Page two of the interview

Jody Denberg: A lot of people think that your musical career started when you met John Lennon, but that's not true.

Yoko Ono: That's not true at all.

JD: And I know that you -- you know, at the very beginning you were classically trained in piano.

YO: Yeah.

JD: And you studied composition. But tell me a little bit about the early days in New York around the beginning of the '60s, the kind of music you were making at the time with people like John Cage and La Monte Young.

YO: (Laughs) It was fun. But you know, the thing is, I have to go back, way back to my childhood because my parents really wanted -- well, my father really wanted me to be a pianist because he was a very good pianist that he had to give up being that because his father said, "Okay, you go into banking." You know, one of those things.

So he was saying, whether it's going to be a boy or girl, the firstborn must be a pianist. This big thing for him. So the first time I met my father, which was like when I was two, two and a half years old exactly, I went to San Francisco. I met my father. And the first thing he did was like, "Well, let's see your hand." And looking at my fingers and saying, "Oh, this part I hope that this part is going to be wide because otherwise you can't reach the octave" and all that kind of thing. And I really think that that's when my fingers just kind of -- my hands just shrunk. Because I was a born rebel. I think he had two minds about it. He wanted me to be a pianist, but also, he didn't really want to see that happen, I don't think, because he gave up. It's that kind of strange, paradoxical feeling. So I could not practice. I mean, frankly, if I'd practice in the same house that he was in and he would just say, "Oh, don't do that." Or, "If you're going to play that piece, then you have to play from the beginning to end. You don't just stop in the middle." And he just made it so nervous -- I was so nervous about it. He made me feel so nervous. And it was frankly not working.

But the best thing that they did for me was when I was about four years old, I think. We went back to Japan. There's a school in Japan called Jiyu-gakuen. And many -- well, a few, maybe -- famous composers came out of that school, which is early training to make children -- train children for perfect pitch. And make children acquainted with music. And I think that the best thing they did was-- of course, they taught you to compose, to play piano, all that kind of stuff. But the best thing they did for us was that there was a homework where one day you have to notate all the sounds around you in musical notes. So like if you hear a car going honk, honk, you know, and then I said, "what is that note? What's that?" You have to have perfect pitch for that. But also, you know, it's an approximation in a way. Sometimes noise don't really have the perfect pitch or anything like that. But to transfer all the sounds around you in daily life into musical notes so that you're always talking, "Oh, his voice is probably octave lower than mine." You know what I'm talking about. Always thinking in terms of musical notes. I think that's a pretty interesting homework

Sarah Lawrence College and John Cage

And it's like that kind of thing promoted me to think about music in that sense, I suppose. And then, of course, when I was in Sarah Lawrence College, my teacher who was a teacher for piano and composition, said "Well, look, you seem to be going in a direction very far out, avant garde kind of direction and maybe you want to study in New York City" because there are people like Henry Coward, John Cage, Edgar Varese, you know, those names. He was just sort of throwing out these names. And that's the first time I heard John Cage's name. And then when I went to New York City, I didn't go to New York City for that. But later in a very strange way, when I was in New York City, I met John Cage, I met Henry Coward, I met Edgar Varese, all these people. It's very interesting. And, of course, La Monte Young, too, but La Monte comes later. I mean, he was a younger group. It was like Cage, you know, all that, first. And I felt that Cage had a very interesting direction, unique direction.

And I was inspired by his free thinking kind of thing. But already in Sarah Lawrence and even before that, in Japan and all that, I was sort of working with kind of notation, because -- believe me, I was into musical notation from age four. So you can believe that you do rebel against that. And I was getting to making notations that are kind of different from the usual Western musical notation that you can -- that you know. It's like something between Oriental and Western notations, because I also got an influence -- an Oriental musical influence from my mother. And she was showing me these Oriental scores. They had nothing to do with the kind of scores that you're used to in Western music.

