Page three of the interview

YO: Well, they were saying that one day they would like to do that, Ryko was saying that. But I never thought they'd do it. And I thought, the box set was so neat and it was so well thought of, like a compact thing. And that's it. I mean, people probably had enough after that. But also, before I was doing the Onobox, I said, "Okay. Well, could I do like nine CDs?" And they all looked at each other saying, We were thinking, well, not four but six. Six is pretty big. Could be four. All right. Six then. But therefore, there were many things that we couldn't include.

JD: Well, it's nice that they're coming out now. There were songs like Mrs. Lennon didn't make it through the first time. And as a fan, it's just nice.

YO: It's nice that it's out. Have you had a chance to listen to bonus tracks?

JD: Just on these four because that's all I have yet.

YO: But it's kind of an eye opener, isn't it?

JD: Well, yeah, especially hearing Song for John. Also, I didn't realize-- you know, that came out on Approximately Infinite Universe, which was '72. You guys made that song four years before that.

YO: Well, yeah. Many songs that I would just go through it or something and then forget about it and then later, well, why don't we pick up that one. You know, there's a bit of that, yeah.

JD: Well, in putting this -- the Rykodisc reissue series together, you not only had to go through a lot of tapes, but you had to look at a lot of pictures. You and John lived your life as art. On Life with Lions, you know, this was not a happy time. You had miscarried a child. On the back, you guys were arrested and that would haunt John the rest of his life in terms of his Green Card situation. So when you were going through putting these reissues together, how did you keep an even keel or did you?

YO: You know, that's funny because the main thing that's -- for instance, this picture. You know, that picture with me and John. Now, we go through some emotions about our private lives and, you know, the things happening in our private lives or something like that. But I learned that, you know. We think about music or the next song or the film or, you know. And if I'm going to write a story about my life or something like that, it might be with, you know -- and then the next was Two Virgins, so you know.

That's how I remember things or think about my life. So it was like always thinking about work. Work meaning what we want to express. So that and the love between us and discovering each other and dealing with the emotional kind of situation of moving away from the past in both our cases, et cetera, was all we were thinking about. Not like, okay, so we're arrested. Okay. We're going here, that, this. All these practical things that happened is like, you know, almost happening outside of us.

JD: So when you look back on it, it's not quite as intense as I might think for you? I mean, I was just thinking, God, when Yoko looks back at these pictures, she would cry or she would -- you know. But there's somewhat of a removal from it?

YO: Yes, definitely.

Life with the lions

JD: The first piece Cambridge is hard to listen to. You know, relentless pain. Were you making the music for your own personal catharsis or was it maybe easier for the audience to grasp in live performance? Because when I put this on the other day, it's hard to listen to.

YO: I don't know. No Bed For Beatle John is in there, right?

JD: Right.

YO: You see, for instance, that's a good example, I suppose. But there was a famous actress who was considered one of the best by George Bernard Shaw and all those people at the time -- I mean, at the time of George Bernard Shaw. And she was such a good actress that she could just say numbers, you know, like one, two, three, but in the way she says it, people would start crying. I mean, she can make people cry by just doing that. And I was just telling it to John, this story. And I was saying, oh, we can do that. Let me just do it. And that's why I did that. I just grabbed a newspaper and did, you know --

JD: No Bed?

YO: No Bed for Beatle. It was a rhetorical kind of discussion about what is more important, the words or the way the words are said or the music or how the words are expressed? You know, that kind of thing. And then I came up with this example. And then I was sort of trying to show him what it was like. That's how that happened. But, in other words, we were just full of different discussions and excitement about discovering all these things about art and music. And when we heard the heart beat, oh, we just have to put this in. So, yes, we weren't putting it in and crying about it. We were excited about putting that in there as music, which was like -- that's how I felt. That's how we felt. But we did cry about it, about the fact that we lost the baby before that. But when we were putting it in, we were just artists, you know, putting it in.

JD: Did you listen back to Cambridge in the process of re-mastering these or whatever it's called? That's an intense piece.

YO: It is, isn't it?

JD: And it's hard to listen to.

YO: Well, yeah that's true.

JD: But -- okay. You know what's amazing is in these days of corporate marketing and A&R guys and how are we going to sell this record, you can't make art for art's sake records on a big label, anyway. You know, that concept is gone, I think. And this -- I'm glad that it was there at one point where a major label would say, Okay, two minutes of the baby's heartbeat, 12 minutes of a radio dial. Well, if that's what you want.

YO: That radio dial is almost like, you know, what do you call those things that scratch?

JD: Oh, yeah.

YO: The DJ does the scratch. It was that kind of idea, I think. And I think the kind of things that we tried in there -- there's some sense of humor in all that, too, that it was that kind of private joke that people didn't understand. Of course, everybody, we thought, knew John Cage just did four minutes and 33 seconds or something like that. So, let's do two minutes. But I don't think anybody got that. They thought that I think somebody who knew that John Cage did silence, whether four minutes or not, just, oh, well, yeah, John Cage did that. Like, putting this down. No, we knew that and I thought the whole world knew it because John Cage named it like --

JD: 4:33, I think.

