Yoko and The Beatles

[Music] [Music] [Music] on December 6th 1980 a man named Mark David Chapman flew from his home in Hawaii to New York on December 8th 1980 Chapman went to a local bookstore bought a copy of The Catcher in the Rye and signed it this is my statement Holden callfield he then took a taxi to the Dakota the Central Park West building John lenon co-owned with his wife Yoko Ono lynen anono had just released their first album in 5 years Double Fantasy which had only just that day entered the top 40 at around 5:00 p.m. on December 8th Lyn and anono left the Dakota to go to their recording studio they always had fans hanging around the building and before getting into their car Lennon signed Chapman's copy of Double Fantasy when John and Yoko returned to the Dakota in their limo around 10:50 p.m. Chapman had not left his spot in front of their home [Music] First Responders arrived in minutes and hurried lenon into a squad car while Chapman sat on a stoop placidly reading his copy of Catcher in the Rye John linen died a few minutes later because the world is round turn me [Music] on because the world [Applause] [Music] is by Daybreak Yoko and some staff returned to the Dakota finding that the crowd outside has grown past 5,000 people the Dakota's front desk receives a call from Los Angeles about a threat to finish the job Chapman started in New York within a couple hours a man is arrested at LAX who in the process knocks out a police officer while vowing to get Yoko Ono I just got to tell the following day yoko's Nanny Helen Seaman brings her 5-year-old son Shawn to her Yoko tries to explain to Shawn that someone has shot his father Shawn doesn't understand it first but as it sinks in his Nanny holds him as he cries for his father Ono does what she can to comfort him but she wasn't as close to Shawn as Jon was Jon had prided himself on his role in Shawn's life as primary caretaker and now he was gone Daddy come home within a couple days the Dakota offices are filled with flowers gifts cards and letters and soon a man claims to have placed a bomb in one of the packages a bomb squad searches the building but finds nothing this day also brings the news of a suicide of a distraught fan and this is what makes Yoko finally break down when she eventually pulls herself together she issues a statement pleading for no more suicides for all the good it will do two more will take their lives by the end of the week Helen's Seaman's Son Fred who also works for the Linens comes into work that day claiming to be devastated seeing how distraught he appears to be Yoko sends him home with pay the following day Fred Seaman visits his college friend an aspiring writer named Bob Rosen excitedly telling him that he is set for life as a Lono employee Fred Seaman has unique access to John Lennon's home and property and he is the first we have a record of thinking more ambitiously on how to capitalize on Lennon's murder the Dakota receives a call about a morg attendant selling a photo of Lenin's dead naked body to a tabloid despite frantic efforts Yoko can't prevent the sale and the photos soon appear on the front page of the New York Post and the national inquire the morg attendant was paid $110,000 2 weeks after the murder Fred Seaman signs a contract contract with his college friend Bob Rosen to write a book about John lenen exploiting Seaman's access to the Dakota to fund this Seaman embezzles money from lono's petty cash fund and over the next 12 months he obtains thousands of private documents including Lennon's Diaries upon finding them Rosen writes in his diary dead Linens equals big bucks paper black a man named John Green yoko's Chief tarot card reader during the family's time out of the public eye had been living in an artist Loft owned by Yoko and used to store Irreplaceable artifacts like pieces of linen artwork and original acetates of Beatles records green lives rentree on the sole condition that he allows no visitors there but not only does he violate this directive he charges people admission Yoko serves Green in eviction notice but he changes the locks to The Loft claims squatter's rights and sues Yoko concerned for the safety of the materials in The Loft she settles by paying green $30,000 upon inspection her assistants discover a typewriter in The Loft with a chapter of Green's forthcoming book Dakota days which would be published by St Martin's press in the book green depicts Yoko as a hysterical Dragon lady who practices Black Arts and sucked linen Talent dry someone in Florida claiming to be the head of the Mark Chapman fan club has been sending several misses to the Dakota ending with the salutation death to Ono one of which is accompanied by a record album riddled with bullet holes the writer announces say that he is in New York and attends to kill her an accomplice is apprehended in New York and released but the writer of the letter is never found Yoko notices that large expensive pieces of equipment start disappearing Fred Seaman has gotten more Brazen after almost a year of embezzling Seaman is finally caught and fired after being paid tens of thousands of dollars to get back some but not all of the stuff he stole a couple of years after the murder there are rumors of books being planned by people other than green including Lennon's ex-lover May Pang who would accuse Yoko of brainwashing lenen when he dum for Yoko Albert Goldman biographer of Elvis Presley who destroyed his reputation by exposing the likes of drug orgies and panty fetishes is rumored to be negotiating for a seven figure Advance towards a linen Expose and then there's Fred Seaman and his college buddy Bob Rosen who by 1983 has landed a book contract with Simon and Schuster for nearly a million dollars Seaman pleads guilty to Second deegree Grand Larsen and is sentenced to 5 years probation contingent on his agreement not to reveal what is in the linen Diaries Seaman can't use the Diaries but Rosen can and eventually does publish his book Nowhere Man the final days of John lenen after being caught stealing Seaman becomes obsessed with destroying who he calls the Black Widow and builds his entire identity around discrediting Yoko that she is a drug addict that she was having Affairs before lenen died that it was she who had Paul McCartney arrested in Japan for possessing marijuana Sean will become the seed from which many of the more nefarious conspiratorial claims against Yoko grow and persist to this day uh uh Theo the yo black [Music] widow but perhaps the worst missive Yoko receives comes in the form of a letter from Atta State Prison it reads in part dear Yoko my new attorney Marshall Beal may have contacted you concerning a possible agreement that would consist of seeking to use any funds earned by the release of certain materials towards charitable purposes Yoko if you feel that what I might enter into even though all funds would be given to charity is against your wishes I would honor this completely sincerely Mark David Chapman unbelievably the man who murdered her husband right in front of her is asking for her cooperation in writing a book about the murder from the murderer's point of view the stuff about charity is of course meaningless going to New York state law barring criminals from profiting from their crime but of course not all profit is financial why did he do it why did Chapman kill John lennin and why would he want to invite more attention to this unforgivable thing that he did [Music] [Applause] oh so 40 years later I'm sitting at a wine bar in Long Beach California looking at some Beatles footage on Adobe Premiere that my editing Partners just sent and I've got like I've got this giant beetles bag that like you can see from a miles away it's a designer thing I bought it in Vegas I don't think they make it anymore and this Boomer next to me looks at the bag and he looks at my computer and he goes oh you like The Beatles And I'm like yeah you I'm working on a thing and hand of Christ the next thing out of this guy's mouth is you know Yoko Ono broke up the Beetles and I'm like are you are you are you serious is I can't tell if you're joking and he's like no I'm not joking and I and I'm like this that's that of all of all the little factoid all that you could drop all the questions you could ask about about the most successful popular well-documented band of all time the the one thing you have to say about them is the greatest and most persistent lie cool but it's going to be such an incredible sort of comical thing like in 50 years time you know they broke up cuz Yoko sat on an M cool cool cool cool cool cool cool [Music] cool so before we get into it let's get out of the way that I think it's interesting that the narrative around Yoko Ono was that she never contributed anything to the John Lennon's UA after the breakup of The Beatles And basically destroyed him creatively when most of the stuff that Jon is valorized for today his post Beatles albums his activism particularly against the Vietnam War was done in collaboration with y she even co-wrote lynon's biggest [Music] hit and was officially named a co-writer of Imagine in 2017 by The National Music Publishers Association and yes that was Lennon's wish during his lifetime actually that should be credited as a len and Ono song because a lot of it the lyric and the concept came from Yoko but those days I was a bit more selfish bit more Macho and I sort of omitted to mention her contribution everything we did together in those days we just inspired each other yeah but if it had been Bowie I would have put lenon Bowie if it had been a male you know when we wrote Fame together but when we did it I just put Lennon because you know she's just the wife and you don't put her name on right and most people don't realize that they've heard Yoko sing at least 11,000 times and I don't mean [Music] this the John linen song that probably gets the most AirPlay out of any of them including by The Beatles owing to seasonality is Merry Christmas War is Over which Yoko sings about half of the and the dear the old the young my very mer Christmas and a happy New Year let's hope the [Music] one without anyar and yeah she co-wrote that one too and these are just some of the things that are still ubiquitous so let's get the idea that Yoko was just this weird hanger on who never contributed anything worthwhile out of the way it's not true also Yoko can seeming just fine right now and again in the second half of our Show Ladies and Gentlemen The [Music] Beatles part of the reason the breakup feels so fundamentally sad is because when you look back at the eight years they spent together you're basically watching these guys grow up while none of them had any formal music training they started a band they worked ridiculously hard to improve themselves and their craft and their passion for American rock music made them the most famous band in the [Music] world you can watch their early shows in Hamburg their historic appearance on Ed Sullivan their early interviews and even movies like A Hard Day's Night which established their razor sharp cheeky sense of humor that just was not seen on this side of the pond has success changed your life yes they looked like they were having a blast because for the most part they were but