Yoko - by David Sheff (Hardcover)

About the Book

This biography redefines Yoko Ono's life, shedding light on her often misunderstood and misrepresented journey. Once dismissed as a villain in the Beatles saga, Yoko's story is revealed beyond her association with John Lennon. Born into a wealthy family in pre-war Tokyo, she endured the horrors of war before becoming a pioneering figure in avant-garde art, music, feminism, and activism in London, Tokyo, and New York. The book explores how she faced intense public scrutiny, wrongly blamed for breaking up the Beatles, and yet continued to create groundbreaking work and advocate for peace. Drawing from David Sheff's interviews with Yoko, her family, and close friends, this biography offers a harrowing, moving, and ultimately redemptive portrait of Yoko Ono, elevating her legacy to iconic status.

Book Synopsis

An intimate and revelatory biography of Yoko Ono from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Boy.

John Lennon once described Yoko Ono as the world's most famous unknown artist. "Everybody knows her name, but no one knows what she does." She has only been important to history insofar as she impacted Lennon. Throughout her life, Yoko has been a caricature, curiosity, and, often, a villain--an inscrutable seductress, manipulating con artist, and caterwauling fraud. The Lennon/Beatles saga is one of the greatest stories ever told, but Yoko's part has been missing--hidden in the Beatles' formidable shadow, further obscured by flagrant misogyny and racism. This definitive biography of Yoko Ono's life will change that. In this book, Yoko Ono takes centerstage.

Yoko's life, independent of Lennon, was an amazing journey. Yoko spans from her birth to wealthy parents in pre-war Tokyo, her harrowing experience as a child during the war, her arrival in avant-garde art scene in London, Tokyo, and New York City. It delves into her groundbreaking art, music, feminism, and activism. We see how she coped under the most intense, relentless, and cynical microscope as she was falsely vilified for the most heinous cultural crime imaginable: breaking up the greatest rock-and-roll band in history.

This book was nearly a half century in the making. In 1980, David Sheff met Yoko and John when Sheff conducted an in-depth interview with them just months before John's murder. In the aftermath of the killing, he and Yoko became close as she rebuilt her life, survived threats and betrayals, and went on to create groundbreaking art and music while campaigning for peace and other causes. Drawing from his experiences and interviews with her, her family, closest friends, collaborators, and many others, Sheff shows us Yoko's nine decades--one of the most unlikely and remarkable lives ever lived.

Yoko is a harrowing, moving, propulsive, and vastly entertaining biography of a woman whose story has never been accurately told. The book not only rehabilitates Yoko Ono's reputation but elevates it to iconic status.

Review Quotes

"Sheff succeeds magnificently in bringing one of popular music's most divisive and misunderstood personae to life...Yoko is required reading for die-hard Beatles fans and music lovers, to be sure, but it's also a master class about assembling the evidence and rethinking the manner in which we think about our culture's most iconic figures." --Salon

"Sheff's book as an important corrective to years of bad P.R. He's done the opposite of a hatchet job, putting his subject back together branch by branch, like a forester... He argues convincingly for her as survivor, feminist, avant-gardist, political activist and world-class sass."
--New York Times Book Review

"Until now, books on Ono have largely been limited to sketchy histories from a former tarot card reader or a takedown by a dismissed assistant. Yoko is the first significant biography of the Japanese-born artist... The strength of Sheff's book is simple journalism, connecting the dots that existed only vaguely before Yoko."--Washington Post

"Nervy, compelling and shockingly sad... David Sheff's new biography depicts the avant-garde artist and activist from a surprising vantage point...What emerges feels sympathetic yet honest and occasionally humorous."--USA Today

"Ono, now 92, receives the major biography treatment, by veteran journalist Sheff, who spent thousands of hours with her, nurturing a friendship since 1980, when she was widowed by John Lennon's assassination." --Minnesota Star Tribune

"Yoko Ono has long been accused of breaking up the Beatles, but David Sheff offers a different perspective in Yoko, his compelling biography." --Christian Science Monitor

"[A] a decisive rebuke to decades of slander and scorn to paint the full picture of a woman without equal in the 20th century."--San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

David Sheff is the author of multiple books including the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Beautiful Boy, which was recently turned into a movie starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Outside, Rolling Stone, Wired, Fortune, and elsewhere. His piece for The New York Times, "My Addicted Son," received an award from the American Psychological Association for Outstanding Contribution to Advancing the Understanding of Addictions.