Jody Denberg: Yoko, 2002 began for you musically with your song Open Your Box being a dance hit!

Yoko Ono: Yeah, it's fantastic.

JD: How did four guys known as the Orange Factory wind up remixing a 30-year-old song to be a dance hit in 2002?

YO: I have no idea. They came to me and asked for permission, you know. I said: "Open Your Box? Oh, okay. It's fine." It was like that.

JD: Now, you've always liked dance music. I understand you went to a couple of New York City clubs and actually kind of got into the dance culture. What was that like?

YO: Wow, it was great. When Walking On Thin Ice happened I was still like in such a shock with John passing and everything. So I kind of heard it peripherally, like, "Oh, it's playing there. People love it. Oh it's good". My song was really broken and I thought it was pretty good. But even before that, I kept thinking about dancing. When you listen to Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, for instance, and listen to Paper Shoes, that's like a club song, really. (Sings): Paper, paper, you know. And so this time when I went to the clubs, at first I went to a club in L.A. And it was like 1:00 at night and it was raining. So I said, "Would you mind calling and finding out if there's anybody there?" "Oh, there's people there." But I didn't expect it to be like -- it was packed on a dark, rainy night in L.A. I mean, nobody wants to go out. But this is a totally different culture.

JD: Before Open Your Box became a hit in 2002, your most recent album came out at the end of 2001. And it was called Blueprint for a Sunrise. But there was a CD in the book that accompanied your art retrospective, which was called A Blueprint For the Sunrise. So how did your new album kind of grow out of that little four-song disc that was in the book?

YO: When I was doing the one on the flap of the (YES Yoko Ono) book, I was doing it like, "Okay, they want music and it's an art book, so I can be as artsy as I want to. So it was like breaking into that kind of a totally different way of making music.

JD: You've never been inhibited. What was different in your approach in making the music for the art book, which then kind of grew into the full CD? What was different in your approach with the art book? Was it that you used Pro Tools or...?

YO: Yeah. You know, I did it all with Pro Tools. In other words, I didn't have any musicians. And when I sent that CD to the publisher, they said, "Well, we'd like to know who the musicians are, you have to put all the credits in and everything." "Yes?" Well I just did it myself." "Well, you couldn't" -- "Well, I did it. Okay?" It was like that. And it was great to do it just with Pro Tools.

JD: The CD that's not in the book, your latest CD, Blueprint for a Sunrise, there's live performances from the Japan Society. There's a live performance that you did with Sean in the late '90s. You remade a couple of songs from Rising. In the CD booklet, you never really kind of let on that it's a patchwork. How come?

YO: You know why? Because it's a music collage. The whole thing is just one big musical experience. So I just want it like that. And I just made the music collage with all different snippets. But instead of, you know, sampling things, I sampled a track, already made track. You know, which is kind of interesting. Instead of taking one or two bars from here or there, you know. And, yeah, so it was a kind of an attempt at making a music collage. It's a time collage in the sense that, in life, sometimes you're in a studio situation and sometimes you're in a concert situation. And most of the time, people think, okay, well, this CD is a live album, or this CD is a studio one. And I was thinking, what are we talking about? I just want to mix it up. So there's a kind of different dimensions there all together. That's what I did.

JD: A lot of the Blueprint album deals with the plight of women in our society and their struggles with domestic violence as well. What made you come back to these issues in your music now?

YO: Well, it's very interesting because I was starting to feel that there were many women still suffering in the world. And the first song, I Want You to Remember Me, was like ringing in my head one weekend. And I couldn't stop it. And this was like three days before my concert in Japan Society. And I had a whole set program. Well, I'm not going to write that new song and put it in or anything. So let me just deal with this new song after the concert. So I kind of finished it that weekend. And (laughs) surprise, surprise, I put it in the Japan Society program. And that was the first song I did at Japan Society. And so that's live, too.

JD: Right.