JD: We were looking at a book earlier today, a John Cage book of notations. And we looked through those and they look unlike anything we've ever seen for people notating music. But they're trying to score things that are, like you say, in between what is conventionally done.

YO: So I'm not claiming I was there alone, I'm just saying I was one of them. In other words, I was inspired very much by John Cage. And I thought, wow, so it's okay to be wacky. But then there were tons of them. At the time it was a very active time with the avant-garde music.

Carnegie Recital Hall 1961

JD: Well, there were the loft concerts and there was a Carnegie Hall recital in 1961. Were you ever recorded during any of that?

YO: Well, unless somebody was just recording or something, I don't know. Carnegie Recital Hall concert was recorded in a very strange way. One, I asked an engineer, a musical engineer, meaning he was probably a composer, a young person. And what I wanted to do was, while the concert was going on, I wanted him to record it and then play that with the next recording so as it goes on, the sound starts to accumulate.

JD: So it's layers.

YO: Layers, layers. And after the concert I went to him, "Did you do it?" And he was saying, "Just can't. This is just impossible." So all the tape was just on the floor, like running to the floor. I don't know, but later I thought, okay, well, that was no good. But in hindsight, anything that he recorded might be very interesting. Not that -- I don't think he was able to do that sort of accumulating and keep doubling. Maybe he couldn't do that, but maybe something was recorded. But I don't even know where he is. That's one. But I had this idea of having a tape of my vocal running simultaneously at the time when the concert was on. So about three days before the concert, I did tape this thing, my vocals, a vocal modulation or whatever you call it. And while I was doing this thing, that came out. I was surprised.

JD: Unexpected double-tracking, almost?

YO: I was saying, "what?" And so then when I listened to that I realized what I was saying was totally right. I think I've mentioned this before on several occasions, but at the time, when I was recording, like two days before the concert to play that tape in the concert kind of thing. At the time when I was recording, it was a Nagra. And then just accidentally it went zoom like, you know, reverse. So when I'm saying, "uh, uh, uh", it's goes, "uh, uh, uh, uh", you know, like that, backwards.

JD: Perfect.

YO: I know. And I heard that. And I thought, this is so interesting. And I imitated that.

Good voice

JD: And so that was part of the genesis of your --

YO: Oh, yes, yes, definitely. But that has a lot of background in a sense that, one, after I kind of, I agreed with my father, that okay, I am not going to be a good pianist so forget it. And I was around 14 then. But I said to my father, "Well, actually, I'm more interested in being a composer than being a pianist." And he said, "But there's not many." Well, he hasn't heard of any women composer who is successful. And so maybe it's a question of aptitude. And I don't want you to suffer. He was really being kind in a sense, though. He was projecting. He was hoping that I would have an easier life than them. And he said, "It's probably much easier for women if-- well, forget the piano."

But that wasn't going to be easy, too, but in his mind easier than composing. But you have a good voice, et cetera. This was kind of around 14 people started saying I have a good voice in school and everything. So why don't you go into taking vocal lessons and try to be an opera singer or a Lied singer. And that way you don't have to compose. You're going to be singing somebody else's song. And it's an easier thing to do, et cetera. Oh, okay. So anyway, I went into vocal lessons and also to get into musical school, music-- what is it? What do you call it? Like Juilliard school of music, kind of thing, equivalent. And you have to be the -- we learn like perfect pitch and how to -- you have to quickly sort of write down music when they are playing. There are many exams.

Menotti, Schönberg & Berg

JD: I don't imagine that flew well with you. I don't think you would have enjoyed doing that.

YO: No, no. I wasn't very good. And also -- but anyway, I mean, and then you have to know a little piano and the vocal and all that kind of thing. So I was trained in opera and in German Lied. Then once I heard this opera called Telephone by Menotti and it's an opera that it's written in English. It's an English performance, but Menotti is an Italian composer. And this opera they were giving me to sing. They were all just like sort of Italian. And then you sing in Italian and you have a dictionary and trying to translate every word or something. And then I heard this Telephone. And I'm thinking, what an incredibly beautiful opera. What an incredibly refreshing thing. Nobody has done that yet. It's so beautiful. And I was totally taken by that.

