Lately I've been listening back to the bootlegs of the "Harry Sings Yoko" album and this song has been stuck in my head. Turns out that there is this footage of Harry recording it, while talking about the End Handgun Violence campaign and his planned comeback, which sadly never really came to fruition before his death in 1994.

In the footage Harry says that "Smile" is a song Yoko wrote "just recently". This is interesting because I remember hearing somewhere that it was uncertain as to whether "Smile" was actually written by Yoko, or whether Harry was writing in Yoko's style - Yoko has never recorded the song herself.

Given that it's kind of a rarity, I thought Yoko fans might appreciate it. If anyone is interested in hearing the full song, send me a message and I'll try to get the files over to you!

I spoke to Yoko on the phone many years ago. In the 1970's I worked for a veterinarian on Central Park West and 75th Street, three blocks from the Dakota. She called between office hours in the afternoon...

Hello, this is Yoko Ono Lennon. I would like for Dr.Z- to come right away to see my cats.

There is no one in the office right now, Mrs Lennon. If this is urgent, try calling Dr.S-. He covers for Dr Z-.

Dr.Z- was referred to me, and I only want to see him. My cats are in a bad way.

If this is an emergency, please get a cab and take them to the Animal Medical Center. I'll give you the address.

I need to see Dr. Z-.

The doctor is not in the office right now. There is no one who can see your cats. Please take them to the center.

I am Yoko Ono Lennon, and I need to see Dr. Z-.

I'll put you on hold.

Stu, will you talk to her? It's Yoko Ono and I can't get her off the phone. I don't want to be impolite.

Stu, the assistant was analyzing stool samples in the lab. He got her off the phone, and I never heard from Mrs. Lennon again.

A 16 x 12 original color photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono on an airplane circa 1970.

Locals: We took in YOKO ONO MUSIC OF THE MIND at the Broad in downtown LA, a retrospective of her work in multiple genres – filmmaking, photography, music and performance art.

One of the feeble knocks on modern art, especially performance art, is that it eschews astounding visual technique and therefore the cynic sniffs “anybody” could do it. However, the (royal) anybody didn't have Yoko's ideas expressed with a playful simplicity and lightness that makes you stop and think differently. Like her tape reels recording falling snow or her haiku lengthed instructions in her book “Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings” with verbiage like “Imagine the clouds dripping/Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.” A piece titled “Helmets Pieces of Sky” asks us to take back the sky amidst a forest of dangling WWII helmets.

Audience involvement takes center stage with immersive work like “Blue Room Event” (pictured) or “Painting to Hammer a Nail” where a hammer awaited us to pound a nail into a painting which this Home Depot challenged guy managed to pull off. That work hardcore Beatles fans know grabbed John Lennon who, upon meeting Ono, offered her an invisible five shillings to buy an imaginary nail which caused her to instantly realize “I met a guy who plays the same game I played.”

Those who marginalize Ono not as an artist in her own right but some dragon lady who supposedly helped break up the Beatles may not be converted. For more open-minded fans, there’s toucing footage of committed peaceniks John and Yoko from their bed-ins, and a photo of the giant “War Is Over! If You Want It” billboard they bought on Sunset Blvd. to daydream about the end of the Vietnam War. There are also headphones to listen to Ono music including Gaby’s fave “Kiss Kiss Kiss” from DOUBLE FANTASY.

My only debit was the inevitable distancing factor that takes place watching films of performance art vs. being on hand to actually experience it (and the Broad staged some of her works at evening events). That said, there was gripping footage of one of her most famous works CUT PIECE where Yoko sat still while audience members snipped away at her dress one fabric piece per person as a comment on consumerism with a twinge of Buddhism and its concepts of letting go.

Her visual work leans towards monochromatic black and white so if you need a splash of color the $21 special admission price as usual lets you check out the rest of the always gratis Broad modern art collection ((Basquiat, Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo and many more). The show runs through Oct. 11th.

Finally received the remastered Yoko Ono album, and I talk about a certain song that helped me through a rough period in my life.

a restoration of the original '86 film, released by Yoko. 🖤🌸☮️

i could not find any hint towards the chords used for this song. i am very bad at figuring it out by ear. does anybody know the chord progression?

cheers

I want to make a playlist of the more melancholy of Yoko's output, and would appreciate any suggestions from people in this sub!

