The album was released in November 1980 to critical disdain, but Lennon’s murder the following month sent sales stratospheric, and Lennon, Yoko Ono and Douglas went on to win a Grammy. They had already recorded the intended follow-up, Milk and Honey, but its release was delayed until 1984.
That year, Douglas sued Yoko Ono over unpaid royalties for his work on that album and Double Fantasy: “I waited three years, then I finally said to Yoko, ‘It’s really a lot of royalties probably accruing here… ’ And I got a nasty letter, almost like, ‘F— you, you’re not getting anything.’ ” A court eventually awarded him more than $2.5 million.
Not that I know anything about this – just gossip from the papers etc – but she’s as rich as Croesus off those royalties. And yet she’s done the above, and also refused to pay out anything to Julian until a court case. Sure, she didn’t, legally, have to either but, you know.
Sorta, you know, not nice?
She’s a little rich girl “artist”. What do you expect?
Yoko not nice? Anybody shocked?
I dunno what sort of rep she had in Japan, or anywhere else really, before she met Lennon. It’s all reflected glory.
She was fairly well-known in avant-garde art circles. This is not the same as being admired.
“Avant-garde art”. There’s an oxymoron for you. I remember sitting in the library at Art School reading a Conceptualist magazine. Even then, and wishing to be cutting-edge myself, I thought: “this is utter bollocks”.
A friend’s husband is (was) a Conceptualist. You’d be hard pressed to meet a more useless cunt than him.
Yoko? Not unattractive: nice legs but kipper tits. Probably a good shag at the time. Absolutely full of shit.
One of (perhaps the most famous of) her ‘art works’ was Cut Piece (1964) in which she knelt on stage fully clothed while members of the audience were allowed to use a pair of scissors to snip away as they wished.
Lennon’s later work sounds to me like he was clinically depressed.
No surprise, really.
The musicians were kept off the booze and drugs and served tea and sushi (or “dead fish”, as Lennon called it). Plates of sunflower seeds and raisins were left by each microphone, and shiatsu massages were given on demand. A photo of the couple’s young child Sean was taped above the mixing desk as a reminder that John had to be home every evening to put him to bed.
Yoko Ono has always struck me as a bit odd. Many widows move on, and often eventually have other relationships, eg Jackie Kennedy. Yoko Ono seemed to be obsessively clinging to Lennon’s legacy, but not in a Queen Victoria permanent morning way. Seeing how Lennon’s estate gave her a lifestyle way beyond her own means makes it look all the more mercenry.
If she didn’t legally have to then a court wouldn’t have made her, would it?
Or is that one of those befamed “common law is better than civil law” things? Where the law doesn’t apply until you apply it?
Checking dates, Julian Lennon was a minor when John died, and in many legal juristrictions that would have made a will with no provisions illigitimate.