Yesterday was a very sunny day for me, despite the monster rain here, thanks to my friend Yoko Ono, who sent me a beautiful Xmas card. Of all the songwriters I have interviewed in the last 30 years, there is not one as generous and gracious - and misunderstood - than Yoko. She has sent me cards - and gifts - every year since I first met her, and got to sit in the white room at the Dakota with Johns famous tuxedo-white grand piano, 1992 - nobody else does that. Most have had photos of her - some with Sean Lennon when he was a kid still - and are framed on the walls of my office, which is a shrine to her. This years card has a photo of a blue sky filled with white clouds, and behind the clouds are the words: IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE LIVING LIFE IN PEACE. Inside, just write, and in black ink in her friendly handwriting: To Paul, Love Yoko 2014. I do love Yoko. Soon as I met her, as I wrote in my book Songwriters on Songwriting, I knew why John loved her. Shes super bright and funny, and theres a softness in her eyes, a happy twinkle, you dont see in photos. And as John said: She didnt just inspire my songs, she inspired me. The whole idea of Imagine - of imagining a world beyond war - was Yokos, from Grapefruit. So in her honor I post this, my favorite song by her, and the very last recording session Lennon ever did - with some of his most furious, unrestrained guitar playing ever. I asked her about the source of this song, and she said it came from when they visited my home town - Chicago, Illinois!! - and went to Lake Michigan - frozen then as it often is - and thought, since it was a lake, that shed be able to see across to the other side. Something my California-native wife also thought! This is one of the Great Lakes, though - its big! It came, as great songs often do, from the revelation of that vision. Just how great some cold forces can be. To this day I put up with the words of people - even close friends - who HATE this woman. For crazy reasons. (She actually did not break up the Beatles, John was making his own choices) and mean reasons. She remains one of the most misunderstood artists of our time. But she is also one of the most compassionate and generous. When I worked for years at SongTalk as part of the National Academy of Songwriters (who bravely allowed me to put her on the cover - Yoko! -) she became a very generous donor, and helped us keep our doors open. Truth is, before I ever met her she touched my life in a direct and profound way. I was living in the NY area - to be close to John - when he was killed. It wrecked me. Seemed like the world was over, and New York was to blame. I gave in to the urgent pleas of my girlfriend to move to Los Angeles. Yoko put our a brave and brilliant album, describing the horror, called Season of Glass which summed up for me, better than anything ever, what I felt - that I didnt want this horror to end. I didnt want the world to end. There is a season that never passes, she wrote, and that is the Season of Glass. I wrote her that I loved her, and thanked her for that album. Too horrific for a lot of people, it shared the reality of what she went through. But ended, as always, with an affirmation. I wrote her that my season of glass was looking through airplane windows as I headed west to California forever. That Xmas, years before I ever met her - before i even was doing hardly any music journalism - I got my first Xmas card from her. She and little Sean and Santa in the white room. It meant the world to me then - to put it lightly - it blew my mind - and it still does. Thank you Yoko. Love you forever.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 18:02:20 +0000
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