Yoko: The Biography
“By avoiding the thorny issues and critical assessments he needs to make, Sheff doesn’t resurrect her for us but instead adds to the negatively charged mystique that has always engulfed Yoko.”
What gives any author the right to describe or define another person’s life? What credentials must they possess? Is it better if they’re a stranger to the subject at hand and not bound by any of the obligations of friendship? David Sheff, the acclaimed author and interviewer of many of the world’s luminaries, was for many decades Yoko Ono’s close friend and confidant; one might even describe him as her protector, especially in the days following John’s assassination. Sheff is still on good terms with the now ninety-something Yoko, and with her son Sean and daughter Kyoto who offered him insights for this biographical portrait Yoko: The Biography. They clearly all trust him. But do we?
Sheff admits he is indebted to Yoko for the financial help she gave him when his son was struggling with a serious drug addiction and bouncing from one rehab facility to the next before one finally stuck. His son has remained sober for over a decade. Sheff wrote about these horrific years in his memoir, Beautiful Boy, which was made into a movie starring Steve Carell who played Sheff and Timothée Chalamet who played his troubled son.
Sheff spent hours talking with Yoko Ono during the years they were close; they are both insomniacs and would often speak late into the night. He recalls the weeks he spent with John and Yoko as they walked through Central Park, or hung out at their recording studio making music, or traveled by limousine through the dark nights of Manhattan to wherever they were headed.
After John’s death, Sheff claims, “I became one of the people who circled the wagons around her as she struggled to survive a period she would later describe as the season of glass, when she was fragile as glass and almost shattered.” We readers are immediately captivated by Sheff’s story and eager to know more about this most misunderstood and often maligned woman.
But Sheff reminds us again that perhaps he is stepping out of line. He asks “Can a journalist tell the truth about a friend? I wasn’t interested in representing a whitewashed version of Yoko’s story—a friend’s filtered idealization. Neither Yoko, nor Sean, nor their representatives read the manuscript of this book. Nonetheless, books written by friends are inherently different from dispassionate biographers. There’s a bias (I disclose mine at the outset), but many are uniquely insightful precisely because of the relationships between the authors and their subjects. I hope the reader finds that true here.”
It’s clear Sheff wants to be fair-minded, but we can sense the weight of Yoko’s gravitas bearing down upon him. He seems to continually find ways to excuse, explain, or rationalize away many of her inexcusable behaviors. Still, we find ourselves forgiving him because we sense like so many of us, Scheff is enthralled with Yoko, or rather with John and Yoko, or with the Beatles who seemed to turn the world upside down. We sense his infatuation with the exhilaration of the sixties because we, too, are drawn to the magic of that time.
Scheff begins by telling us about a 1965 performance Yoko gave at Carnegie Recital Hall. Only 32, with long black hair tied back into a bun, she dressed completely in black and performed “Cut Piece.” Members of the audience were encouraged to go on stage and cut a piece of her clothing while she lay there passively. Some men started to go on stage and cut large swaths of fabric away from her body exposing her private parts. Women yelled for them to stop.
Sheff explains how Yoko’s work was always provocative and caused people to think about what she was trying to get across. Much of the time she seems to present herself as some sort of victim, but the essence of her work is always fluid, and open to varied interpretations. At times, she would sing, allowing her voice to travel into fits of agony and ecstasy that made some listeners cringe in discomfort.
Yoko was born in Tokyo to a wealthy and influential family. In March of 1945, when Yoko was 12, the United States dropped 1665 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo. At least 100,000 people were incinerated. Her mother and siblings hid in a bomb shelter under the mansion, but Yoko explains she was left alone upstairs due to a high fever.
Scheff takes her at her word, writing, “She watched the bombs fall—heard the whistling, the explosions; felt the earth shake—and watched the city burn.” Afterward, her mother took Yoko and her siblings to a rural village where Yoko recalls being hungry and in charge of her younger brother. They would play imaginary games like designing a menu of all the foods they wished they could eat. Yoko believes this was the genesis of her career as an imaginative performance artist.
Some readers may notice a pattern in which all of Yoko’s memories seem to place her at the center of some trauma where she suffered more grievously than anyone else. She has said that her art has always been her antidote, but there is something disturbing about her stories that seem to have a whiff of fabrication and artifice. Yet Yoko’s admission of always experiencing a certain loneliness rings true. Later in life, she admitted to several suicide attempts when she was younger.
When Yoko and John met, there were fireworks. Lennon recalls thinking, “I always had this dream of meeting an artist woman I would fall in love with. Even from art school. And when we met and were talking I just realized she knew everything I knew—and more probably. And it was coming from a woman. It just bowled me over. It was like finding gold or something.”
