High life
Unsavoury
Taki
New York When I heard they were massing out- side the Dakota my perverse streak made me drive by and look at them. There were hundreds of them, keeping a not so silent vigil. There is something about rem- nants of the Sixties that is very loud. Especially remnants of the New York Six- ties, which these mourners were. They were mostly overweight (after all, pot-smoking gives one the munchies), balding and, i my humble view, rather pathetic. Finally,n like most of those people who made headlines during the Sixties, they were arrogant and
very ignorant.
I got out of the taxi and asked my friend John Bowes-Lyon to accompany me while we mixed with them. Bosie was reluctant and became more so when I shouted that it would be fun to see remnants of the Sixties grown old and ridiculous. Well, you know what those people are like. Very brave in a crowd and all that. Aver large and dirty- looking man came towds me and said something insulting. I laughed and yelled for Bosie to get the limo. The big man went no further. People who revere John and Yoko Ono respect money. In fact its seem to me that this country is filled with Ps intellectuals intellectuals who hate materialism but love rich people and everything rich people buy. And, as everyone knows, there is no one richer than Yoko Ono. Two years after her husband was murdered she had her seven- year-old son retrace his father's steps out- side the Dakota whileo the TV al cameras down for and hundreds of hacks took it l posterity. Well, not exactly. What she was doing had more to do with the present than the future or the Past. She was ending a week-long promotion blitz on TV, radio and with the press to push her latest album, I'm All Right. How about that good taste? She pick- ed the anniversary of the week Lennon was murdered for her album to appear, and her ghastly friend and impresario, one David Geffen, went on television to try and con- vince the great American public that the way to assuage its guilt over the shooting of Lennon was to buy her latest inferior offer- ing; Ono's sounds are to music what full contact karate is to gentle morning calisthenics. Not that others haven't tried to cash in. One of his so-called closest friends has just collaborated on a book that gives us a hell of a picture of life under Yoko's yoke. It makes riveting reading.
It seems that Lennon's brain had fried completely after all those LSD trips, and by the end of his life he was nothing more than a zombie, watchingTV sitcoms for days on end. Now if any of you have ever seen an American situation comedy, as these pro- grammes are most inappropriately called, you'd realise the state Lennon's brain must have been in. He loved the great indoors almost as much as did another great recluse, Howard Hughes. Unlike the late aviator, however, Lennon only took orders from his guru, Yoko. A friend of mine who must re- main nameless, but who is one of her lawyers, told me how Ono once got very angry with Lennon and ordered him to fly round the world backwards, going east, and stopping in bad airports like the one in Sri Lanka. Lennon eventually got stuck in Tokyo, being too afraid to keep going, and she flew over to meet him. Then she told him that it was the wrong time to travel and they all remained in the Okura hotel for a couple of months. When Yoko finally decided it was time to move, they did. When my friend first told me all this I thought he was exaggerating. Then I read excerpts of this new opus and things began to make sense. Although the author bends over back- wards to show that the Onos were simply eccentric, their horrid lifestyle manages to come through. In fact what emerges is a horror story of manipulation that makes The Story of 0 seem a bedtime story by comparision. Throughout her marriage Ono seems to be pushing Lennon to attack the establishment and capitalism. Every cause they embrace is directly opposed to the accumulation of windfall profits, but by the end of his life she has managed to ac- cumulate more than £500 million worth of property and companies using his original rather modest wealth as investment. Judging from her actions of last week I see that her hunger for money remains as voracious as ever. But not all people are fooled. The National Lampoon has sudden- ly become my second favourite magazine after publishing a letter from Sean Lennon to Santa Claus. I quote: 'Dear Santa Claus. Last year I left you milk and cookies and a long letter in my stocking but when I woke up the bitch was still there. Please don't forget again this year. Love Sean Lennon, the Dakota.' Sometimes bad taste does come in handy.
Previous page