And then, I came to New York with my father and my family and all that. And he was into 12 tone music. He liked Schönberg, string quartet kind of thing. And he kept talking about 12 tone and all that. You have to listen to this, it's so great, and everything. So I was really turned on to 12 tone through my father. He was turned on by a string quartet, maybe, but I was more into Schönberg, like Pierrot Lunaire, kind of vocal stuff. I thought, wow, it's incredible. What an incredible thing to do. And the notations are not real notations. I mean, it's very new.

Like just putting these crosses or something where you can actually use your kind of untrained voice. You know, that kind of thing. It's beautiful. And then I heard Alban Berg and his operas Lulu and Wozzeck, which has a drinking song where the guy's singing, like Tom Waits. It's beautiful. And so each time I listened to all this I got into this by the vocal expression as an instrument. And I thought it was very interesting.

The scratch

JD: And it had never been brought to a rock and roll sensibility before?

YO: No, no, no. But even in sort of classical music you have to understand that I was looking from a very different angle. I mean, they were considered to be kind of avant garde notation, but still in the realm of formal singing kind of thing. And -- oh, I've done Brecht. Kurt Weill and Brecht. I thought their songs were fantastic, beautiful. Then I heard Billie Holiday. I thought, you know, because her voice was going -- it was scratchy and all that. You see, each time I was more kind of attracted to. It didn't matter what field. You know, wasn't going to say, oh, Billie Holiday, that's different. You know, a different field, the opera or this whatever.

I was attracted to what the voice expresses in terms of the humanity or the human suffering or whatever it was. And I was not attracted to that pristine, clear, trained vocal, which only expressed like nothing but just the notation of the composer or something like that.

JD: So you were attracted to the emotional core of the music. You weren't afraid of any stylistic boundaries. You didn't distinguish between the classical or Billie Holiday or the opera. You felt free enough to just let it loose.

YO: Tune into the emotion of the expression, the voice. And it was very interesting because that area I felt was not explored at all, in a way.

JD: But some people found it hard to listen to.

YO: Not Billie Holiday.

JD: No.

YO: But who?

JD: Well --

YO: These were -- I mean, 12 tone ones and all that, they were all sort of like -- in other words, they were supposed to do something that was perfect, but then the scratch came in inadvertently in the voice. And if they had it their way, they would have taken the scratch off or something like that. I was more interested in that scratch. So that's the difference. And then in the avant garde world, I think it's safe to say that most composers were mostly men, too, by the way, mostly. They were more interested in instrumental music as opposed to vocal. And it was considered cooler -- I mean, to the vocal expression it was maybe sort of uncooler, but it was much more mathematical and kind of abstract world, you know, that they were pursuing.

And when I was screaming and all that kind of thing I think that they -- in fact, somebody commented that, this is too theatrical or dramatic. You know, that's how it was perceived. Too animalistic. But we make those noises when we give birth to children. And so I was more interested in the kind of -- the sound of turmoil, inner turmoil kind of thing.

JD: And that's the roots of your music?

YO: Yeah.

JD: But then it went through all these changes that we're going to talk about now, I guess.

YO: And I felt, one, because I was kind of a loner in a way and I was kind of lacking, too. I felt that, you know, I'm like one of those -- a warrior with one sword or something, which was my voice. Okay. I've got this instrument, I can go anywhere. I'll travel. You know, that kind of thing.

A soundtrack for a Japanese animation film

JD: Well, was Two Virgins the first released example of your work? The first recorded and released?

