The Word, or: About those first meetings
It's a minor biographical mystery, but somewhat intriguing. We do know when John and Yoko met for the first time (btw, yesterday was their 42nd wedding anniversary)- November 1966, at the Indica Gallery where she had a show. (John and Yoko remembered it as November 9th, since 9 was John's lucky number, but later biographers traced it to November 4th. Whatever.) However, John might or might not have been the first Beatle to encounter Yoko Ono. When John was inducted into the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 1994, Paul mentions meeting Yoko for the first time when she showed up at his house to ask for a song manuscript as a contribution to a 50th birthday present collection of contemporary composer manuscripts for John Cage. "So I said," Well it's ok by me, but you'll have to go to John."
This is where it gets complicated, because John Cage actually was born in 1912, which means he was well over 50 in 1966 (let alone subsequent years). However, this collection of manuscripts from contemporary composers for John Cage exists, and does contain a Lennon/McCartney manuscript, the lyrics for the 1966 song The Word, reproduced in Cages Notations, a selection of the scores he had been collecting for the Fundation of Contemporary Performance Arts. It's also available at the Northwestern University, together with six other Lennon/McCartney manuscripts, and The Word is noted as having given to John Cage by Yoko Ono. Simple, you could say, John Lennon gave it to her later. But this is where it gets really complicated. According to the notes at Northwestern, Yoko informed Cage that the lyrics for The Word had been in Paul's possession. The lyrics are in John's handwriting, but, again according to information given by Yoko to Cage, Paul appears to have gone over them with a black pen to make them more visible, and added watercolour paintings around them.
So, whom did Yoko get the manuscript from, John or Paul? Or did John ask it back from Paul to give it to Yoko? And was this before or after the John/Yoko encounter at the Indica Gallery? Biographers don't know. (Well, two of the trashier ones, Guiliano and Sandford, go as far as to speculate on a pre-John one night stand between Paul and Yoko, but since they provide only an unnamed "man familiar with the day-to-day lives of the Beatles in 1966" as the source for this, it's definitely gossip rather than gospel. "Unnamed source" usually translates as "I need something sensational to sell my book and that way I can make something up without needing to back it up".) What does strike me as plausible is that either Cage or Yoko, in order to get the the manuscripts from contemporary composers, made up the 50th birthday story because that's a more plausible reason to collect than just "I want them". Yoko knew Cage from New York and had worked with him, so it makes sense he'd ask her to get an example from the two most famous contemporary British musicians after she moved to London in September 1966. I also suspect the reason why either Paul, John or both picked The Word and its multicoloured sheet was because one of them was dorky enough to think they'd better give Cage something pretty for his birthday. (Which makes me suspect Paul rather than John.)
...but you know what this entire tale is a, shall we say, ironic counterpoint towards? Yoko's statement re: first encounter with John. "I didn't know who he was. And when I found out, I didn't care. I mean in the art world, a Beatle is - well, you know." Not a view, it seems, shared by the manuscript-collecting John Cage. Incidentally, given that the Indica Gallery was heavily patronized by the Beatles - it was run by John "Husband of Marianne Faithfull" Dunbar, Barry "Future Biographer of Paul" Miles, and Peter "brother of Jane" Asher, and that Paul had literally helped building it (as in, sawing wood and painting walls), it's extremely unlikely an artist having a show in this particular at Indica of all the places would not be aware of the Beatles anyway. However, it's entirely possible Yoko didn't recognize John on sight, because in November 1966 he had just completed shooting How We Won The War, which meant he had radically changed his looks from moptop John to the later iconic National Health glasses, sideburns and (temporarily) short hair. If you've only seen publicity stills from Beatlemania era John, even a fan would have had to look twice or three times before making the connection, let alone someone not musically into the Beatles.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/664449.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
This is where it gets complicated, because John Cage actually was born in 1912, which means he was well over 50 in 1966 (let alone subsequent years). However, this collection of manuscripts from contemporary composers for John Cage exists, and does contain a Lennon/McCartney manuscript, the lyrics for the 1966 song The Word, reproduced in Cages Notations, a selection of the scores he had been collecting for the Fundation of Contemporary Performance Arts. It's also available at the Northwestern University, together with six other Lennon/McCartney manuscripts, and The Word is noted as having given to John Cage by Yoko Ono. Simple, you could say, John Lennon gave it to her later. But this is where it gets really complicated. According to the notes at Northwestern, Yoko informed Cage that the lyrics for The Word had been in Paul's possession. The lyrics are in John's handwriting, but, again according to information given by Yoko to Cage, Paul appears to have gone over them with a black pen to make them more visible, and added watercolour paintings around them.
So, whom did Yoko get the manuscript from, John or Paul? Or did John ask it back from Paul to give it to Yoko? And was this before or after the John/Yoko encounter at the Indica Gallery? Biographers don't know. (Well, two of the trashier ones, Guiliano and Sandford, go as far as to speculate on a pre-John one night stand between Paul and Yoko, but since they provide only an unnamed "man familiar with the day-to-day lives of the Beatles in 1966" as the source for this, it's definitely gossip rather than gospel. "Unnamed source" usually translates as "I need something sensational to sell my book and that way I can make something up without needing to back it up".) What does strike me as plausible is that either Cage or Yoko, in order to get the the manuscripts from contemporary composers, made up the 50th birthday story because that's a more plausible reason to collect than just "I want them". Yoko knew Cage from New York and had worked with him, so it makes sense he'd ask her to get an example from the two most famous contemporary British musicians after she moved to London in September 1966. I also suspect the reason why either Paul, John or both picked The Word and its multicoloured sheet was because one of them was dorky enough to think they'd better give Cage something pretty for his birthday. (Which makes me suspect Paul rather than John.)
...but you know what this entire tale is a, shall we say, ironic counterpoint towards? Yoko's statement re: first encounter with John. "I didn't know who he was. And when I found out, I didn't care. I mean in the art world, a Beatle is - well, you know." Not a view, it seems, shared by the manuscript-collecting John Cage. Incidentally, given that the Indica Gallery was heavily patronized by the Beatles - it was run by John "Husband of Marianne Faithfull" Dunbar, Barry "Future Biographer of Paul" Miles, and Peter "brother of Jane" Asher, and that Paul had literally helped building it (as in, sawing wood and painting walls), it's extremely unlikely an artist having a show in this particular at Indica of all the places would not be aware of the Beatles anyway. However, it's entirely possible Yoko didn't recognize John on sight, because in November 1966 he had just completed shooting How We Won The War, which meant he had radically changed his looks from moptop John to the later iconic National Health glasses, sideburns and (temporarily) short hair. If you've only seen publicity stills from Beatlemania era John, even a fan would have had to look twice or three times before making the connection, let alone someone not musically into the Beatles.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/664449.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.