An excerpt from the interview by The Wire (1998)

"Q: How did you come to organise the Loft Concerts series and how did you choose the people that you presented there?

A: Yoko invited me to do it. I had already made contact with the people before when I was at Berkeley, except for Jackson MacLow I met in New York. I made contact with Henry Flynt before I came to New York, and I naturally already knew Terry Jennings and Terry Riley. Joseph Byrd I knew from the University of California, and Simone Forti I knew from Ann Halprin's class in Kentfield, California. That was the class that Terry Riley and I taught during summer 1960, and where I first delivered Lecture 1960. That's where I met [sculptor] Robert Morris too. The first time Yoko came to my apartment at Bank Street I guess she noticed that I had all these scores that I had collected and that I knew all these composers. Eventually I selected from among those scores for An Anthology [a book of La Monte's work, which was eventually published in 1963].

Q: What did the art world, the social group that you were in, think when she later became involved with John Lennon?

A: Well, I knew that Yoko was an extraordinarily enterprising person and one of the first things she told me was that she wanted to be as famous as me! I was, at that time, considered very famous for an avant garde musician. She really had an idea about building her career and doing things and moving ahead in life. I have no doubt but what her relationship with John Lennon was very sincere and complete. At the same time, one can have no doubt that Yoko was very aware of what she was doing and how she was moving. She was a strong person and had a lot of feeling, and I think she really understood what she wanted from life and went about finding her way toward that goal."