The Yoko Ono Document
History is easier to understand when it’s simple, and so it grows simpler as it shrinks further into the past. World War I started because of the ‘powder keg’ assassination of Franz Ferdinand. The Titanic hit an iceberg.
In the mythology of the greatest rock and roll band of all time, it’s “Yoko Ono.”
The full truth is more nuanced. While Yoko might have been the Beatles’ iceberg, there were quite a few design failures that made the band unable to take on water. The 1967 death of Brian Epstein—the man who discovered the Beatles, cleaned up their image, marketed the hell out of them, and managed their finances—is considered the first blow. To take the ship analogy too far, his death left the band rudderless at the very height of their popularity.
John Lennon, even while composing some of the greatest rock and roll songs ever written, became an acid casualty in the late-1960s; his LSD intake was described in Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head as “herculean.” Coupled with his contrarian, sarcastic, and antagonistic personality, he could not have been pleasant to be around.
Meanwhile, George Harrison, long third-wheeled from the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership, was developing into one of the world’s greatest composers in his own right. His first album after the Beatles’ breakup, which many consider the best of the solo-Beatles albums, comprised three vinyl records of new material. Had Lennon and McCartney recognized sooner—and been more willing to accommodate—the brilliance of Harrison’s songs, everything might have changed. That all tends to get washed out of the story of the Beatles’ breakup.
Of course, despite the animosity Beatles fans feel toward her, Yoko’s relationship with John has been held up as an icon of love since, ever since their “Bed-In For Peace” in 1969 during the Vietnam War.
But everything is not as it seems. If you have time, give a listen to the March 8, 2016 edition of the Something about the Beatles podcast. It goes into painstaking detail recounting Yoko’s pre-Beatles life and musical career, how she and John got together, and how she’s managed her husband’s legacy since his death in 1980.
There is a LOT of well-sourced evidence to support the idea that Yoko was downright sinister in sinking her claws into the emotionally fragile Lennon and using him for her benefit. The most damning—and this remains speculation, plausible though it is—comes in Tony Bramwell’s book Magical Mystery Tours. As one review of the book says, “Bramwell does not stint himself on the subject of Yoko. As far as he’s concerned, she was a ruthless, charmless and wholly humourless operator who ‘set out to hook a big fish,’ and after showing rhinoceros-skinned tenacity, finally landed one.”
And here’s the money shot, describing a document drawn up between Yoko and her then-husband Tony Cox:
I followed up with Robert Rodriguez, Beatles author and one of the hosts of Something about the Beatles. He said, “It’s reported in Tony Bramwell’s book and therefore is a very public assertion. Richter stands by it, and the fact that no one has challenged it and Yoko herself has neither denied it nor taken Bramwell to court gives it a bit of weight. Tony Cox would be the other living witness and unfortunately he’s not giving interviews these days.”
If such a document ever existed, in my mind, it would obliterate the narrative behind one of the world’s greatest love stories. It would also, then, be fair to extrapolate: Maybe Yoko encouraged John’s drug use precisely to make him more docile and easier to control. Maybe she had a hand in turning John against George.
Maybe in this case history is that simple.
If you enjoyed this story — and even if you didn’t — you should check out my book, Ticketless: How Sneaking Into The Super Bowl And Everything Else (Almost) Held My Life Together.