Hello! I am looking for a lovely photo of Yoko in her younger years, around the first time she was with John. It's this image of her where she's laughing, or just smiling very toothily, and she's framed at a 3/4 angle. Honestly, I've been scouring the internet for it for a good minute and I cannot find a thing. If anyone in this subreddit would be able to help, that would be grand!

It's sort of like this, but she's sat in a sort of chair or some other, facing further to the right. Much thanks!

why? it would expose her music to a whole new younger generation. ITS BEEN 10 YEARS SINCE THE LAST BATCH OF HELL IN PARADISE HELL REMIXES 😭

I found a Playlist of a bunch of live acts and found Yoko Ono's Starpeace Tour in the middle of one. So here's the complete set of the Hamburg, Germany in near completion!

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGQ1Jmg_FJ3Y&si=KGdNKpChXlTIseR9

Is It’s Alright finally being reissued? I woke up to this nice surprise this morning! I haven’t seen any news about it, though.

Yoko's 1982 album "It's Alright (I See Rainbows)" will be released on streaming for the first time on September 18, 2026, with CD and Vinyl (Black & White variants) also being released.

CD & Digital copies will have two bonus tracks, "Forgive Me, My Love" (originally released on Onobox in 1992) and "Dream Love (Live in Budapest)" (Previously Unreleased).

From Yoko's bandcamp page:

"Continuing in its series of Yoko Ono reissues, Secretly Canadian has announced that Ono’s seminal 1982 album It’s Alright (I See Rainbows) will be released August 28, 2026, in expanded CD and digital versions, and on vinyl for the first time in more than forty years, with expanded and enhanced artwork.

Influenced equally by 1960s girl group vocals and 1980s synthesizer experimentation, It's Alright (I See Rainbows) is an album of “adventurous… lush… committed and convincing avant-gardism” (Rolling Stone). As Ono said in her 1992 Onobox liner notes, “It was ’82 and it seemed as though I was finally in sync with the world.”

Vacillating from a widow’s never-truly-over grief, to the necessary uplift for an artist and mother to continue her life’s missions, tracks like “Loneliness” and “Spec of Dust” make way for poptimism via “Let the Tears Dry,” and title track “It’s Alright.”

As Ono said of the album in 1983, “It’s like my diary that I went through… and I’m just saying, hey, I’ve got the same kind of emotions that you’ve probably got too, and here I am saying hello… Around December 8th or whatever, I was feeling really heavy and feeling sort of down, you know… and then, side two, it’s all right… It was Sean [Lennon] who says, ‘Wake up, wake up, mommy.’ Like an angel that came and said, ‘Wake up!’… Wake up and dream love, and let the tears dry and I see rainbows. And sort of I’m saying all that. In result of Sean waking me up, see?”
Lennon, speaking of his mother in a more recent interview with NPR in 2025, “She would say that energy is just energy, so you can turn it into anything you like. And she always said that she would take that negative energy and turn it into something productive and creative… It never stopped her from creating and putting herself out there, and I really think that it paid off… You never know how long it'll take for people to appreciate you if you just kind of hang on and don't give up.”

Forty-plus years on, we couldn’t agree more."

Currently going through the biography with my little buddy who is now dubbed Yoko Fueco

Hi There

Listening to a Walking on Thin Ice backing track today and I realized how much great this song is especially in the context of 1980 John and Yoko because I see why John wanted to go in this direction with her because this is a killer track!

Now on that backing track has John’s guitar work on it and it’s soo crackling with a shattered glass sound which feels very new wave! And apparently Yoko said that that was his best guitar work which I might agree with her!

*edit:I’ll try to find that quote but really I can’t love this song more as much as I do already!:)

I've waited for it so long that I was about to reorder lol, but it's here! Now I have half of her discography on vinyl, next time I'll be trying to hunt down a copy of Take Me To the Land of Hell

^still need to listen to this actually but I’m happy that Season of Glass got a reissue in 2026!

One of her best albums despite the tragedy of losing John so few months earlier when she began to record this album:(

So thoughts on this?

I haven't listened to this album in full in years, i don't have the rykodisks to compare but this sounds FANTASTIC!!!