YO: I learned that this kind of vocal stuff that recorded in the early '60s. There's another recording, definitely that I know of, which was an animation film by a very famous animation filmmaker in Japan. And when I went to Japan and he got kind of interested in what I was doing, I suppose, he said, "Well, would you mind making music for my next animation film" or something like that. Of course, I thought it was great. And I gave him a tape. And that was on the animation film. And I'm trying to get a hold of it. I don't think he even has a copy of it. At the last I found out my brother got in touch with him and said, "Oh, but that's a long time ago you're talking about." And since then we haven't heard from him. So I have to find out. But it's an animation film which was, at the time, around 1964 or 1965, even played in Museum of Modern Art in New York. You know, just kind of an artsy film that's played once or twice, I don't know. So it does exist somewhere. And my voice is on it.

Two Virgins

JD: So there is something before Two Virgins, but obviously this was the first time the world at large --

YO: On lacquer, right.

JD: On lacquer, thank you. And you recorded it -- this was recorded at John's home studio in Weybridge?

YO: Yes, in Weybridge on this sort of attic-- there's a kind of musical room -- a music room that he had. And that's where we recorded it.

JD: Was it -- you say a musical room, so it wasn't really a studio per se?

YO: It wasn't a studio at all, no.

JD: What did you have --

YO: There was no board or anything.

JD: You had a couple of tape machines?

YO: He had many tape machines there. Nagra and that kind of thing.

JD: When you listen to Two Virgins there's a piano, found sounds, did you just make it up as you went along?

YO: Oh, and he had many different, you know, sort of like sound-effects records.

JD: And so you used those?

YO: Yeah.

JD: So it was just done -- was it done in one fell swoop?

YO: Yes, but there's a certain, I think, editing we did and everything, too. But-- and also there was a certain planning done. But it was closest to jamming, I suppose, you can think about from that point.

The cover of Two Virgins

JD: How did the idea come about for the record cover photograph of you and John Lennon?

YO: Well, John thought of that (big laugh). And we just thought that was a good idea.

JD: What do you remember about the photo session that day?

YO: (Laughs) John was sort of like setting up everything and being very nervous and all that. And there was a guy -- I forget who it was, but an assistant who was just kind of helping to set it up. You know, we weren't naked. He was helping to set up the electrical, the cameras, the automatic shutter, you know. And then John said, "Okay. Okay. Get out." So it was just us. And we just took the photos.

JD: What do you remember about the reaction from your family and friends to the picture? And from the world. Everyone had a reaction to this picture.

YO: I never thought that way at all. You see, this is a funny thing because in those days -- well, you have to think about it in terms of what the society was like at the time. The society I lived in. Like in Knokke there was a big avant garde festival. And Knokke is in Belgium. And there was a woman that was rolling on the floor, you know, with a kind of a lot of bubbles and balloons going up or something like that. And she's rolling in the floor naked. I mean, it was like very '60s, kind of free-thinking age.

JD: So you didn't expect to have all the --

YO: Well, I think that there was -- the reason I thought this was good was because this -- as opposed to those types of happenings and events that was done, there was no sexual connotation. This was like straight. It wasn't flirting with the air. It was like straight-on kind of thing. And it looked a bit sort of -- we could have looked better. We felt it was okay. That's the funny thing. And, you know, afterwards everybody said, "What was that?" Yeah, yeah, that was our bed. And I looked at him and said, "Well, maybe, is that bad?" Started to sort of try to look at it that way. And, of course, you have to remember I was, I don't know, four or five months pregnant or something like that. So between John and I we would say, "This is actually three virgins."

JD: I just think that the interesting thing is that with John you had someone who had the world's ear and you had the ear coming from the underground and the avant garde and you were able to bring it to all these people. Now, maybe not all of them got it, but a lot of people got it who might not have otherwise gotten it if you were just doing it and they didn't -- you know, without his popularity at the time. And that's a beautiful thing. The bonus track on Two Virgins is Remember Love. And it was the B-side of Give Peace a Chance. Now, in 1992 when you did the Onobox set, you didn't include Remember Love. At that time, did you think that someday you were going to release the individual CDs, hopefully?