that they went about to promote their message of peace, but you can’t deny the sincerity of their convictions…  They lead by example and truly did “lay down their arms”…

The song ‘Revolution ‘ plays a huge part during John & Yoko’s first summer together…  John’s pension for violence as a youth is something that even the most avid “John people” won’t deny, including John himself (“I used to be cruel to my woman and…”)…  And with ‘Revolution ‘ I felt that he truly confronted this head on…  The ‘John Lennon Plastic Ono Band’ album was more about the pain & anguish after the fact whereas with ‘Revolution ‘, he’s resisting his impulse to inflict the pain…  The fact that there were no less than 3 versions of ‘Revolution ‘ officially released seemingly drives home the fact that he was struggling to come to terms with this…  On ‘Revolution #1′ it’s no clearer than with “when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out/in“ …

Enter Yoko Ono…  Not only did she help show him that the pathway to peace begins on the inside, but that he could channel the “destruction” most effectively for himself by viciously slashing away at the chains that bound him…  and much of that had to do with the burden of being “Beatle John”…  Yes, much of the “she broke up The Beatles” was actually true, to a certain extent, but it just had to happen…  History shows us that it takes a Revolution to ignite change, and with John & Yoko’s revolutionary love, the walls of racism, chauvinism, and barriers preventing peace began to crumble, as unpleasant as the process was for us Beatles’ fans to witness…  It’s not a stretch to say that John & Yoko during this time affected human history every bit as much as The Beatles did when they first captivated millions…

As sad as life had become for Julian & Cynthia, their lives needed to be turned upside down as well…  Although it took years for the dust to settle, so to speak, everyone involved were better for it…  Yoko Ono was the catalyst and with time I’m confident everyone will eventually “appreciate” it…  Sadly, it’ll likely happen posthumously which reminds me of a Lennon lyric, or atleast I think that it was him…  ‘Walls & Bridges’ maybe?  but it goes something like this:

Nobody loves you when you’re down & out

Everybody loves you when you’re six feet under

…:-)

Billy Rhythm said

…The racism, all ready brought up herein, was very evident at the time …

What racism?  Specifically?

Pineapple Records said

Billy Rhythm said
…The racism, all ready brought up herein, was very evident at the time …

What racism?  Specifically?

  

I won’t get into a history lesson here but, let us just say that how the Japanese were received in the Western World during the 1960’s was only just beginning to inch toward a lukewarm reception with the events of WWII still somewhat fresh in people’s minds…  Racism was, and unfortunately still is in some parts, an accepted attitude amongst many who either lived through this era, or more commonly, brought up by those who did and inherited this behaviour…  There’s many glaring examples throughout today’s world where children are taught to hate those who come from certain places, and that’s what’s really at the heart of the problem, in my opinion…  In the case here for the West, instead of teaching our children to kill someone with certain ethnic backgrounds, the popular approach was to give each minority a nick-name or what’s known as a racial slur…  Countless people in 1968 referred to anyone from Japan with an abrupt disrespectful one syllable word, essentially treating them as a thing instead of a person…

Before we go pointing fingers at those who addressed Yoko Ono in this matter, and yes, there are unconfirmed accounts (if only we had cellphones back then) that she was indeed demoralized in this manner even within the The Beatles’ inner circle itself, we need to discuss the attitude directed towards her by just about everyone she encountered except for John Lennon …  Most didn’t have the inner fortitude to be open and honest about their racist views towards her and say what they truly felt, instead they would attempt to belittle her by simply not even acknowledging her existence amongst other childish behaviour…  Yes, a lot of people simply didn’t like her because she was with John Lennon , but then why didn’t Linda McCartney have to deal with such widespread hatred as Yoko did?  I mean, after all, Paul was always “the heartthrob” and most popular…  You’d think that Linda would’ve had to deal with truckloads more of this crap than Yoko, no?

Yoko had been insulted in just about every way that the press could get away with printing…  Even an old classmate of hers verbally assaulted her in print after Yoko graciously agreed to be interviewed by her…  Listen to Yoko tell the story at the  16:00  mark of this great interview (I urge anyone to view the entire show):

I’d like to see anybody get away with printing such rubbish nowadays…  Never mind the press, those who were alive during this era not need to think too hard about their conversations with their peers on the subject of John & Yoko…  Almost ALWAYS the discussion would degrade into an attack on her…  This attitude was passed down from what they & their parents read in the newspapers and watched on TV, whether they were reading about John & Yoko or World Affairs…  It’s about as racist as you can get, if you ask me…  Come to think of it, you did ask…:-)