In article <41jtd6$7d1@harbour.awod.com> pshank@awod.com (Paula Shank) writes:

>I don't think she has talent, that's why she married John, so that she
>would be in a position to have people listen to her music....

This still strikes me as a curious assessment, since Yoko's primary
artistic expression was non-musical. In fact, she has stated (and 
then-gallery-owner John Dunbar concurs) that Yoko was reluctant to
meet Lennon because of his "millionare" status and the fact that she
cared nothing for pop music.

Yoko had produced experimental music, but not mainstream pop, and seems
to have had no interest in the latter at all. Her creative focus seems
centered around films (what were then called "art films") and conceptual
artistic "happenings", of a type not found very much now but then quite
the rage in New York and London.

For contemporary opinion on Yoko's output, you might want to examine
what critics of the time said of her work. I too am often more impressed
with a conceptual artist's audacity and chutzpah than their creative
ability, but even so it takes someone trained in the field to properly
assess her talent. I'm no expert.

>I always felt she didn't truly love him, but only used him. But of course
>that's the opinion of an outsider looking in.

Well, staying with a man for twelve years---enduring a not-insubstantial
interlude of separation, as well as emotional upheavals of various
sorts; bearing his child at great risk to her own health; and managing
their business matters with surprising skill and good fortune---does
not strike *me* as "using him", and I'm an outsider too! :-)

The fact is, when you're an outsider, there's an elemental truth you
always miss.

No matter how irritating Yoko Ono may have been to some Beatles
fans (and what do we matter, anyway?), she was exactly the
woman John felt he'd been seeking for years. He said so, numerous
times.

Her outrageousness, avant-garde courage, and conviction of her
own artistic worth all captivated him, and perhaps made pale his
own inner fears and inadequacies. Did she suggest to John that
such apprehensions were meaningless? Her methodology could certainly
be seen that way. This was years before "performance art" was
even a well-known phrase, and much of what Yoko did in the art
world was seen by outsiders as merely bizarre. Yet such an artist 
cannot afford fear. Hers was the sort of statement John admired; hers
was, apparently, a kind of bravery and insouciance that provided
him with s vision for his own artistic future (even if you happen
to think that he took the wrong turn. :-)

His attraction to Yoko, and hers to him, was not entirely based in
music as performance or entertainment, but music as a portion
of art...and life. John had been creating art anyway for years, but 
his need was to make a clean break here, a solemn divorce of his
old way of life. It wasn't just first wife Cynthia who had failed
to provide that nourishment; it was now his profession, which
could no longer sustain him. He needed a new art form, and
part of that need was realized in making his joint life with
Yoko into a new artistic statement. Life itself became potentially
unified with one's art.

No question that this was the beginning of the end of the
Beatles; but that was inevitable, no matter how long the
group continued to put out records and bicker like tired
old siblings. It was not so much Yoko's entrance into the
recording studio that harmed the Beatles' future; it was
John's estrangement from his former life, and his desperate
need to consolidate his emotional and creative yearnings
into one person, that caused the Fabs' flame to flicker.

But frankly, they were almost all looking for a similar way
out.

What about the problems John encountered after this time?
Would they have been eliminated or at least eased if he'd
just settled in for the long haul with Cyn? There might be
no "Imagine", no return to graphic (no pun intended) art, no
Green Card travails, no political/revolutionary pronouncements,
no "Double Fantasy" and promise of a return to composing.... 

But maybe these aren't good enough? Maybe, you might argue, John
could have produced much better, more consistent art had he
shared that quiet, pliant, devoted lifestyle with a docile
mate. And I'm not arguing against ordinary, simple, dependable
domestic harmony! Good heavens; it suits many quite wonderfully.

But it's also arguably not for everyone, and I'd still suggest
that it would have destroyed Lennon's art---however you define it---
and perhaps have embalmed his soul, too, had he settled for life
without his self-determined soulmate.

John and Yoko's relationship was not one of complete bliss and 
romantic innocence; it was often tense, estranged, drug-tinged, 
and seemed unpleasantly bombastic and farfetched to viewers on
the outside. But we remain on the outside. It was their life;
in some sense it is *still* their life. And while it was not
always a form of art---or a creative connectivity---that we
can accept, it's worth wondering if it was, in the end, their
own justifiably best of all possible worlds.

-- 
"Fads don't last, but it should be clear by now that 
the Beatles are no ordinary fad."
----------------------------------------------------
saki@evolution.bchs.uh.edu