Jody Denberg: When you guys were giving, you were giving everything. I saw John the night he played with Elton John.

Yoko Ono: Oh, you were there?

JD: Yes, it was one of the best moments I have ever had.

YO: Well it's very special for us too, because Sean met Elton that way.

JD: When you guys left the scene for a while I always kept up and looking for stuff about John and Yoko in the little columns in the newspaper every morning. The things I would read about would be your business dealings - things like cows and real estate as well as the unfinished affairs of the Beatles' company. Do you still frequently deal with business, and do you find it a challenge?

YO: Well, I have about three or four very important facets of my life. The first thing is being a mother, I'm a mother to Sean and that comes first. This is a very surprising statement for me, but it is important. And then I'd like to think that my own personal work is something I treasure a lot, too. But business is another very important aspect of my life because I have that responsibility, y'know. And there's also John's sudden leaving. It wasn't meant to be like that, so there's a lot of things still unfinished.

JD: Unfinished music.

YO: Yes, and things that we tried to do together, and some things he tried to do. It's important to just sort of try to see it through.

JD: Around this time you also gained some attention, or people were interested in your interest in things like astrology and numerology and other spiritual concerns. Are psychic concerns still a part of your life?

YO: Well, I think that words like psychic and magic and all that... It sounds immediately like a freak show, y'know. To me, magic and being psychic is just another way of saying a future science. Scientifically one day it might be proved that we have psychic power, sort of subliminal understanding of things.

JD: John, I think in the Playboy interview, said something like you were his Casteneda. After John died your strength really reminded me of those books when Carlos would say you just have to see things as they are in the big picture; as Sean once said, "It's just a little story".

YO: I know. I think Sean is amazing. Well, children are amazing and there's no exception with Sean.

JD: He performed It's Alright on the new album. Do you think Sean will somehow follow in his parents' footsteps, and is he emulating your concept of life as art already?

YO: Well, he's not John and he's not me, and I don't know how he's going to develop. He's just being himself. And in that sense, he's amazing. But at the same time, I don't want to push him into anything, but also, I don't want to discourage him. It's a very delicate balance there, I think.

JD: Where does Sean go to school, does he go to school in New York?

YO: Yes.

JD: During the 70s you and John dabbled in various methods of self-improvement and awareness - from primal therapy to EST to doing drugs to maintaining a macrobiotic diet. Does anything in your life today compare with those pursuits, and did you find that you derived something from them in the end?

YO: My feeling is that each person has a different function and different metabolism, and a different history. You can't really generalize things, y'know. You just have to find something that's best for you, and in our case macrobiotics worked. But also, anything excess is bad. (laughs) I think it's always good to enjoy freedom as well.

JD: What do you do for pleasure? Do you like to listen to pop music? Do you read magazines and have a smoke, do you watch the cable? Do you still collect Egyptian art? What's fun for you?

YO: Fun... fun... (repeats to herself as if a foreign concept) I'm just hoping that we will go into the age of fun and joy. I'm not really feeling the fun yet. (laughs) Daily, if there's any enjoyment in life, the kind of thing I like to do is just take a walk, just watch the sky or whatever. In that sense I'm a very simple person to please, really. If it's a clear day and I watch the sky and it's beautiful I'm very happy. If it's snowing I'm happy too. If it's raining I think it's beautiful. (giggles)

JD: Now tell me... I haven't been to New York for a while, and I know that right across the street from where you live is Strawberry Fields (AIU note: a place in Central Park dedicated to John Lennon's memory). What is that exactly and what's there?

YO: Oh now it's in the process of really making Strawberry Fields come true. They're planting trees and doing the groundwork, and I think it'll be ready by next Spring.

JD: So it's not fully realized yet but it'll continue to grow forever like the rest of us.

YO: Yes, and one of the things I'm very thankful of, is that this is a place that an incredibly negative thing happened in our life. And negative things continue to happen since then, too. But at the time, everybody was saying, "Why don't you just leave because it must be terrible, why don't you leave New York City, why don't you leave the United States"... I did consider that, of course. But I stuck out here, and part of the reason was some kind of continuation in Sean's life. And somehow, by sticking out, and really sitting here and trying to do things, we are just in the process of turning the table around and making the negative into positive. It still hasn't happened yet, in a big way, but I'm hoping that it would.

JD: You were talking about continuation in Sean's life. You guys went to Liverpool in January... What was that experience like for you and Sean? You must have heard John talk about Liverpool for years...

YO: I know, I know. And I knew just how he felt about it. He had a very deep love for Liverpool, and he was very proud of it. But at the same time, his painful childhood was spent there, too. When I went to Liverpool, it was a mixed feeling. I felt the pain that John felt in his childhood, and also the beauty of Liverpool. But for Sean it was just one big picnic, y'know. (laughs) It was great for him.

JD: You guys went by Strawberry Fields (AIU note: the Strawberry Field Salvation Army orphanage in Liverpool which inspired the famous song by the Beatles), and I know you don't like to talk too much about the work you do for charity, but you gave money to a children's home there.

YO: Yes.

JD: I quess it was just great for Sean. At least when he hears the songs he knows where it's coming from. It's not really a fantasy world, this is reality. From what I have heard, several unreleased works of both you and John exist. There were songs from a Broadway musical John was working on, the tapes of the Double Fantasy conversations, a novella... I heard Cheap Trick was on the original Double Fantasy sessions...