there were challenges they didn't just want to be popular they wanted critical respect like their Idols Bob Dylan and Chuck Barry had but by 1966 their tour schedule both stimmed that and was no longer fulfilling owing to the fact that they couldn't hear themselves play because of all of the screaming [Music] George later said of a show they played in Japan where the audience was well it wasn't not screamy but you know it was less screamy and this performance made him realize just how bad they'd gotten as a live [Music] act so they decided to quit touring all together they started incorporating complex arrangements with a wide variety of instruments they start their own record label with their own stable of artist they start using mind-altering drugs George learns to play the sitar under his mentor Ravi Shankar John gets into avard art and starts spending a lot of time with this Japanese performance artist Paul takes up more of a leadership role and Ringo well he's just happy to be here but internally by the late 60s things are falling apart and it's not just sad to watch it was sad for those involved there's this moment in get back where George has temporarily quit the band and John just stopped showing up a rehearsal so it's just Paul and Ringo alone I don't know and then number two I used to Flo no these guys weren't just in a band together their relationship was familial said Ringo just this year it was a great time of my life of being a beetle was great and I had three brothers an only child and uh that's life so what could have happened to drive them apart was this Avant guard performance artist who was doing a lot and I mean a lot of heroin at the time really that powerful no no no she was not everything in the be Garden was Rosy but that was a long time ago they went their own private ways found their own friends and became rest re rant on each other for guidance and the reason why the band broke up is complicated but I'm going to try to simplify it as much as I can in order of when they first left the band baby baby who D he's not a beetle or is he one of those fifth Beatles well I've heard it argued Brian Epstein was their first manager the son of a successful liver pudle and businessman Brian Epstein ran his family's music shop in 1961 Brian discovered The Beatles after a local show and despite his lack of experience in management puts the four under contract with him by May of the following year he had secured them their recording contract with Emi but before they signed their contract John and Paul start a song Publishing Company together years ago when the Beatles were still the quy men they had agreed that all of their songs even the ones they write by themselves would be published under the moniker of lenon McCartney which is why Lennon has a credit on Hey Jude and Paul has a credit on both re Solutions number n number n number n number n number [Music] n n n John and Paul call their Publishing Company Northern songs and agree that they will always own equal shares in the company because they are creative partners and Friends best friends Brian convinces the group to dump their leather jackets and jeans for tailored suits mop top hair and essentially the image that would carry them to worldwide Fame despite his inexperience Brian Epstein had excellent managerial instincts for the next six years although he's only a little bit older than the lads Brian is effectively team dad creating their image cultivating opportunities and managing personalities but Brian has his own issues he was gay and Jewish in a time and place where it was advantageous to be neither of those things and although his gayness was known and accepted by The Beatles it was also a closely guarded secret to pretty much everybody else when the Beatles started getting into Fun drugs Brian began self-medicating as well the more famous The Beatles got the more worried Brian was that he'd be cast aside and it's clear to establish that he wasn't just their manager he was incredibly generous to them on a personal level especially to JN and his first wife Cynthia he was even Julian Lennon's Godfather he genuinely cared about their best interests and never took advantage of their wealth and fame but he wasn't as ruthless or as excellent a negotiator as other managers in the industry were purported to be you still feel I must not exploit this person yes absolutely I still feel that uh even if they don't want to know about a certain contract or a certain fee or something it's my duty to inform them even though they may throw the bit of paper away on which I tell them but doesn't this make life terribly uncomfortable for you no not at all I think I think many of my artists have conscious the fact um that I do want them to know what's going on it's been rumored that the Beatles bside Baby you're a rich man was about him and may have also included some playful slurs by [Music] John The Beatles never confirmed this and is probably a wrong be a mass auditory hallucination as is the case with so many Beetle songs but it has also been said that the song did hurt Brian's feelings he never confided these insecurities to the band however preferring to self-medicate and while the Beatles were doing a spiritual Retreat thingy in Wales with Maharishi mes Yogi remember him Brian Epstein is found dead in his apartment from an overdose of alcohol and barbituates on August 27th 1967 he was 32 years old giving a statement from the workshop John said meditation gives you comfort enough to withstand something like this even the short amount we've had George added there's no such real thing as death anyway uhuh did Peter Jackson's get back documentary they bring up how lost they are without Brian several times ever since Mr epin passed away it's never been the same I mean we've been very negative since Mr Epstein passed away and that's why all of us in turn has been sick of the it's discipline we lack we've had discipline we've had sort of slight symbolic discipline like Mr Epstein according to John in 1971 I knew that we were in trouble then I thought we [ __ ] had it now after Brian died we collapsed Paul took over and supposedly led us but what is leading us when we went around in circles we broke up then that was the [Music] disintegration well I bet you I'm going to be a big star Ringo always enjoyed immense popularity as long as the Beatles were together arguably the most popular Beetle if we're going by low negativity ratings here those yours no they for Ringo must have cost your fortune in Stamps Ringo he comes from a large family he was the last to join the band and as a result always felt like he was kind of the odd man out especially because he was a guy who was basically a really solid session musician who by the end of The Beatles was surrounded by three once in a generation songwriters so the year is 1968 it is the famously difficult White Album sessions during rehearsal for the opening track Back in the USSR the band breaks out into an argument which they'd been doing a lot during The White Album sessions and Ringo gets up and leaves that's where you walked out of the be like said well no I only went out because I did feel like it was you know we done pepper and that was fine and we were trying to be a band again which I love right and then and I'm look you know I'm there in the studio and it's like I I don't feel good I don't feel part of it so I go and knock on John's door and I say hey you know I just don't feel right I don't feel that you know I'm part of this you three seem so close and he goes I thought it was you three right so I said [ __ ] it I'm off Ringo decides to go on vacation and he takes his family to Greece where he will write his best known song Octopus's Garden I'd like to be underneath the s in an octopus in the sh and yeah it sounds like a dumb kid song because it is but it's also quite literally about how nice it would be to escape the turmoil outside we would be War below the storm in our little Hide Away beneath the waves at that moment I love to be under the sea with an octopus but before too long the other Lads realized that they need him and sent him a telegram telling him that he's the best rock and roll drummer in the world and that they love him and please come back things that happened that I was separated from the band and they were all great sending me uh text and stuff come on home we love you and I went back and I had that piece of song and you know that's how it was so star came back arrives at Abbey Road to find his kit decorated in flowers for spelling out welcome back Ringo a morning good morning Rich how are you this morning now of all of The Beatles Ringo was the one who wanted the band to break up the least so it may come as some surprise that he was the first to quit but the reason he quit was rooted in how much he hated seeing the other guys fight producer George Martin sum things up during Anthology if you go to a party and the husband and wife have been having a row there's a tension an atmosphere and you wonder what whether you're making things worse by being there I think that was kind of the situation we found with Ringo he might have said to himself am I the cause when you watch get back Ringo spends a lot of time just you kind of in the background looking sad sad at the writing of the wall that the band is drifting apart however in get back the biggest frowny pants in the room is not Ringo nor is it John but things must pass by 19 66 George Harrison the youngest Beetle was already talking to Brian Epstein about leaving when the band started he entered as a sort of younger brother mentee to Paul and John but by this point he was starting to feel like he was outgrowing them a 3-month break is proposed by Brian and George goes off to India to study satar under Robbie Shankar George is plated for the time being but by the time the group gets back together in April of 1967 to record Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band which is basically Paul's baby The Strain is still felt said George of the sergeant pepper sessions it became an assembly process a lot of the time it ended up with just Paul playing the piano and Ringo keeping the tempo and we weren't allowed to play as a band as much when the Beatles began George was the youngest he could play the guitar but he was not a songwriter he would learn the craft from John and Paul and over the years would eventually rise to their level but John and Paul never saw it like that George was basically restricted to a quota of around two songs per album which became a bigger issue than more songs he had in his personal backlog recording for get back which would eventually be released as Let It Be begins at the beginning of 1969 with the intent of also releasing another documentary film although most of the Beatles are not thrilled with this after the Flop that was Magical Mystery Tour read the B sh a documentary is the concession one that ends up inadvertently recording the end of the group itself uh I think I'll be now when now mostly he's mad at Paul and John for kind of having eyes only for each other Paul for his micromanaging see we should should be yeah different be and sort of all onto light things and symbols yeah about a week later they change their plans for the album