The world was disturbed by John and Yoko’s partnership. Many felt, as Amanda Hess wrote in the New York Times, that “Her image stands in stark contrast to that of other Beatle partners—modelesque white women in chic outfits who occasionally swoop in with kisses, nod encouragingly and slip unobtrusively away.” Others were mystified by her persona. Paul D. Miller wrote, “She’s a shaman. Shamans were transcendent figures who could guide you on an experience.” The other Beatles just felt more and more incensed by her relentless presence and John’s insistence upon it.
Sheff practically lived with John and Yoko for weeks on end in 1980 when he was writing a profile on them for Playboy. He saw how often John teased her and watched Yoko roll her eyes. But Sheff fails to provide us with a sense of what their real-life give-and-take were like. What did they talk about? How often did they fight? How much time did they spend together? Why did they often resort to taking so many drugs? What was their life like when Sean was born? Why did Yoko immediately allocate the nurturing for Sean to John while she tended to the family’s business interests and her own art?
The questions begin to trouble us. It appears as if Yoko always put herself first while preaching about love, world peace, and inner beauty. But Sheff makes no such assertion and seems to look for explanations for her deficiencies. Even after John’s death, Yoko sent Sean away with his nanny for reasons that are unclear and couldn’t have been helpful to Sean who was in shock from losing his primary caretaker. Again, Sheff rides over such information without condemnation.
We learn how Yoko deserted her daughter Kyoto from her earlier marriage to Anthony Cox and how she tried to get her back but seems to have been often distracted by her life with John. Cox eventually went off the radar with Kyoto living in communes and religious cults for years before resurfacing. When early on a judge asked Kyoto whom she would rather live with, she told him her father. The story with Kyoto is left murky except for the fact that Yoko did what no mother should ever do: She walked out on a young child and left her in the hands of her father. She ran to New York City, explaining she needed to breathe. We again notice how Yoko protects herself when feeling overwhelmed; she simply disappears. She seems oblivious to the trauma she inflicts upon others. But Sheff doesn’t categorize it as such. He seems to offer up her various ordeals as an excuse to inflict pain on others. Kyoto eventually reestablished contact with her mother decades later and remains on good terms with Yoko today.
There came a time in John and Yoko’s marriage when Yoko felt she couldn’t function in their relationship. She arranged for John to move to Los Angeles with her personal assistant May Pang who would act as his lover and protector. Pang was in love with Lennon and conceded to Yoko’s demand.
In Los Angeles, John was drinking heavily and missing Yoko terribly. Yoko felt relieved to be able to be alone and returned to her work. She went to the movies and art galleries and played mah-jongg with friends that visited her at the Dakota. She read books about history, philosophy, spirituality, and psychic phenomena. Sheff tells us that Yoko was obsessed with all forms of the occult and often decided who could be her friend based on the tarot cards she was continually turning over. Sheff himself scored the first interview with her by pleasing her with the date he was born and what the cards indicated about him. Eventually, Yoko was ready to take John back, and Pang was discarded like yesterday’s trash. Again, Sheff goes out of his way to find reasons Yoko needed to do what she did even if we readers can’t imagine such a me-first philosophy when dealing with those we supposedly love.
After John’s death, Yoko began a 20-year relationship with Sam Havadtoy, who was wonderful to her in every way. He was an interior decorator by trade and helped redecorate her many homes. He assisted her with her art and helped her make investments to further diversify her portfolio. He was gentle and loving toward Sean. Yet when Yoko decided she had enough of him, Sheff tells us Yoko had the locks changed on the Dakota apartment where she lived. Havadtoy went back to Europe shellshocked and developed a flourishing painting career.
Sheff’s narrative holds our attention but perhaps not for the right reasons. He becomes the voice of one of her surrogates instead of a penetrative biographer. He steers away from the darker forces that seemed to take hold of her. He can’t shed a certain defensiveness about her nor an overeagerness to protect her. We find it hard to find the real Yoko, or a closer estimate of who she is, through the smoke and mirrors he surrounds her in. She remains unknown to us; an image we vaguely recall of a woman wearing large dark glasses with mounds of long dark hair who frequently sits slumped in a chair with a sullen expression on her face. Almost as if she is of another time or another world. We begin to resent Sheff’s refusal to give us what he promised: an unvarnished portrait of a woman we know so little about, yet one who played a crucial role in the life of John Lennon and the Beatles. By avoiding the thorny issues and critical assessments he needs to make, Sheff doesn’t resurrect her for us but instead adds to the negatively charged mystique that has always engulfed Yoko.