YO: And I think by the time that was kind of ringing in my ear, about a year before September 11th, I think, exactly about a year before September 11th. I would just wake up in the middle of the night because I hear this screaming. And I'd think, what is going on here? So you see, in the CD, I put the scream, the experience of screaming, just in the end of It's Time for Action. That's the kind of scream I was hearing, you know, in the middle of the night. And I kept thinking about women. Women of the world, what's happening to them. And then I did a show in Germany, a gallery show at the time called Herstory. And people were saying "What are you doing? Are you still kind of tooting about feminism or something? I mean, isn't it something that's passe? So I'm saying, "No, not really." And then that's when my rebellious attitude got me. I better make it. (Laughs) It's like that!

JD: We're talking about the plight of women at large. Another song on the album is called I'm Not Getting Enough. And I read that you recently ended a longtime relationship. Did that spark the song I'm Not Getting Enough and are you open to love again in your life?

YO: No comment! (Laughs)

JD: The cover of Blueprint features your face superimposed over a Chinese Emperor who is, perhaps, the first called a Dragon Lady. They used to call you that a long time ago. Do you think that the folks who would call you Dragon Lady got the joke this time?

YO: I don't know. It was a very strange thing because I saw this book, this very handsome woman, looking kind of tragic and tortured, but very handsome. It's beautiful, with this beautiful outfit. "What is this book? It's interesting?" And he says, "Dragon Lady." That was the title of the book! Oh dear, I must buy this one. And it turns out that this is the last emperor of China. And in the school when we were just kids, we learned about Chinese history, because in Japan you do learn Chinese history. Very near you, so you know. So this last lady, last Empress, was supposed to be incredibly mean and nasty and a terrible person. And I heard about that. I mean, we all learned that, okay, terrible person. And it turns out that it was just old propaganda of the British press, because they were very upset that this beautiful Empress was not letting them take over China. And that's interesting, isn't it? And they put out all the sort of ugly photos of her and everything. Thousands of photos are taken of you, some of them are not really right. Oh, that's what they did to me, too. It was very interesting.

JD: It's the same situation all over again. Inside the booklet that has that cover for the new album Blueprint, there's a couple of your drawings from The Spots On The Wall series. They're very striking. How did you start drawing like that?

YO: I don't know how that happened. That's another thing that's interesting. It's about, 1994. And that's the first one I think. And I was in the country, in my farm, and just relaxing and everything. And somebody told me that they want my drawings for an exhibition. I said, "I don't do drawings." But it was such a beautiful day. And I saw this beautiful rolling hills and the sun and everything was so kind of lackadaisical, beautiful summer day. And I think, "why don't I just try to do it? Oh, this is interesting!" So I finished like six of them. And I called the person who's arranging the gallery show and say, "I think I did some drawings. Do you want it?" "Of course, we're waiting for it!" So from then on, I realized that it's so easy to do it. And it's just so relaxing to do it. It's almost like a therapy. So I did so many of them.

JD: They're beautiful. And people can see them if they make it to the Yes Yoko Ono exhibit.

YO: Yeah. And the other thing that's very interesting about the dot drawing is the fact that I'm doing it without planning. So it's not like I'm saying, "Oh, let's do a circle," you know. So each one is totally different.

JD: One drawing is reproduced in the booklet to Blueprint where the lyrics would have been for the song, Soul Got Out Of The Box. This song, to me, was disturbing. Sort of a depiction of madness. The flip side to your song,
O' Sanity.

YO: Oh, okay.

JD: Didn't it, like much of Blueprint, seem to foretell the events of 9/11? A premonition?

YO: I know. I just couldn't believe it, because I was getting all these messages. As I told you before, like in the middle of the night I'm waking up and I hear screaming. And in hindsight I think, "oh, maybe that was related." And then the stuff that I wrote in the liner notes -- when I wrote that, I said to myself, (laughs) "This album is certainly going to be so popular." You know, because I'm talking about war and all that. It's Second World War and all that. And it was a time when this country, the United States, was in peace for the longest time. And everybody was just busy making money. Everybody was getting rich. Oh, it's very peaceful. Nobody's thinking about any of that except the past violence and all that kind of thing. I get books about diamonds or something. They send all these thick catalogues about diamonds or paintings or something. So I thought, "This is not an age when I should bring out this CD." And then, bam, it hit. It was really frightening.