and the documentary they are filming George comes back happy and for a minute they're almost back to the good old days they're working well together everybody is fine and the get back sessions provide the Boost they needed in order to to eventually record Abby rad their best album don't add me but the problem still stands George still has that quota of only two songs per album and by this point he's probably a more prolific songwriter than either Paul or John his now classic solo album debut All Things Must Pass was not a double album but a triple album by 1969 George was sick of John and Paul having the Run of things he had outgrown them because all these songs of mine I could give to people who could do them good but i s suddenly realized you [ __ ] all that just going to do me for a bit over the uh years you know I had such a lot of songs mounting up that I really wanted to do but I only got my quota of one or two Tunes per album and uh that way I would have had to record it about a 100 Beatle albums just to get out the tunes I had in 1965 were you held down by the other fellas uh well very subtly yes I don't know you know I'm just trying to get some more songs on the album you know you know my name have the number you know my name during the band's break in 1966 John lennen goes off to Spain to shoot the black comedy film how I won the war of this period linen would later say I made her movie how won the war with dick lesler which never got much seen but it did me a lot of good and so from 65 on I was sort of vely looking for somewhere to go but didn't have the nerve to really step out in the boat by himself push the boat off so he comes back they record Sergeant peppers they they release Sergeant peppers they uh record Magical Mystery Tour and then Brian dies John where would you be today without Mr Epstein I don't know so uh then there this infamous trip to India happens I'm going to try and keep this short Brian died while they were at this retreat in Wales but the Maharishi invites them to India and you know everyone's nerves are fried identities are shaken so let's go to India and learn about Transcendental Meditation John and George are really into it Paul's down to do whatever that needs to be done for team building exercises in Ringo let's just say Ringo packed two suitcases one full of clothes and the other filled with Hines baked beans so we wouldn't have to be exposed to spicy food so it's not just the Beetles like their entire entourage is there a bunch of other famous people except Yoko who is not here although John will write a bunch of songs about her while he here and the trip is extremely productive a majority of the wi album is written here including Ringo's first song with the Beatles which would be featured on the wi album but it's also just kind of tense and weird Ringo lasts all of 10 days before he pieces out beans and all Paul leaves not long after because being Paul he's worried about the business things back home John and George saw Paul and Ringo's early departure is these guys hesitating on the path to higher Consciousness just as the pair particularly of Carney had earlier refused to join them in their LSD experimentation but at the same time we see a Schism between John and George begin to develop in the description of a journalist who was there Harrison had a genuine dedication to meditation where his Lennon's approach was more adolescent he was looking for the answer well there isn't the answer and so they both leave abruptly after the Maharishi may or may not have done a sex crime against Mia faroh who was also here we we don't actually know if he did it but we do know that he did try to talk the band into giving the asham 25% of his next album's royalty which at first John's like yeah before he's talked out of it and he like wait a minute this this Maharishi sure is into a lot of celebrities and money [Music] sexy you get yours yet however big you think you are according to author Jonathan Gould in 2007 the mysterious bond that had been first sealed on the stage of a cidi Hamburg nightclub called the Indra would begin to unravel 8 years later in the hill of India itself great no stop it please stop fighting here in India this would be the last time the Beatles ever traveled together after this trip Paul decided he's had enough of hard fun drugs and meditation and goes back to being a normie you know sets back on his life's goal of being the ultimate wife guy Ringo drinks a lot George Goes even harder into all things Hari Krishna and JN gets into even harder drugs which also coincides with him leaving Cynthia for Yoko and before I go any further I don't mean to imply that the rest of the Beatles had absolutely no problem with Yoko a they were concerned about the heroin it wasn't that JN didn't do heroin before he met Yoko but they enabled each other a lot during their early relationship this in addition to the fact that she was just always [ __ ] around when they had agreed like no spouses or girlfriends in their writing and recording sessions and this is the big reason that the other guys had a hard time with Yoko especially during The White Album it wasn't just that Jon was obviously testing boundaries with them like a toddler with what he could get away with his girlfriend doing especially since the other three had known Cynthia for years and we're not thrilled with the way JN was handling his divorce so yeah let's just get that out of the way Yoko did not cause their breakup but that did not mean that they were always on great terms with Yoko it was a rough start so JN is the first of the Beatles to release a solo single with give piece a chance [Applause] are an anti-war Anthem that John feels he could not release with the Beatles because it is just too ding- dang dong political for Paul Paul is not anti-protest song per se ton wison said to the immigrants you better get back to your common Dylan does them protest songs are cool but at the same time he's also of this sort of like lower sea conservative mindset that celebrities shouldn't be super political after Abby rh's release in September of 1969 John formally calls it quits to the rest of the band although he holds off on announcing it publicly for business reasons he would not be the first to announce the breakup however because he would be beaten by a wonderful Christmas time before Brian died a reporter friend asked him who was the most difficult Beetle assuming it would be John after all the blean manager Norman A Hard Day's Night is Loosely based on Brian and he spins the whole movie being John's butt monkey are you listening to me lenon you're a swan Brian surprised his friend by telling him no actually it was Paul Paul was a a bit of a control freak always getting in Brian's business and was always upfront about what he thought the Beatles needed whether he was right or not and he was often right and he usually got what he wanted either through his Charisma or just by being pushy because Brian was deep down afraid of being replaced after Brian's death The Beatles decide to self-manage but Paul becomes deao band leader used to play those dark clubs in Hamburg remember that bu of course I do I booked him I'm the leader of the Beatles it was Paul who would announce the breakup shortly after the release of his debut solo album McCartney in April 1970 without telling his bandmates he was going to do this John is of course Furious thinking he's using the breakup to promote his own album but this was not the greatest anime betrayal remember Northern songs well Paul had been secretly buying shares of Northern songs the Publishing Company he co-owned with John again their agreement had been to keep their shares equal but Paul now owned over 100,000 more shares than John now this alone could have been the end of The Beatles but it wasn't the death nail if the death nail could have been said to be a person that person was not Yoko Ono that person [Music] was sitting in his no in 1965 the music Biz was a buzz by The Rolling Stones manager a New York Wheeler Dealer named Alan Klein getting the Rolling Stones an excellent royalty percentage and a then unheard of $1.25 million advance for their next album the stones were a big deal but they weren't Beatles big so how come they and not the Beatles got this unprecedented deal what was not yet public and what the stones did not yet realize their money was being funneled through client's agency and this is extremely common even to this day royalties are often paid through agencies rather than directly by Publishers but Klein according to the contract he wrote did not have to disperse these royalties for 20 years so in that time he could do whatever he wanted with the Rolling Stones money and so Klein was doing stuff like buying stock in GE with their money and cashing out the dividends when it was convenient while also ignoring the stones when they sent him messages like hey guitar broke I need a new one hey we need to pay our staff hey please give us some money so we can run our business and slowly the stones realized that this unprecedented deal was also screwing them over in an unprecedented way but this was not public knowledge in the 1960s so of course Paul bossy boots that he is after a renegotiation by Brian Epstein that got them a deal that sounded nowhere near as amazing is like where's our deal Brian where's our $1.25 million Advance Brian and Brian can't answer that you know he's a good manager but he's not experienced like kleene you know he's not a lawyer and he really does try to do right by his Lads Klein of course would love to manage the Beatles the only act in town that's bigger than the band he is currently swindling and when Brian died he saw his opportunity and to give you an idea of how ghoulish this guy was he actually said this in an interview with Playboy I can even tell you the moment when I knew for sure I was going to be their manager I was driving across a bridge out of New York and I heard on the radio that Epstein had died and I said to myself I got him when Klein met John in January of 1969 smack in the middle of the get back sessions when things were actually going better for the band he knew exactly how to push Jon's buttons I'm before I met him the other day you know it's fantastic he really is first jokes very very clever but it's Chang man that's what it's about all and was on side all other comment on the other side he told him that there are four Beatles so where does Paul get off acting as deao leader I'm the leader of the Beatles he also declares that Yoko isn't getting her flowers as an artist from the Beatles or from society at large and this was everything JN wanted to hear so Klein didn't ask to manage them right away all he wanted was full access to their books you know just to see how things are going cuz JN is worried about Apple their record company and Jon grants him this without telling Paul so Paul finds out and while a few years earlier he was pestering Epstein about why he wasn't more kleinik by 1969 he was no longer # team Klein and Jon's actions had him worried his fiance Linda's father Lee Eastman was also a New York loyer and unlike all these Brits he knew the guy's reputation as well as the fact that he was currently under active investigation by the