Playboy Interview 1980
Page 11
Yoko: There were many things. I'm what I call a "moving on" kind of girl; there's a song on our new album about it. Rather than deal with problems in relationships, I've always moved on. That's why I'm one of the very few survivors as a woman, you know. Women tend to be more into men usually, but I wasn't....John: Yoko looks upon men as assistants. ... Of varying degrees of intimacy, but basically assistants. And this one's going to take a pee.
John Exits
Yoko: I have no comment on that. But when I met
John, women to him were basically people around who were serving him. He had to
open himself up and face me - and I had to see what he was going through. But
... I though I had to move on again, because I was suffering being with John.
Playboy: Why?
Yoko: The pressure from the public, being the one who broke up the Beatles and
who made it impossible for them to get back together. My artwork suffered, too.
I thought I wanted to be free from being Mrs. Lennon, so I thought it would be a
good idea for him to go to L.A. and leave me alone for a while. I had put up
with it for many years. Even early on, when John was a Beatle, we stayed in a
room and John and I were in bed and the door was closed and all that, but we
didn't lock the door and one of the Beatle assistants just walked in and talked
to him as if I weren't there. It was mind- blowing. I was invisible. The people
around John saw me as a terrible threat. I mean, I heard there were plans to
kill me. Not the Beatles but the people around them.
Playboy: How did that news affect you?
Yoko: The society doesn't understand that the woman can be castrated, too. I
felt castrated. Before, I was doing all right, thank you. My work might not have
been selling much, I might have been poorer, but I had my pride. But the most
humiliating thing is to be looked at as a parasite.
John rejoins the conversation.
John: When Yoko and I started doing stuff together, we
would hold press conferences and announce our whatevers - we're going to wear
bags or whatever. And before this one press conference, one Beatle assistant in
the upper echelon of Beatle assistants leaned over to Yoko and said, "You
know, you don't have to work. You've got enough money, now that you're Mrs.
Lennon." And when she complained to me about it, I couldn't understand what
she was talking about. "But this guy," I'd say, "He's just good
old Charley, or whatever. He's been with us 20 years...." The same kind of
thing happened in the studio. She would say to an engineer, "I'd like a
little more treble, a little more bass," or "There's too much of
whatever you're putting on," and they'd look at me and say, "What did
you say, John?" Those days I didn't even notice it myself. Now I know what
she's talking about. In Japan, when I ask for a cup of tea in Japanese, they
look at Yoko and ask, "He wants a cup of tea?" in Japanese.
Yoko: So a good few years of that kind of thing emasculates you. I had always
been more macho than most guys I was with, in a sense. I had always been the
breadwinner, because I always wanted to have the freedom and the control.
Suddenly, I'm with somebody I can't possibly compete with on a level of
earnings. Finally, I couldn't take it - or I decided not to take it any longer.
I would have had the same difficulty even if I hadn't gotten involved with,
ah...
John: John - John is the name.
Yoko: With John. But John wasn't just John. He was also his group and the people
around them. When I say John, it's not just John...
John: That's John. J-O-H-N. From Johan, I believe.
Playboy: So you made him leave?
Yoko: Yes.
John: She don't suffer fools gladly, even if she's married to him.
Playboy: How did you finally get back together?
Yoko: It slowly started to dawn on me that John was not the trouble at all. John
was a fine person. It was society that had become too much. We laugh about it
now, but we started dating again. I wanted to be sure. I'm thankful to John's
intelligence...
John: Now, get that, editors - you got that word?
Yoko: That he was intelligent enough to know this was the only way that we could
save our marriage, not because we didn't love each other but because it was
getting too much for me. Nothing would have changed if I had come back as Mrs.
Lennon again.
Playboy: What did change?