Days That I'll Remember: Spending Time With John Lennon and Yoko Ono by Jonathan Cott

Author:Jonathan Cott [Cott, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Music, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Art, Individual Artists, Entertainment & Performing Arts, History & Criticism, Composers & Musicians
ISBN: 9780385536370
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2013-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

“But do you think you’ll ever get back to doing the kind of performance pieces and happenings that you used to?” I asked her.

“Excuse me,” John interrupted, as he put aside the Henry Flynt essay for a moment. “The Bed-Ins for Peace that we did in Amsterdam and Montreal last year were direct developments of what Yoko had been doing before … and those were big events. Also don’t forget our WAR IS OVER! billboards and posters that we put up in twelve cities around the world. That was an event all right! … I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I just overheard what Jonathan was saying and I wanted to straighten him out and remind him that it did carry on. So I’m simply doing what you do for me,” John said, turning to Yoko. “And that’s why we like to do interviews together,” he continued, now turning to me, “because sometimes we forget things about our own work, and we need to remind each other … And dear,” John observed to Yoko, “another thing that’s going to throw you: in his ‘Concept Art’ essay, Henry Flynt’s talking about the song ‘Sweets for My Sweet’ by the Drifters … so he’s been rocking for a long time! ‘Sweets for my Sweet’ was a big rock-’n’-roll hit—‘Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey’—so he’s been aware of that for a long time. I don’t think he got to that sound pissing about with mathematics … So I’m sorry, but I had to interrupt, but I’ve been reading his essay about concept art, and it’s bloody hard, but he gets to ‘Sweets for My Sweet’ and I finally understood him.”

“Probably I was the only one who didn’t,” Yoko responded caustically.

“Dun de dun-dun!” John teased her. “I’m not putting you down, dear, I’m just very surprised to read this.”

“I know you mean well,” Yoko replied, “but I’ve now forgotten what I was saying to Jonathan.”

“I think you were talking about the 4/4 beat,” John said.

“Yes, Jonathan, what I was saying before about thinking that the 1–2-3–4 pop beat was kind of simplistic, because I was still doing my Music of the Mind … well, suddenly I realized that the heartbeat is 1–2, 1–2.”

“You have to do it intellectually, is what she’s saying,” John teased her again.

“Well, all right,” Yoko said with a sigh. “But I realized that modern classical composers, when they went from 4/4 to 4/3, lost the heartbeat. It’s as if they lifted off from the ground and went to live on the fortieth floor. Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern—Webern’s on the top of the Empire State Building. But that’s all right. I still carry on the conceptual rhythm with my voice, and there’s even a very complicated rhythm in my song ‘Why,’ but the bass and the drum are the heartbeat. And these days I’m putting a beat under everything I do.”

“At the beginning of your relationship,” I asked John, “did you ever get slightly intimidated about Yoko’s talent and forthrightness?”

“Well, we’ve clashed artistically,” John said with a laugh.

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