SEC so they all decide to meet George Ringo John now officially represented by Klein and Paul represented by Lee Eastman and it goes tits up right away Paul wants Eastman to manage the Beatles finances and the other three are like no no no dude we are not letting your girlfriend's dad manage our company Paul also makes the mistake of condescending de clein's clothing style which John reads as classist Klein who's done some digging into Eastman has discovered that Lee Eastman was actually Bor Leopold Epstein and was a Jew who had angle sized his name and proceeded to do the thing that Trump did to John Stewart when he kept calling him John Liebowitz like what are you ashamed of your heritage Epstein JN thinks this is hilarious Paul and Lee Eastman quickly got fed up with Klein's belligerence and fled the meeting and so Alan Klein now alone with the other three tells them oh man it's really bad it's like really bad your finances are bad man but don't worry I'll do an audit and I'll fix everything and so they all signed sign with kleene on the spot so with three of the four managed by kleene and Paul refusing they are now at an impass they can either dump clim or dissolve the band they chose the latter I got BL I'm [Applause] [Music] offici the event is so momentous that historians may one day view it as a landmark in the decline of the British [Music] Empire Paul would ultimately get the win on this one as the other three one by one realized Klein was bad news and by 1973 they had all parted ways with him but what was yoko's share of the blame here she maybe could have stopped the breakup but she was swayed by Klein's flattery same as John George and Ringo at their first meeting Klein promised her a million dollars in funding for her next art installation an absurd number that he could not and never did deliver on after the breakup a series of legal battles followed Paul claimed in an affidavit that when John George and Ringo chose Klein over him it was the first time in the history of The Beatles that a possible irreconcilable difference had appeared between us and in the midle of investig I break [Music] down and some K is going to get you going to knock you off your feet the following few years would see a lot of public animosity from the four x beetles particularly between John and Paul who could not stop writing diss tracks about each other those weeks was right when they said you was there you took your lucky break and broke it into now what can be done for you John in particular was just mean one has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beetles were and that's what I'm saying in this album I'm saying I remember what it's all about now you [ __ ] you know [ __ ] you all he famously called Paul's song's granny music and took everything extremely personal and was just wrong about Abby a lot even Paul had forgotten that it wasn't all animosity leading up to the breakup Peter Jackson's get back wasn't just a technological breakthrough but also functionally rewrites history a history that has become so woven into the fabric of rock legend that even the people who lived it had forgotten that it wasn't all bad first off it shows that a full break was not inevitable and even that the full break that did happen probably wouldn't have losted forever if JN hadn't been killed second it shows that after George returned to the group they were working well well together particularly after the arrival of session musician Billy Preston brings a breath of fresh air to the sessions in fact the mood is so improved after they move to Abby Road and bring on Billy they talk about making him a member of the band I mean I'm just like giving our band that's I like a fist beetles but a particular note is a conversation between John and George where they talk about wanting to preserve the Beatles while they work on solo projects we put on helping it's all safe that we beat together but George is doing an album oh yeah but I mean be nice to if any of us can do separate things as well but that that way it also preserves this the beatle bit of it more now Paul didn't hear that conversation in 1969 he didn't know that even happened he sees the film and I ask him what what do you think about that conversation that you would have seen for the first time where where George you you know and John talk about solo I mean that I said that that sort of paints a picture of how the Beetles could have carried on the future and you know what Paul said to me he said I I wish I knew that they said they said that at the time so while there were a lot of factors at play that went into the decision for the most part it was the business side of things not the personal or artistic side that really drove them apart it hadn't been for Brian's death if they hadn't started Apple cor if they hadn't got caught up with Alan Klein yeah there would have been solo projects and that probably would have been their main thing for a while if not forever John was just more excited by working with Yoko in 1969 George had way too too many songs and was always going to be held back by John and Paul but though a break was inevitable a permanent breakup complete with like war and dis tracks was not it's interesting how public perception even shaped the memories of the people who lived it Paul was so affected by all of the accusations that it was his fault and he was the real villain here that he started to believe it and I kind of bought into it I I thought that you were the villain a little bit you know CU when you called it enough you start think well maybe I maybe I was you know so I I had to do a lot of sort of wrangling with was I wasn't I did did I know John were we friends and anything you know knowing really we were but but there were so many rumors about it and that photo when I saw that it's like yes we were friends but even despite all that despite the public narrative being so powerful that it shaped the memories of both Paul and and Ringo making them forget that the get back sessions were for a lot of it a rolicking good time they never blamed Yoko for the split no the group had problems long before Yoko came along many problems folks I she certainly didn't break the group up the group was breaking up and I think she attracted John so much to another way of life that he then went on to do very successfully and had a sort of second part to his career writing things like imagine and doing uh give piece a chance I don't think he would have done that without yoga they can't understand why we should uh actually enjoy splitting up but there's a time you know there's a time when people grow up and they leave home or whatever they do and they go for a change you know and it was really time for a change Ringo was one of the few people Yoko would talk to in the days after John's assassination I didn't need to hear people telling me how much they love the beetle or any of that when we just lost John cuz I wasn't there to see a beetle I was there to see my friend not relating to this B and in the years since Yoko has been maybe even hyperbolic in her praise of Ringo Ringo was always just very gentle and he really believed in peace and love no one is probably going to believe it but he was the most influential pet an incredible day for me to finally go to bed with Yoko so who even was Yoko Ono like why was she such a big deal [Music] that born in 1933 to isuk Ono a wealthy wouldbe classical pianist turn banker and ISO Ono Yoko spent her childhood bouncing back and forth between Tokyo and the United States during World War II Yoko and her family fled Tokyo scraping by in the Japanese Countryside and often wondering if they'd ever see their father alive again by 1952 yoko's family had moved to New York where she joined them before attending Sarah Lawrence University to study poetry where she was introduced to the Avant guard movement she ultimately dropped out after meeting her first husband classical pianist Toshi Ichi inagi before settling in New York in 1957 it is there that she meets the head of the fluxus movement a loose Association of data inspired artists and begins exhibiting her own work with the help of its founder George maunus in the following years as she built her career career Yoko gets a divorce is briefly committed to an institution for depression remarries and has her daughter Kyoko by the time she met John in 1966 she was well known and respected in the Avant guard scene for a point of comparison think Marina Abramovich in fact her most famous art exibition cutpiece would prove heavily influential for abramovich's later work cutpiece is an installation where Yoko sits motionless on the floor in fine clothing for a set length of time and the audience has the instruction to cut pieces of her clothing off and this was fine for a few installations but as you can imagine this could and did get violent and exploitative and Yoko stopped performing it eventually a running theme throughout yoko's body of work is the power of imagination Yoko considered imagination integral to her survival of the World War II bombing of Tokyo said Yoko of The Hunger they experienced at the time lying on our backs looking up at the sky through an opening in the roof we exchanged menus in the air and used our power of visualization to survive when her brother was hungry and unhappy Yoko would ask him what kind of dinner would you like ice cream he would say good let's imagine our ice cream dinner they did and he started to look happy I realized even then that just through imagining we can be happy so we had our conceptual dinner and this is maybe my first piece of art although the fluxus movement was inspired by Dada Ono's art can almost be described as anti-ada although much of it Springs from the horror she lived through and witnessed during the war much like the original creators of the daada movement after World War I instead of creating anti-art for a civilization that did not deserve Grace Yoko created art that tried to faret out goodness and optimism and potential in humanity often through absurdism her art has this through line about process imagine this cut this off watch the sunset until it becomes a square in fact it was this that caught John linen attention in her book grapefruit before they even met so while still married to her second husband she encounters John lennen at one of her shows Yoko accompanied JN while he browsed the art on display one piece that particularly caught his eye was a ladder which when you climb up there's a magnifying glass at the top which you use to look at a piece of paper on the ceiling where you read a tiny word and that word is just yes and this was totally up John's alley said John later it's a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spy glass and it doesn't say no or [ __ ] you Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band contains in my opinion the greatest Lenin McCartney song but the lines between the sections that Lennon and McCartney wrote are so Stark you can practically hear the slash between their names he blew his mind out in a car he didn't notice that the lights had Chang woke up fell out of bed dragged a comb across my head a crowd of people turned away but I just have to look found my way downstairs and drank a coffee iate