YO: -- time, you know, 4:33. So if that's the sort of expression of that music, then I'm going to make two minute expressions. That kind of thing. And we were laughing like crazy.

Tramps Benefit

JD: The bonus tracks on here show, though, that even though you were working with this vocal style that was -- as on Cambridge, that you were doing things as sweetly, as melodic as Song for John back in 1968 and people didn't know that about you at that point. They had a, perhaps, this image of what you were doing. The other bonus track on there is Mulberry. And you played that a few weeks ago at the Tramps Benefit, I heard.

YO: Yeah, I did.

JD: Why that one? Were you in the middle of this process and you came upon it and thought this would be a good one to do tonight?

YO: Yeah. I thought it was good and I thought that probably -- you know, I wanted to do something with Sean. And I wanted to see what he does. And I think what he did with Mulberry I must say it was very, very good. Later he was saying, "Well, I know you and I know your vocabulary" -- like, he was cool about it.

JD: Kind of like what happened with Mind Train on the Rising Tour?

YO: Yeah.

"The whole world hated me and my music"

JD: It was the only song from your old catalogue that you brought out after doing Rising, which -- and I will say, I think Rising is arguably your best piece ever, after all these years, which is a beautiful thing to have your best work come -- or some of it. But then at the very end, it was Mind Train. Did he choose that?

YO: No, I said Mind Train. I think that everybody wanted Mind Train. It was a very strange thing because Mind Train in Onobox is very short. And when I was making Onobox, you know -- first of all, I didn't want to make Onobox. When Ryko came, I said, "Don't let me go through that one again. The whole world hated me and my music. And so let's bury it and leave it alone." But -- so there was that attitude. So Mind Train was 16 minutes or something, right?

JD: It was long.

YO: Long. So 16 some minutes. So I was thinking, okay. Well, let's just give a little taste of it. And then they won't mind it, maybe. There was a little bit of that. So now everybody is saying, Oh, we can't hear that long one. I mean, that's too short and this and that, and we want to really hear the real Mind Train. Okay, well, we'll bring it out.

Studio One

JD: On the liner notes you credit -- it says, "Studio One archivist Karla Merrifield." Is she the person that helped you find these old tapes for the bonus tracks? How did you decide what songs you were going to use and how did you find the tapes?

YO: Well, I didn't do any of it. Actually, Karla, being called archivist, I think, has a lot to do with the written material and the photos and everything. And I think Rob Stevens and Michael Phillips, they went to the storage and they found all this stuff.

Wedding Album

JD: And then played it for you and you chose what you wanted to use. Let's move on to the Wedding Album. Talk about a sense of humor. The whole long side of you and John repeating each other's names recorded at Abbey Road Studios. What did the folks at Abbey Road Studios think that night?

YO: This was like we were totally excited when we did it. There was -- what was it? "John, Martha." You know, that's the kind of classic English kind of comedy pair or something that when on the stage and goes, "John," "Martha," "John," you know, they were doing that. Well, long time ago, I suppose in vaudeville. I was saying, "Okay. Well, let's do that ourselves, but this time we'll do it in our way." And he got very much into it. He liked the idea, too. So in Abbey Road Studio there's this one big room, you know, one of those huge, double ceiling place. And so I was on this end and he was on the other end. They set up a booth for us, separate booths. So it wasn't like we were together in the same room. We're just doing it with our voice. I mean, meaning the closeness was made by being together as voice.

JD: Because one of the first times I talked to you in 1984 was a phone interview. And I said, "Well, gosh, I really wish that I could be together to talk to you." And you said, "No, there's a certain intimacy when it's just voice to ear, ear to voice."

YO: Oh, did I say that? Yes, exactly. That's how I believe. And it was really interesting in that way, I thought.

JD: So was it because it was the Beatles record label? I mean, if you tried to do that now and say, Okay. Here's the new album. The first piece will be 14 minutes of us screaming each other's name.

YO: I don't know. You see, that's how you describe it. I don't think we were screaming. Just screaming each other's name. One there's the rock beat, which we made with the heartbeat.

The "screaming"

YO: I am still so upset that John and Yoko, that screaming or whatever you call it. It's music. It's music. It starts with a kind of pianissimo and kind of largo. And then it goes on increasing in speed as well. And then it goes into a crescendo and it goes on and on being very -- I mean, that's music. You can notate that.

JD: Right. Well, I should rephrase that. I've probably been in the music business too long. So I'm just envisioning the record guy going, well, can we get an edit of this? You know, that's what I was saying from the commercial angle.

YO: Yeah, I understand that side, too.

JD: The whole ambient thing right now, the whole electronic thing, well, put on Two Virgins. The whole sampling thing, listen to Radio Play, the scratching thing. It is the basis for that. But then again, there were people before you, too, doing --

YO: Radio Play. That's John's idea. You know, scratching, John's idea.