YO: Yes.

JD: In the course of the time, do you plan to present the unfinished works of yours and John's archives?

YO: I have to really carefully weigh each one of the projects. I have to think about them for John's sake and for my sake, and I always want to think, "What would John have wanted me to do about it?". If it's something that I think John wouldn't like it to be done, I just wouldn't want to do it, even if the whole world wants it. Because he's an artist and it's very important for him that the things that come out would be just right in the artistic sense. (sighs) I'm put in a very strange position. If I don't put out things they'll say I'm hoarding. If I put out things they'll say I'm ripping him off. So, I like to say, well, give me a chance. I'll try my best. I have to carefully think about each project and whatever unfinished projects there is.

JD: Along these lines, your liner notes on Milk And Honey and the versions of Grow Old Along With Me and Let Me Count The Ways that came, I really did get the feeling that those simple bare arrangements - just like on the first Plastic Ono Band albums- were what the world was meant to hear.

YO: Well, I know that he wouldn't have minded those tracks to come out. If he was around, we may have changed them around, etc. But in this situation, I'm sure that he wanted those tracks to come out. Grow Old With Me is almost comparable to Imagine, or maybe even better, because it's really a song full of love.

JD: My favorites are Look At Me and Love from the POB albums. I mean, to be able to define love in a three minute song... That's something only one or two people can do. Now, I know you lost some items from your archives that were stolen - diaries, tapes, files - have you been able to recover most of them?

YO: I wouldn't say that. The amount that was taken from this place (AIU note: from the Dakota, her home in NYC) was just enormous. Incredible. Well, maybe it's some kind of a lesson. I still don't understand it. But I also think that anything that should come back will probably come back. Eventually.

JD: There's been a lot of books that have come out by different people who supposedly said that they had insight into yours and John's lives. Do you plan to eventually set the record straight in a book of your own?

YO: Well, back then I went through many different emotions. I mean, of course I was hurt. I was angry and I was angry for John, too. There's some very hurtful things that were said, and which were simply not true. But my feeling is that whatever people want to say they're going to say, y'know. What you get from John is his words and his music, his songs. And if you get anything out of it, if you're inspired by John - that's what counts. Even if all the beautiful things are said about John, if it doesn't inspire you it's not good at all.

JD: I grew up in New York City without a dad, and I was growing up in the 70s. I always watched John and Yoko running around the town doing things, and I thought - here are two people with enough money and power to do what they want, and they're devoting their energies to promoting peace and love. What more can you ask? That's why I always loved John and Yoko.

YO: There are very few things that you can write about John because he said it all, he wasn't hiding anything. I think he was very eager to show his vulnerability to the world. Maybe my story has its grace, too. That has to be much later. If I were to write something it has to be much later.

JD: You and John were always idealistic. You said War Is Over If You Want It, you wrote a letter in 1979. I mean, I remember thinking thru those years after seeing John play with Elton John and then he didn't play anymore for so many years, "Gosh, what are those guys doing?". You were raising a kid and it's beautiful, but we only heard a little bit, and then I got the Love Letter that you wrote in 1979. And some people said, "This is a bunch of hippy stuff", but I have a sense of idealism. Maybe because I got it from you... How have you managed to maintain that sense of idealism in the face of John's murder and the difficult period which followed?

YO: There was so much sorrow, and it's very easy for me to get in a rut of just being very sad and angry and bitter. But just realistically or practically, it's not going to help no matter how sad I am, and we have to go on. And we can do it.

JD: I believed John's song Instant Karma or at least the essence of it: do good and good will come to you. And there's no doubt that John had a very fulfilling and beautiful life. It threw a wrench into my belief of Karma when John died.

YO: I know. John used to say, "But Yoko, we're trying so hard to do everything right, but y'know, out there there's those guys who are doing all sorts of things and getting away with it!". (laughs) Well, I didn't have the answer to that, but I was just saying, "Well look, until we understand why, we should keep our Karma clean." It seems so unfair that somebody like John, who tried so hard to his best... It wasn't perfect, but whatever we did we tried to do our best. I think the reward of that was that we found within ourselves and between each other some beautiful moments. We were very happy. There were moments of incredible happiness.

JD: Right, so the Karma was fulfilled in that fashion. If people think they're hip enough to know about Karma they gotta know that they're just like the leaves on the trees or we will fall off. "One day I'll be just a stone. No one will know that the stone had such emotion."

YO: You see, one of the things we felt was the feeling of peace between us.

JD: Did John and Yoko change the world, or were they just -in your words- "a boy and a girl who never looked back"?

YO: We just went through whatever we went through. If some people got something from it, we're lucky and very thankful. But anything can inspire you, y'know. The inspiration is actually within you. And if you are inspired, even the drop of a leaf is going to inspire you. We were just doing what we can do, that's all it means.

JD: When I was 13 I watched you guys on the Mike Douglas Show, and you opened up the phone book and you made phone calls to people and said, "I love you". I always wanted to call you and say "I love you", and tonight I feel like I did. So this is my lovecall to you, and please send it to Elliot and Sean too. Thank you very much.

YO: Oh thank you.

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