after this they did collaborate some but most of their songs were written separately which Paul attributed largely to the fact that they had no reason to be around each other when they weren't recording they had stopped it is around this time that Jon and Yoko start their first unfinished experimental albums the fact that JN was still extremely popular with the Beatles but this is what he was creating with Yoko combined with this stuff that he was dragging Kicking and Screaming onto the White Album number n you could see where people were a bit put off by yoko's influence while at the same time people people ignore the stuff that she collaborated on that were generally well-liked the thing about yoko's crimes they're kind of hard to disprove like any conspiracy theory it's much harder to prove a negative that has been alleged like we don't know what was going on in Paul and George's heads they could have been just non-stop Yoko hate and it could have been johon being brainwashed from the moment he met her to the moment he died 14 years you know we can't prove a negative nobody ever said anything about what Paul having a spell over me when I was with him for a long time or me having a spell over Paul they didn't think that was abnormal two guys together I don't think anybody should be that interested in every detail of my life from Beatles to to now but anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist or even as part of the beatle has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with Yoko also her crimes are not that bad so you can't can't chant lock her up over her alleged crimes it's just like lock them all up it's also being annoying especially all that Avant guard singing but most importantly the disdain for yoko's crimes they're easy to relate to we all know of someone who was kind of ruined by some relationship they got into dude you ever have like a buddy of yours and he's he's he's dating some fuing psyo but he's in love with her so you can't fing say anything and you're just sitting there waiting for theing lightning bolt to hit your friend in the head where he finally realizes that he's dating a psycho and it's kind of like John that's your woman get her in line and John Lennon does not even [ __ ] he doesn't even blink the legend of the abusive controlling woman is overstated in its frequency and often utilized by manipulative abusive men we'll get to that later but these women absolutely exist in the real world everybody knows someone like that but you really can't discuss the backlash against Yoko without factoring in race there were plenty of interracial relationships between American men and Japanese women coming out of World War II in 1945 after the war had ended I met an American soldier named Walter L we fell in love and many of these women came back to the US but Yoko does not fit the image of such a woman at all she was not demure or submissive as The Stereotype said she should be we did get a look of real resentment from one woman she had lost a son at iojima miwako was Disturbed but when I explained she understood she was political she cared about the people dying in Vietnam she wanted an egalitarian marriage a basically unheard of thing before the feminist movement of the 1970s and one that John always struggled to deliver on a Western World barely a generation removed from World War II was of course always going to look at a woman woman like Yoko Ono whose whole thing was challenging people and taking them out of their comfort zone and make her into a cultural punching bag if she came into the public Spotlight like just look at this Esquire article written about her in 1970 nice I have to admit the Yoko songs I like during the Beatles period are few and far between especially the unfinished experimental ones guys just because you recorded something doesn't mean you need to put it out there and charge money for it so a fundamental distaste for Yoko and her influence on JN isn't bad or immoral it's okay to be like man I wish they hadn't met because I don't like the artistic Direction it took John I don't like the spiritual stuff I don't like the political stuff I don't like how he found feminist Jesus for a variety of reasons some of them valid even take this little diddy from 1971 and the song is called woman is the of the world and obviously there was a few people that reacted strangely to it but usually they were white and male John John John she's the slave of the slaves that's what Connelly said John stop talking John the all my black friends uh feel I have quite a right to say it cuz they understand it it's 100 Flo of Frights they're not all going to be winners it is fair to be disappointed that an artist whose work means a lot to you changed course when he met someone all totally reasonable feelings to have but of course it rarely ends at simple feelings of distaste [Music] [Music] on March 30th 1994 Kurt Cobain bought a [Music] gun Courtney Love who was the front woman for the band whole married Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cain in 1992 here they are Nirvana [Applause] by this point Nirvana's breakthrough Album never mind had already taken the World by storm with Cobain himself garnering many comparisons to John Lennon I think he was the closest that his generation came to a John Lenin in March of 1993 Courtney Love and several people close to Cobain staged an intervention concerned both with his use and his several recent attempts love suggested that they go to rehab together I love him so much it just turns to but Cobain was largely not receptive to put it lightly love decided to go to LA to check herself into rehab without him a few days later Cobain did check himself into a different rehab but he soon escaped and went missing about a week later he was found above the garage in his Seattle house dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound with a detailed side note lying nearby Nirvana leader Kirk Cobain an extraordinarily gifted singer songwriter and guitarist was found dead in Seattle on Friday morning and the Animals fall become my best I don't really think it takes away his dignity to read this considering that it's addressed to most of you for too many years now I feel guilty beyond words about these things on our last three tours I've had a much better appreciation of all the people I've known personally and as fans of our music but I still can't get out the frustration the guilt and the empathy I have for everybody there's good at all of us and I simply love people too much so why did you just [Music] stay so much that it makes me feel too [ __ ] sad thank you all from the pit of my burning nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the last years I'm too much of an erratic Moody person and I don't have the passion anymore and so remember and don't remember this cuz this is a [ __ ] lie it's better to burn out than to fade away God you [ __ ] Peace Love empathy C that Courtney Love drove him to do it was a common narrative but that she orchestrated his murder was even more common and it was terrifyingly mainstream an episode of Unsolved Mysteries posits Cobain's death as a well unsolved mystery maybe he was murdered when rock and roll singer Kurt Cobain committed few question the official ruling but private investigator Tom Grant is convinced that the truth about Cain's death has yet to be revealed I believe there was someone with him in that room I believe it was someone that he knew in 19 1998 a documentary called Kurt and Courtney premiered at sundance's Film Festival the film spends most of its runtime building a case that maybe there is some Credence to the idea that she conspired in his murder before ining nah she probably didn't but here's a lot of reasons why she might have there have been many documentaries and specials and YouTube exposes and podcasts in this F ever since take everything I want you the fact that Cobain took his own life a week before Hull's breakthrough album live through this was released did not help Love's Public Image with the conspiracy crowd neither did her behavior in the year following his death nor her Brazen attitude in general nor her bottomless talent to turn her friends and colleagues into enemies people such as Trent resner Dave Gro Tori Amos and serial abuser Marilyn Manson nor did the surfacing of domestic disturbances that happened while Cobain was alive help her such as the March 18th 1994 incident where love called the police police because she feared that Cobain who' locked himself in the bathroom might take his own life Cobain told the police that he was hiding from her and now I understand you I'm really kind of worried about Courtney now at this point you know I mean uh she's had a rough time with the media before and I could just see that a lot of people would make a field day out of this even at the time when I was not old enough to understand what was going on I struggled with the cruelty of the situation it would be life ringly horrible enough to lose a spouse to especially as a new mother with a baby only to then have millions blame her for it but then pause it maybe she actually did it maybe she was in on it Courtney of course blamed herself for what happened a great deal as so many in her situation do you feel his death is your fault in this instance yes because because I didn't need to call for an intervention you I shouldn't have called for an intervention both Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain had substance abuse problems before they met and like John and Yoko enabled each other we all know about your little problem oh let's keep them coming but Cobain not only suffered from depression his entire life it ran in his family he had two uncles who using Firearms Co also suffered from a condition that caused him chronic pain which was compounded by the stress of Fame and touring and it's obvious that his identity as a famous person was front and center in his mind as he was writing that note considering How It Ends a line which Courtney Love would eventually turn into a song it's better to rise fade [Music] away in the eyes of so many Kurt Cobain was not an autonomous person who struggled with mental illness and physical illness his entire life but an infantilized male genius Kurt Cobain may have been a Dynamo and a genius but deep down he was weak insecure an addict who was ripe for exploitation all this black widow needed to do was to get her fangs in him and he was doomed I really have to wonder why if people have so much respect for these Geniuses who create this work that they love so much that when it comes to their interpersonal relation ships they are reduced functionally to babies with no autonomy any action that they take that you don't like well it's not their fault a woman made them do it so for all you folks out there who think that I'm having the woool of my eyes well that's an insult to me you think you know me or you have some part of me because of the music and then you think that I'm have I'm being controlled like a dog on a leash because I do things with her then [ __ ] you brother or sister you don't know what's happening Megan Markle is a more recent example of a woman absolutely exor for ruining her husband's life and one I find particularly