Yoko

Description

An intimate and revelatory biography of Yoko Ono from the bestselling author of Beautiful Boy.

John Lennon once described Yoko Ono as the world’s most famous unknown artist. ‘Everybody knows her name, but no one knows what she does.’ She has only been important to history insofar as she impacted Lennon. Throughout her life, Yoko has been a caricature, curiosity and often a villain – an inscrutable seductress, manipulating con artist and caterwauling fraud.

The Lennon / Beatles saga is one of the greatest stories ever told, but Yoko’s part has been missing – hidden in John’s formidable shadow, further obscured by flagrant misogyny and racism. This definitive biography of Yoko Ono’s life will change that. 

In this book, Yoko Ono takes centre stage. Yoko’s life, independent of Lennon, was an amazing journey. Yoko spans from her birth to wealthy parents in pre-war Tokyo, her refugee status during the war, and her arrival onto the avant-garde art scene in London, Tokyo and New York City. It delves into her groundbreaking art, music, feminism and activism.

We see how she coped under the most intense, relentless and cynical microscope as she was saddled with the most heinous crime imaginable then: breaking up the greatest rock-and-roll band in history. 

We see Yoko Ono through her own eyes, from a vantage point we have never seen before. Drawing from Yoko’s personal letters, journals, films and videos and unpublished manuscripts, as well as access to her surviving family, closest friends, past collaborators and enemies, David Sheff covers the 90 years of Yoko’s rollercoaster life. 

Yoko is a harrowing, moving, propulsive and vastly entertaining biography of a woman whose story has never been accurately told. The book not only rehabilitates Yoko Ono’s reputation but elevates it to iconic status.

Reviews

 'In this propulsive memoir, writer David Sheff rewrites the script on one of music's most misunderstood characters' * Marie Claire Australia *
'In this unfiltered, unvarnished portrait of the artist, Sheff succeeds magnificently in bringing one of popular music's most divisive and misunderstood personae to life...Yoko is required reading for die-hard Beatles fans and music lovers, to be sure, but it's also a master class about assembling the evidence and rethinking the manner in which we think about our culture's most iconic figures'

-- Kenneth Womack * Salon *
'Few public figures have been as maligned and misunderstood as Yoko Ono, an artist most famous for being the wife and creative partner of John Lennon. Sheff offers an expansive portrait of Ono as avant-garde artist, vocalist and peace activist. Sheff interviewed Ono and Lennon in 1980 for Playboy just months before Lennon's murder. In the aftermath, Sheff and Ono developed a close friendship, which informs this in-depth and compelling biography' -- Freda Love Smith * Booklist *
'The former music journalist has finally distilled his archive of interviews and notes into Yoko: A Biography, a decisive rebuke to decades of slander and scorn to paint the full picture of a woman without equal in the 20th century' * San Francisco Chronicle *
'Sheff adeptly traces the familiar beats of Ono and Lennon's love story from its earliest days through the fallout following his murder and beyond, while also providing a comprehensive and enriching analysis of Ono's art career, highlighting in particular how she helped pioneer the notion of art and performance cocreated with an audience. It makes for an intimate and perceptive portrait' * Publishers Weekly *
'Inside the complex world of an artist who was much more than a Beatle wife... reveals Ono as an emotionally sensitive and charmingly provocative artist who, in Lennon, found an ideal muse'
* Kirkus Reviews *
'David Sheff was the last journalist to interview Yoko Ono and John Lennon before Lennon's 1980 murder, and he and Ono subsequently became friends. His engaging and intimate biography provides a full picture of the woman unfairly accused of breaking up the Beatles, highlighting her long, provocative career as an avant-garde artist' * The Christian Science Monitor, The 10 Best Books of March *

Author description

David Sheff is the author of multiple books including the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Beautiful Boy, which was turned into a movie starring Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, WIRED, Playboy, and elsewhere. His piece for The New York Times, "My Addicted Son," received an award from the American Psychological Association for Outstanding Contribution to Advancing the Understanding of Addictions.