Yoko Ono Lennon

Welcome by the Public Orator

Vice- Chancellor,

In 1991 a trust fund was endowed in the University of Liverpool for the provision of scholarships ‘for encouraging the higher education of well-qualified students who would not otherwise be able to either enter or to remain in the University and enhancing among other things awareness of global problems and environmental issues’. There were the John Lennon Memorial Scholarships and the trust fund was negotiated with the University on behalf of Yoko Ono. It reflects John Lennon’s root in Liverpool and both his and Yoko Ono’s concern for environmental and social issues.

Much less is known about this kind of initiative, characteristic as it is of Yoko Ono’s personal concerns since the death of John, than about either her own life or her relationship with John Lennon, both of which have been the subject of huge media scrutiny.

Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1933, the eldest of three children of a wealthy and aristocratic family. Her father was, by all accounts, a frustrated musician who, in 1935, became head of a Japanese bank in San Francisco. In 1951 he moved to New York and his family settled in the suburb or Scarsdale. Yoko dropped out of Sarah Lawrence College when she eloped with her first husband, a composer, and went to live in Greenwich Village, then the centre of the avant-garde arts world of the City. There she became involved in films, music and art, and developed a reputation as an artistic radical. She was best known in music at that time for her ‘primal scream’ and for the works she called ‘In sound’ and ‘In structure’. These ideas were a strong influence in the formation the group known as Fluxus who were dedicated to challenging conventional definitions in the fine arts, and conventional relationships between artwork and viewer. Here she met the jazz musician and film producer. Anthony Cox, who was to become her second husband, and with him she began her own artistic development of the famous, and sometimes notorious, ‘interactive conceptual events’. Finally, she began to be taken seriously for her endeavours to represent art as a two part process: what is presented by the artist and how it is interested by its audience. But there was still an element of revolt and frustration about her work and the influence of people like Warhol, Dali and Dada was clearly evident. At this time she was involved in live performance, recording and filming, as well as in painting and three dimensional installation works.

            She came to Britain in 1967, preceded by her artistic reputation, and once here she met John Lennon at an exhibition of her work at the Indica Gallery in London. They found themselves kindred spirits and friendship quickly turned into romance. The following year they married and, between then and John’s murder in 1980, they enjoyed a fruitful relationship which had its own particular artistic outlets, from the famous ‘bed-in’ during their honeymoon in an Amsterdam hotel, to John’s composition Give Peace a Chance, which they recorded together as The Plastic Ono Band in 1969. All of this, and much more, recalls their mutual political stance and their reactions to Vietnam. Her continued involvement with film-making on a variety of themes, such as the human body and theoretical issues to do with movement and change, was often done in collaboration with John. Without doubt, their work – although at times wayward – was often representative of some of the main interests and concerns amongst the young of their times and they were, together, a creative force much greater than they would have been in their separate achievements.

Following John’s untimely death, Yoko has brought up their son Sean, who was born in 1975 and who has also become a musician, and returned to her own career in music, continuing to influence the contemporary scene, and to go her own way, no less radical and independent than in the past. She recorded the album Seasons of Glass in 1981. IN response to a question about what kind of artist she is, she once replied, ‘I deal with music of the mind’. She has had a number of one-women exhibitions in many countries during recent years. In 1985, she was instrumental in creating in Central Park, New York, the Strawberry Fields International Peace Garden as a tribute to John Lennon. It contains plants and trees donated from 121 countries.

Today we honour a singular lady, whose unique talents, born, perhaps, of a creative marriage of the Japanese and the American cultures, have through the accident of human relationships been brought to bear upon the more tragic aspects of our society. She has tried not only to hold these issues up to popular scrutiny, but also to do so in the hope that the world might reject the destruction of life in renewal of the search for the intangible and the beautiful. At the same time, through her practical good management of her inheritance, she has sought to help some of those whose needs are considerable and who she believes should be given a chance to acquire the skills they need to serve society.

Vice-Chancellor, in the name of the Senate and of the Council, I present to you for admission to the degree of Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) in this University, Yoko Ono Lennon.