The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko
April 2 - June 21, 2009 - Free Admission
See also: John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Chronologies and The World before and after 1969
John Lennon was born in Liverpool on October 9, 1940, right in the middle of an air raid. Given up by his parents at an early age, he was taken by his maternal aunt. Even as a child, he thought of overturning the established order and invented his own colourful world that contrasted with the grey, economically depressed Britain of the postwar years in which he lived. The impact of the arrival of rock ’n’ roll represented the hope of a different kind of future, another model to follow rather than that, like his sailor father, of the working-class hero.
Like thousands of young people throughout Britain, in March 1957 John Lennon formed a band, the Quarrymen, which Paul McCartney and later George Harrison joined. They played rock ’n’ roll standards. The Beatles’ early gigs, first in the basement nightclubs of Hamburg’s Sankt Pauli neighbourhood in 1960, then at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, where they became the leading group on the scene, quickly turned the teenagers and amateurs they were into adult professionals.
As of 1964 stars in the United States and then in the rest of the world, the group was now playing in huge venues, like New York’s Shea Stadium in 1965. Tired of the very poor technical conditions afforded by such shows, they decided to give up touring, since their music was becoming more complex. Their success fanned by television and radio, the Beatles became at once stars, heroes, demigods, consumer products and sacrificial victims of a religion that had gone out of control: Beatlemania. The group’s musical adventure no longer involved the realm of performance but the creation of music in the studio. In 1965, the album Rubber Soul, a four-track recording, heralded the beginnings of an aesthetic change that made the Beatles the leaders of a new pop culture. The great advancements in sound technology (stereo, audio experiments, distortion of frequencies) then taking place offered them the means to explore new sonic avenues that the stage could not. On August 29, 1966, their final public concert took place before thousands of fans in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.
Yoko Ono was born in 1933. She became interested in music and art at a very young age. She learned to listen to the sounds of daily life and the environment and translate them into music, just as John Cage would later do. She received encouragement in this direction from her banker father, who passed on his own thwarted ambition to become a pianist to his daughter. In New York, where the family had emigrated in 1952, she studied poetry, music and composition, penetrating the world of the musical avant-garde along with her first husband, Toshi Ichiyanagi, a young Japanese musician and composer. Yoko became the “high priestess of happenings,” holding concerts of experimental music in her loft attended not only by Walter De Maria, La Monte Young, Yvonne Rainer and David Tudor, but also by Marcel Duchamp, Peggy Guggenheim and Max Ernst.She was an active participant in the Fluxus movement, created in 1961 on the initiative of George Maciunas, which brought together a non-dogmatic and fluctuating community of eclectic artists living in the United States, Germany and Japan. In many ways a continuation of Futurism and Dada, Fluxus advanced a spirit of play, imposture and chance in ephemeral, non-reproducible art anchored in the present—an affirmation of life. As composer John Cage, one of the movement’s main instigators, declared, it aimed to make everyone truly aware that they are living, killing their origins and cutting their links to the past through actions that removed the sacred aura from music, theatre, poetry and the visual arts. In her first performance pieces, Yoko Ono combined a post-Dada approach, Antonin Artaud’s theories on theatre and Zen Buddhist philosophy with actions inspired by Japan’s Gutai movement. In September 1966, she was invited to take part in London’s Destruction in Art Symposium organized by the artist Gustav Metzger.