baffling race was obviously an element here as was her status as both an American and a divorce a but beyond that she didn't do anything other than rub people a certain way in fact it was through Megan Markle that I was introduced to the wild horid pseudoscientific world of YouTube body language experts there's been no considering the actual hugging between the two of them the kind of things that they did last year her smile becomes teeth that's it her eyes are dead Megan is making the headlines a pathway to victimhood the entirety of this clip is like a combination of Amber herd and kamla Harris yike but The Narrative of her ruination of Prince Harry is a particularly strange one to me because Prince Harry he doesn't do anything do something go he wasn't this sensitive genius like Kurt Cobain or an activist like John Lennon he was just a royal he didn't have any genius to ruin and yet The Narrative of the infantilized male genius ruined by the woman was still up and running like Yoko somehow she had seduced one of the most rich and famous men in the world and convinced him that he was both weak and worthless without her and every decision that the couple made since their marriage no matter how many times they explained their reasoning was done by her Cree for her benefit because this is not an adult man it is a baby Carla bruny wife of former French prime minister Nicholas sarosi took precious minutes out of her finite life on this Earth to photoshop Yoko Ono's face on Megan markle's body to imply that she I don't know broke up the royal family I mean and in that case good and there was much rejoicing but the legend of the infant ized male genius and the power obsessed abusive women who ruined them reached its Zenith in 2022 with the defamation trial of Johnny Depp who sued his ex-wife Amber herd for defamation for a 2018 oped she co-wrote in the Washington Post with the ACLU in which she referred to herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse the article itself was an oped pleading for Congress to reauthorize the violence against women act which was set to expire the article was not about Johnny Depp and did not mention him by name St suit heard for defamation all the same as this article was the closest thing to a straw he had to grasp at claiming not only that this article was defamatory but that he never ever laid hands on her nor have I ever struck um any woman um in my life despite the mountain of evidence that he had done so many times I truly do not know if there has ever been a more mainstream or successful misinformation campaign as this to the point that it's pointless for me to even begin debunking the absolutely bongers narrative that de's team popularized and at the risk of this becoming an hour-long tangent here is a list of things you would need to believe in order to buy into deth's narrative that it is he and not his much less famous much less Rich much physically smaller wife who was half his age who is the real victim [Music] here there is so much to learn from how this case played out but what I want to focus on is how eagerly people accepted Depp's patently ludicrous narrative and yes the narrative he presented at trial was that the mountain of evidence herd had against him was all an elaborate hoax rather than believing that a guy with a well-documented History of Violence intimate partner abuse and substance abuse dating back to an Amber herd was a toddler started falling off the wagon hard in the late 2010s after years of proclaimed sobriety set his sights on someone much younger and less powerful than he and started abusing her when he was drunk Andor High sometimes that after several years of this she started fighting back even blaming herself sometimes for their fights and admitting to having done so that over the course of their relationship the cycle of drinking physical and sexual abuse apologies love bombing and a warm glow post-abuse period deepened that his career fell apart not because of her false allegations but because he was aging out of the roles that made him famous and was a well-known liability because of his drinking and drug use that none of the executives behind the decisions to remove him from the Pirates of the Caribbean or fantastic Beast franchises even knew about Amber herd's oped until he sued her according to writer and podcaster Michael Hobbs one of the very very few people who wrote anything in support of Amber herd one of the reasons I've gotten so obsessed with this case is the sheer unreality of watching large swads of the internet and Progressive media act as if this narrative powerful man with anger management and drug problems beats wife is some implausible fairy tale rather than a story we've seen a million times oh make me over I have to ask a couple of things about Justin okay of course he has gone on television and pretty much said you broke his heart you did something that caused him so much pain so much suffering what did you do speaking of professionalism when is it professional to publicly bash someone who's going through a hard time few early adopters of social media have been so Vindicated by recent history than Cara Cunningham who literally became famous by becoming a joke for defending Britney Spears Leave Britney Alone Britney Spears spent years being exori by the tabloids as a bad mother who dates bad silly men she shaved her head she hit a paparazzo's car after the 9 millionth invasion of privacy and we all laugh it's funny now some 15 odd years later it's not so funny anymore Britney didn't make suffering or victimhood a part of her brand but she didn't need to one only look at the reality of her situation for like a minute look beautiful don't do it like that please come on this is your exercise jogging jogging by the late 201 T she had not had control over her personal life bodily autonomy or state for a decade caused that long intense whale of Agony had not been met with human empathy by her family but effectively by house arrest Pamela Anderson in some ways had it worse because something deeply personal was stolen from her by a man trying to get revenge not against her but against her husband hence we have the first major celebrity sex tape if anything her husband's flagging career was boosted by said sex tape where hers was functionally ruined and then there's Monica Lewinsky a non-public figure who never intended to be famous where do we even start two of these three women have had high Prestige miniseries from their points of view come out within the last couple of years Monica's with her help Pam's less so but both reflecting the change in public opinion that we had all gotten it wrong that these women were not attention seeking [ __ ] using their sluttiness to climb the social ladder or whatever but were victims both of the public and of the men in their lives to have something so intimate so stolen from you know something private from inside your marriage and have it taken without permission and exposed to the world it's devastating that the public scrutiny and demonization that they received wasn't just disproportionate to their transgressions it was not deserved at all but not Yoko Yoko Ono donated some John Lenin memorabilia to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this week the items include his Sergeant Pepper uniform an electric guitar he used at Cha Stadium and the original handwritten lyrics to several songs that she ruined if anything the legend of her evil has only grown since John's death Brandy what is love John Lennon said love is the answer he also said no thanks every hot woman I'll take this woman crawling out of the Well from The Ring who none of my friends like [Music] freak is if you have any Talent at all hi I'm I'm Yoko Ono the new spokes human for girly girl beer and now a song I've [Applause] written Jon give me the remote I was where the tomb of TI me your corono is unmad about you this week M about you okay that way I remember yeah that's pretty cool she'll be playing a conniving [ __ ] who broke up the beetles all right hey hey it's just a given that her contribution to history was breaking up the Beetles and ruining sensitive flower genius manbaby John lennen but why why is it that Yoko has never gotten her big reevaluation in the public Consciousness I think the operative word here is suffering but it has to be balanced with a perceived lack of playing the victim Britney never blamed the Press at the height of her crisis Pamela never spoke out on what happened to her except obliquely and as good-natured I can take a joke kind of thing all in and I realize I could paint the picture of my own life and that yeah life isn't easy I don't know I just thought why not love somebody in spite of it all and Monica disappeared from the public eye only to resurface as an anti-bullying Advocate some 20 years later after the dust had settled and most people realized wow that was pretty [ __ ] up Britney Spears Monica Lewinsky Pamela Anderson even Paris Hilton who has tied her her hither to unknown personal tragedies and do her personal brand in a very Savvy way good job Paris they eventually got their reevaluation and public sympathy to State the obvious a major difference here these are all white women Yoko is not but all the same there are women of color who got their respect after the fact the last years of Whitney Houston were a joke at the time I remember it I was there but now she is held in almost as much esteem as men who died in similar circumstances to her like Prince her death is reframed as a tragedy of Fame causing self-destruction more in the vein of Kurt Cobain rather than the hysterical joke the tabloids portrayed her as in her final years Amber herd will get her re-evaluation the evidence is just overwhelmingly on her side and the trial and media circus surrounding it just created a precedent too horrible to be forgotten if anything it should shine a spotlight not on male victims which Johnny Depp is not but on how abusers have always used the court system to further torture their victims through frivolous lawsuits like deps and Depp's unlikely success has opened the gates for more of the same but hers reappraisal will not be anytime soon in large part because unlike in the '90s where it was mainstream and tabloid media profiting from The Narrative well over on CBS Shania Twain had her big musical special I felt sorry for Shia see that brings up the age-old question of guys who do you watch the nice girl the pretty girl you can take home to Mom or the cheap slender girl you know puts out everybody goes for Monica now it's the public people on social media doing it for clout and for money in the the case of Britney Spears and Monica Lewinsky and Pamela Anderson it took years for them to get their reevaluation especially Lewinsky but Amber herd didn't need the likes of Jay Leno or Perez Hilton to be the Avatar of Cruelty like for Lewinsky or Britney Spears Depp weaponized Millions upon millions of people to do it for him the more complicit the public at large is in the unjustified public shaming of a person especially a woman the longer it will take for that reevaluation and what great Mass vilification of a celebrity has the public been more complicit in and for long longer than Yoko Ono yes but I like