JOHN LENNON October 9, 1940 – John Winston Lennon is born in Liverpool during a German air raid. 1956 – Lennon’s mother gives him his first guitar. The Quarrymen, a group playing skiffle music (with blues and jazz influences), is formed. The following year Paul McCartney and George Harrison join the group. 1958 – After the death of his mother Julia, John Lennon learns to play musical instruments such as the banjo and the ukulele. 1960 – The Beatles is formed. After meeting some success in Liverpool, the group is invited to play in Hamburg. 1962 – Lennon marries Cynthia Powell, with whom he has a son, Julian, the following year. 1963 – Release of the Beatles’ first studio album, Please Please Me. 1964 – The Beatles’ first North American tour and an historic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9 and 16. In April, Lennon publishes his first book, In His Own Write. Concerts at the Montreal Forum on September 8 and 9. 1965 – A second book, A Spaniard in the Works, is published. The Beatles album Rubber Soul is released. 1966 – The album Revolver is released and the final Beatles concert is held at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29. Lennon meets Yoko Ono in London. He acts in Richard Lester’s film How I Won the War. 1967 – The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is released. 1968 – Cynthia Powell and Lennon divorce. The Beatles, also known as the White Album, is released eleven days after Lennon and Ono’s album Two Virgins. 1969 – The Beatles perform in January, on the roof of their record label’s offices in the Apple building, for the film Let It Be. The Beatles album Abbey Road is released in September. 1970 – Fourteen drawings from Lennon’s Bag One are exhibited in London. The Beatles officially break up in April. 1971 – Lennon leaves England. The album Imagine is released. 1973 – After his separation from Yoko Ono, John Lennon lives in Los Angeles for a few months. His album Mind Games is released. 1974 – The album Walls and Bridges is released. 1975 – After several years of attempts, Lennon obtains his green card from American immigration authorities. The album Rock ’n’ Roll is released. 1980 – Returning from a recording session, John Lennon is murdered in New York on December 8. |
JOHN AND YOKO 1966 – John Lennon meets the artist Yoko Ono at Indica Gallery in London on November 9. 1967 – Yoko Ono’s exhibition Half a Wind, sponsored by John Lennon, is held at the Lisson Gallery in London. 1968 – Lennon and Ono’s first experimental record album, Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, is released, showing the two nude on the cover. Acorn Event performance at Coventry Cathedral. 1969 – Lennon and Ono are married in Gibraltar in March. The album Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions is released. Amsterdam and Montreal Bed-ins; a conference for peace follows at the University of Ottawa. In September, the 45 rpm single “Cold Turkey” is released. At the Rock and Roll Revival Festival in Toronto in September, Ono spends the first part of the concert in a white bag (Bagism). The film of the concert, Live Peace Toronto, is released in December, a few days before the campaign War Is Over! If You Want It begins. The Wedding Album is released. 1970 – The album Plastic Ono Band is released. 1972 – In June, the album Some Time in New York City is released. 1973 – April 1: Nutopia declaration. Lennon and Ono separate for eighteen months; Lennon describes this period as his “lost weekend.” The album Mind Games is released. 1975 – On October 9, Sean Taro Ono Lennon is born on John Lennon’s thirty-fifth birthday. 1980 – The album Double Fantasy is released. 1984 – Posthumous release of Lennon’s album Milk and Honey in collaboration with Ono. |
YOKO ONO February 18, 1933 – Yoko Ono is born in Tokyo. Her father, a banker, is transferred to San Francisco six weeks before her birth. 1935 – Ono’s family settles in San Francisco, where she sees her father for the first time. 1937 – Return to Japan. Ono studies music at the prestigious Jiyu-gakuen Music School. 1945 – Air raids on Tokyo. The family takes shelter in a bunker and then flees to the countryside. 1951 – Yoko Ono becomes the first woman to be admitted to the philosophy program of Gakushuin University in Kyoto. 1952 – Ono returns to live with her family in Scarsdale, New York, and continues her studies in art and music at Sarah Lawrence College. 1956 – Ono marries the Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. 1961 – Ono’s first solo show, Paintings and Drawings, is held at the AG gallery in New York, run by George Maciunas, the founder of the Fluxus movement. As part of the first International Week of Today’s Music, she performs A Grapefruit in the World of Park: A Piece for Strawberries and Violin at the Comédie Canadienne theatre in Montreal. 1962 – Ono divorces Toshi Ichiyanagi and returns to Japan, where she exhibits her Instruction Paintings. She gives a series of performances at the Sougetsu Art Center in Tokyo. 1963 – Ono marries the filmmaker Anthony Cox. Kyoko Chan Cox is born. 1964 – Publication of the book Grapefruit. Ono moves to New York. 1965 – Cut Piece is performed at Carnegie Hall in New York. Following its success, Yoko Ono is invited to present her work the following year at the Indica Gallery in London, where she meets John Lennon. 1966 – Yoko Ono is invited to participate in the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS), organized in London by the artist Gustav Metzger. The exhibition Unfinished Paintings and Objects is held at the Indica Gallery in London. 1967 – She makes the film No. 4 (Bottoms)and performs her Lion Wrapping Event in Trafalgar Square, London. 1968 – Bag Piece performance in Paris. Yoko Ono appears on the David Frost Show, where she performs Painting to Hammer a Nail with the show’s guests. 1971 – The album Fly is released. 1973 – The album Feeling the Space is released. 1981 – The album Season of Glass is released. 1986 – The “World Tour for Starpeace,” to promote the album Starpeace released this year. 1989 – The exhibition Yoko Ono: Objects, Films is held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. 1991 – Ono revives “Give Peace a Chance” to protest against the Gulf War. 2001 – The album Blueprint for a Sunrise is released. 2002 – A retrospective exhibition of Yoko Ono’s work, entitled Yes, is held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Art Gallery of Ontario. 2007 – The Imagine Peace Tower is inaugurated in Iceland. The album Open Your Box is released, with songs by Yoko Ono remixed by famous DJs. 2009 – On June 6, Yoko Ono will be awarded a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Venice Biennale. In the words of the Biennale press release, Yoko Ono, wife of John Lennon, is a “pioneer in performance and conceptual art [and] one of the most influential artists of our time. Long before becoming an icon in popular culture and in peace activism, she developed artistic strategies that have left a lasting mark both in her native Japan and in the West.”Yoko Ono is awarded a lifetime achievement Gold Lion at the Venice Biennale. |
The Early 1960s
Profound socio-political changes begin to be felt around the world in the early 1960s. In Quebec, the Quiet Revolution brings rapid modernization to Quebec society. There are a few bumps along the road: the Front de libération du Québec carries out terrorist activities and violent protests are held. The Quebec Women’s Federation is founded in 1966.
In the United States, two great currents stir up American society. The African-American Civil Rights Movement follows on the wave of decolonisation in African countries and the unrest in South Africa in the face of apartheid, which leads to the arrest of Nelson Mandela. The movement’s leading figures are Stokely Carmichael (Black Power), Bobby Seale (the Black Panthers), Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, who delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 and wins the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965. The peace movement, born during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, raises people’s awareness of the threat of nuclear weapons; in 1962 Linus Pauling receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign against nuclear-weapon testing. Protests against the war in Vietnam are the logical consequence; the first bombings and the arrival of American troops date from 1965, and the first protests are held in Washington that same year. In 1967, 100,000 come out to hear Martin Luther King speak in front of the United Nations headquarters during a march for peace. In October of that year the Pentagon is encircled by thousands of protesters engaged in a sit-in for peace. “Flower Power” is born out of the protest movement against the war in Vietnam.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the Berlin Wall goes up in 1961. “May 1968,” an unprecedented student and worker uprising, takes place in France: The country is paralysed by a spontaneous general strike. That same year sees the Prague Spring, when Czechoslovakia is taken unaware by its population’s non-violent resistance to Warsaw Pact troops.
The 1960s are a time of major advances in safeguarding human rights. Amnesty International, which works for the release of political prisoners and for the abolition of the death penalty and torture, is founded in 1961. In 1964, US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits all discrimination based on a person’s race or sex. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in 1968 to René Cassin, principal author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
1969
Violent protests take place at the University of California in Berkeley in May. President Richard Nixon announces the withdrawal of 60,000 US soldiers from Vietnam in December. In Canada, the Omnibus Bill, precursor to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, is introduced by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and adopted on May 14: Reflecting the new values of the Canadian people, it addresses abortion, homosexuality and gun ownership.
On June 28, the Stonewall riots erupt in New York. They will prove to be a turning point in the movement for equality, as homosexuals begin to claim their rights.
On August 4 in Paris, Henry Kissinger and Xuan Thuy, representing the United States and Vietnam respectively, hold secret peace talks, which fail.
In August there are violent clashes between Catholics and Protestants in Belfast and Londonderry; for the first time, the English army opens fire on protesters in Belfast.
On November 13 and 14, a protest in Washington against the Vietnam War attracts 250,000 people.
On December 9, the Rogers Plan for the Middle East is presented by William P. Rogers, the Nixon administration’s secretary of state. The plan calls for Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula according to a calendar approved by Israel and Egypt, peaceful relations between the two countries and the creation of several demilitarized border zones.
A technological revolution is under way. The Concorde takes its first flight in France; in the United States the Boeing 747, the largest passenger aircraft, takes its first test flight. On July 21, Apollo XI lands on the moon. A billion people watch as the astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin take their first steps on the moon: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Post-1969
In 1971, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his policy of openness to the Eastern Bloc and his rapprochement with the German Democratic Republic (Ostpolitik). The two German nations recognize each other’s sovereignty and are admitted to the United Nations the following year.
New protests against the Vietnam War. In 1971, 500,000 protesters march through the streets of Washington; more than 7,000 people are arrested. The war in Vietnam ends in 1973 following negotiations between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, who are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The agreement stipulates that US troops will withdraw from the country within sixty days; the Vietnamese government agrees to free American prisoners of war. The final marine returns to the United States on March 29. In Vietnam, battles between North and South continue. On April 30, 1975, the South Vietnamese government capitulates, North and South are reunited, and the capital is renamed Ho Chi Minh City.
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