to work at home on the phone and with computers Yoko has mentioned in interviews sometimes how hard it was being so hated but she never made being victim a part of her brand for all that perod when people were blaming you for the breakup of The Beatles well you know I've been blamed I don't know maybe 30 40 years now you so you were aware of that going on you were aware I was fully aware of it because it was like they was jabbing me all the time like acupuncture it it is probably actually healthy that people jab me and I was turning that negative energy into positive energy and that's why I think that one of the reasons that I'm healthy now is because we're healthy well sort of healthy healthy is because uh I wenta she has never been perceived as vulnerable even Courtney Love let people see her cry a little bit early on after Kurt's death but she hardened up real quick I got to go back to work I mean it's what I do well no one's going to hold this against you I don't think that I think they do I mean I think that it's expected that that I should go close the drapes and and and you know shoot drugs or something for you know 5 years but I don't want to do that Yoko has never publicly been perceived as a person who suffered either before or after Jon's death mostly because she inherited all of Jon's estate she has his IP she had his money so what she got to suffer about a common attack against Yoko is that she wanted to used Jon's Fame to which I can only say no [ __ ] Sherlock yes she wanted Jon's Fame to elevate her art and her activism likewise Jon wanted to use her credibility neither of these people were stupid they knew exactly what they were doing any famous person has a fraught relationship with Fame but Jon wanted to use his for something good he wanted to weaponize it and through Yoko he found a shape for it this is why they did their famous bed inss they knew that their wedding would be a press Feeding Frenzy so they decided to use that to their advantage in a lot of ways they were the first celebrity activists they were predated SL inspired by civil rights activists forced into the role people like Muhammad Ali and his opposition to the draft my C won't let me go shoot my brother are some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America and shoot them for what they never call me John took the idea of the protest song to the next level to that of actual protest John and Yoko understood that celebrity was a weapon but it was never one they could fully control eventually came this understanding of the inherently destructive nature of Fame I wasn't fre I'd got boxed in it wasn't just because of a contract but the contract was physical manifestation of being in prison and that I might as well have gone to a 9 to-5 job was carry on the way I was carrying on I just got myself boxed in which combined with burnout on the music industry in general and the birth of their son and Sean is why John and Yoko stepped away from Fame for the second half of the 1970s only coming back when they felt the burst of Creative Energy that would lead to the two albums Double Fantasy and milk and honey our life together is so precious together we have grown these albums weren't political but more about celebrating domestic Bliss we are boring and proud we've been through the ringer and come out the other side Stronger by the release of Double Fantasy bending Fame to their own ends was no longer the [Music] goal maybe John and Yoko were no longer concerned with their celebrity but the man who killed John [Music] was stting on January 27th 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald bought a gun now somewhere in the black mining Hills of Dakota there lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon Oswald made his first assassination attempt using that gun on April 10th 1963 against former US Army General edwi Walker Walker was a crank who was so far to the political right he was forced to resign from the US Army eventually being charged with Insurrection and sedici conspiracy for his anti-integration activism Oswald a self-described Marxist I am a Marxist that is correct basically saw this guy as his equal and opposite political mortal enemy you might say the anti-americans as far as our Traditions Heritage and Constitution of concern and there are plenty of them in this country in spite of the federal government's position that there is no uh threat from within Rocky had come equipped with a gun to shoot off the land of his rival and when Oswald missed his mark on that day he'd get his chance at a high-profile political assassination about 7 months later on November 22nd 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald bummed a ride to work with a friend went to the sixth floor of the building where he worked loaded that same gun which he'd left there the day before President Kennedy died at 100 p.m. Central Standard [Music] Time he's been shot he's been shot Oswald has been shot but 48 hours and 7 minutes after the president's death his accused Slayer is [Music] dead I think a big reason why people have an easy time buying into the conspiracy narrative surrounding JFK isn't the idea that an otherwise insignificant person could just so happen to get a job in the right place at the right time and alter the course of history after his first more let's say politically appropriate assassination failed although that is part of it well there's an enemy within this country and of course it's the same enemy that uh represents the position that we should do away with the house on American Activities Committee why after all would he kill Kennedy a Democrat someone whom his imagined arched enemy often described as a communist it's the murkiness of oswal's motives made even more murky by his own assassination a few days later but really we know them from that first failed assassination attempt Oswald was a left-wing extremist with a highly inflated image of his own self-importance he was also a sad sack of [ __ ] who had never accomplished anything he couldn't hold down a job he couldn't keep his marriage together he couldn't even make it in communist Russia as a Soviet worker Oswald wasn't smart he wasn't articulate he didn't have any friends the only thing you could say for the former Marine was that he was a pretty good shot why he figured Kennedy was a good replacement for Walker was because by that point the political motives had ceased to matter to Oswald after all Kennedy was to oswal wal's right on most issues as Americans we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity back in the US in the US back in the US I didn't shoot anybody sir I haven't been told what I'm here for there's an ominous symbol in Lee Harvey Oswald's murder weapon people have a hard time wrapping their head around why Mass murderers do these things when the answer is pretty simple infamy is a quick and easy form of Fame Kennedy was important Oswald wanted to be important he wanted to be a part of history and in a culture as violence obsessed and fame obsessed as ours is it any wonder that so many people who otherwise contribute nothing to the people in their lives or Society at large hone in on killing people with guns as an easy way to get the attention to which they feel so entitled so when people say the official Narrative of the JFK assassination doesn't make sense or even the linen assassination which Shan onol lenen would eventually come to believe with what they mean is that these killings don't make narrative sense and therefore they don't satisfy our need for a cohesive narrative the JFK assassination doesn't make narrative sense the same way Lennon's murder doesn't make narrative sense he's not dead John lenon can't be dead it's just not satisfying wouldn't it make more sense if lenon was the victim of a political conspiracy after all the US government had done everything they could to keep him out of the country the FBI had killed Fred Hampton for similar reasons why not John linen the power to the people you know anybody knows that the people have the power all we have to do is awaken the power in the people the people are unaware it's like they're not educated to realize that they have power celebrities are much harder to track down now and are generally surrounded by security so we don't see celebrity assassination with as much frequency as we did in the ' 60s and 70s no now we see school shootings and mass shootings but they're done for more or less the exact same [Music] reason there's this misconception about Kurt Cobain especially among the younger generation that he was this intrinsically authentic figure who always bore his soul and spoke his mind and just accidentally became famous because he was in the right Zeitgeist at the right time he didn't cultivate His Image he was just being himself and this could not be further from the truth like look at the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit their breakout hit which he had a huge hand in shaping and how can you say this image is anything but perfectly [Music] cultivated and brilliantly so too this song Alone changed the landscape of Music forever as many many people have said Kurt Cobain was not good at being famous but he wanted to be famous he wanted to be the voice of a generation he wanted to be an icon but once he got what he wanted he saw that there was no way out but he did not anticipate the baggage or the damage it would do to him it's been all at this point to compare Kurt Cobain to his Idol John lenen but Cobain and linen shared a crucial similarity in how their painful home lives and traumas as teenagers made them seek Fame out seek out the Adoration of the masses as a substance to plug that shrieking void by the end Cobain knew he couldn't control it but lenon had convinced himself that he had it figured out no the thing of feeling that one did not was not justified in being alive unless one was fulfilling other people's dreams fulfilling their dreams or fulfilling my own dreams and Illusions about what I thought I was supposed to be mhm which in in retrospect turned out to be not what I am that that's what I was saying about had lost the initial freedom of the artist m by becoming enslaved to the image of the artist of what the artist is supposed to do and a lot of artists kill themselves because of that the So-Cal pain of the artist was always paid for by the freedom of the artist and the idea of being a rock and roll musician sort of suited my talents and mentality and the freedom was great but then I found that I was free you better [Music] out Fame is a weird animal everyone sees it as this desirable thing that anyone who has it should be grateful for and not this volatile position that is just as likely to destroy you as it isn't it's kind of like taking up smoking yeah I guess it makes you look cool but you know you've just octed your risk of dying young speaking of which George Harrison's official cause of death was lung cancer it's a big cigarette I will a big man he blamed years of smoking for the disease that ultimately killed him but it wasn't just cancer on December 30th 1999 George Harrison and his wife were attacked in their home by a paranoid schizophrenic who stabbed Harrison with a kitchen knife puncturing one of his lungs Harrison was hospitalized with more than 40 stabbed wounds and a part of his lung had to be removed not long after his cancer returned and George Harrison died about about 2 years after the attack given that Harrison was in remission before the attack many close to him believed that it was caused for the Cancer's return and one way or the other it definitely hastened his death but it definitely took years off his life you know so if you're trying to fight cancer and then you're trying to stay alive for something like that you know it's got to it's got to take it out of you you know if not for being stabbed 40 times if not for having part of his lung removed how much longer might George have had weeks months years how much time was taken from him because an obsessed fan broke into his house John linen and Yoko Ono tried to harness Fame for the greater good they tried to be both of the people and above the people eventually they gave up trying to control Fame stepping away from the public eye to raise their son only for John to lose his life basically the second they returned to the public eye this epidemic of Fame destroying people still rages on but never does the finger point inward at a Fame obsessed populace who demands infinite product at the system of celebrity itself a condition which the human mind never evolved to endure I don't want this to be reductive as saying whole cloth Fame bad I think in human civilization Fame is inevitable and there are some people who've learned to be good at being famous any question I saw an ad today for Mariah K's line at Victoria Secret and I thought there's someone who's good at being famous Maria Carey I want to believe that she actually does have it figured out same with Paul McCartney Fame was on him for a while but he figured it out eventually and I'm grateful that he stayed in the public eye and even John and George and Ringo I feel like my appreciation for the work that they did both with and after the Beatles is enriched by knowing about them by knowing their personalities and how that informs their songwriting and the way they make art but I don't feel entitled to any more than that you you remember remember when you were with the Beatles sure sure that was awesome worldwide celebrity is a condition that carries with it a higher mortality rate than most occupations hell higher than even some forms of cancer and it's weird that we just kind of accept this as not only a norm of having a system of celebrity at all but still sees celebrity as something to be envied first of all the 27 Club it's one of these things that everybody talks about in the music world but how did you come up with the idea to bring this musical adventure to Las Vegas that these people whom we claim to so Admire have a good chance of being destroyed if not by randos with guns then by themselves through enabled substance abuse and untreated mental illness there is a good argument to be made that Johnny Depp is a victim and that his career was destroyed but not by his ex-wife John linen and Yoko Ono were more thoughtful and conscious than most about how they wanted to use their Fame John linen wanted to be a famous rock star but once he became one of the most famous people alive he found it all kind of pointless he no longer wanted to be famous for being famous's sake he wanted his Fame to have meaning I don't think it's fair to say that they failed at trying to use their Fame for Meaningful purpose but I do think it's fair to question whether that level of Fame can ever really be controlled and I do think it's fair to ask if it was worth the cost love you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] they've arrived at January 1969 and they're trying to figure out what it is to be the Beatles in at this point in point in time and it's almost like you know the the um oh God I'm going to mention talk oh damn it shouldn't be happening at the end of Lord of the Rings when when um fro says you know we set out to save the shy Sam and we did but not for me I I kind of have started to project that because the Beatles changed the world did all this only to realize that there's not really a place for them they can't they don't want they want to perform to 300 people they last performed 3 years ago to 60,000 you try to sell 300 tickets to a show you're going to have 60,000 people King up the street what they want to do is they can't it's not practical they and so they suddenly realizing we what we want to do we're the biggest band in the world we have a very simple thing we want to do we just want to be rock and roll band people we can't do it the world has no place for us anymore once there a way to get back [Music] home once away that Abby Road is the Beatles best album and one of the greatest albums of all time is well you know that's just like uh your opinion man but it is a fairly widely held opinion especially by Beatles fans though it wasn't their last album to be released it was the last they recorded and is now considered to be the final Beatles album it's got a high quotient of classic bangers on it but that's true of all of their albums especially the later ones to me what makes it special is how it ends with a medley which again John spent the first few years of the 70s being wrong about like the way the songs flow into each other build on each other [Music] it still blows my mind it's one of those artistic Creations that really makes me wonder what part of yourself you have to dig into to come up with something like that in a way that very very few things do I never give you my pill I only send you my invitations John did contribute to the medley but it really belongs to Paul who like all of them knew that this was probably their last harra as the Beatles and wanted to make it [Music] special you're going to carry that way car that long inevitably some of that medley is written about what's going on between them but Paul being Paul he ends it on a triumphant note the end the love you take is equal to the love you [Applause] [Music] may I mean yeah there's this weird diddy at the end but we we don't need to count that girl Chang from day to the end is the final Beatles song of The Beatles [Music] era and we could talk a bit about what came after how Anthology brought the surviving Beatles back together the new singles made from Jon's demos that Yoko gave Paul in the80s how now and then is really a pretty Perfect song for looking back on how things ended but to me part of what makes the Beatles so special is that they ended on Abby Road the most popular popular bands and artists of all time usually have a fizzling before they call it quits people all around the world in every nation together forit a slow decline or a steep one if it doesn't end in tragedy at their height as it so often does but not the Beatles they chose to end on their highest note so when people blame Yoko for the breakup or even Paul I have to ask what more did you want from them did you want them to keep bitterly making music together slowly declining into mediocrity instead of ending on the note of Triumph they did end on was what we did get from them in their time really not enough for you well some people you know would go on and on forever singing the same tune and playing the same gig if they were making some money you know but uh I think we'd all rather give that up and try going on our own and try doing something we really want to do remember love remember love love is what it takes to see in 2015 Yoko Ono got her first dedicated Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City it was called Yoko Ono onew woman show and it was based on a parody of aom show she did in 1971 where she falsely claimed she'd released an army of house flies into the Museum and called it the Museum of Modern fart see whoever said Yoko didn't have a sense of humor at the time this was a call out of Moma not only for their exclusion of Yoko personally but broadly of their exclusion of the fluxus movement in general which in hindsight was not a great look considering how influential they were in the art world but it also shows how in The Narrative of man destroyer and fun Ruiner also lost is her identity as an artist which is not hard to find except that people don't seem interested in looking yoko's art has always been rooted in process and instructing the viewer to imagine things that are conceptually strange or paradoxical but challenge them such as asking a stranger to engage in things that make both them and her uncomfortable or that make them question their participation as a viewer and where it begins and ends all we're saying is give piece a chance well if the least we can do is give somebody a laugh we're willing to be the world's clowns take for example this idea that she tweets about every few years or so you see the chair as it is but when you burn the chair you suddenly realize that the chair in your head did not burn or disappear most wrote this off as weird quirky manic pixie nonsense but it's emblematic of her art to challenge people in the way they see the world the narratives they construct in their mind so let's say there is an object and something destroys it but that does not mean your image of the object has been destroyed so it goes with a lot of the popular narratives about famous people that I've mentioned here especially famous women narratives that the majority of assume must be true in these cases because many of them come from the people in these women's lives the disgraced movie star who blames his ex-wife for his own ruined career the pi who speaks out against the woman who hired him in desperation to find her suicidal husband the former lenona employees who eventually make destroying Yoko their entire personality even the powerful even literal princes and princesses of the world cannot control their own narrative when there are a lot of people invested in The Narrative of something more Insidious to quote a r Rand medium article about Deb V herd which was written under what I assume to be a pseudonym to protect the author from blowback this case is about misogyny and about how quickly We Believe even the most patently ludicrous stories once they're uttered from a powerful man's mouth and how much we still so dearly love to have a witch to burn [Music] it conversely we could read the Tweet about the chair as another one of yoko's instruction pieces maybe we see the myth of Yoko the Destroyer maybe we burn it maybe after it turns to Ash what remains is the thing she actually did rather than the crimes misattributed to her a small book of surreal instructions the lyrics to imagine footage of strangers cutting off her clothes piece by piece pictures of a new bride lying in bed with the man she loves for a week a tree full of wishes all things that could replace the burned falson image along with a 90-year-old woman still out there making art still using that art to encourage people to examine the way they see the world still trying despite everything to control her own narrative love is what it takes to [Music] remember [Music] [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: Lindsay Ellis

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Length: 101min 10sec (6070 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 05 2024