Music

Yoko Ono says she had nothing to do with The Beatles' breakup

by Jesse Locke

Complaining that Yoko Ono broke up The Beatles is a classic rock cliché that should have been put to bed decades ago. John Lennon’s partner in music, political movements, and avant-garde art has always denied it, and she’s once again rammed the point home with her appearance in Us Weekly’s “25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” column. See thing #24:

Criticisms levelled at the now 83-year-old Ono focus on her appearances in the recording studio, as Lennon asked her for creative input and allegedly alienated the band’s other members. While she remains unpopular, listening to Ono’s post-Beatles output such as 1973’s Approximately Infinite Universe prove that she’s a fantastic musician. Lady Gaga, Sparks, Moby, and the other collaborators of her recently released remix album Yes I’m A Witch Too would surely agree.

In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, even pretty cool dude Paul McCartney took Yoko off the hook and shifted the blame to Allen Klein, the businessman who tried to take over for famed Beatles manager Brian Epstein.

“She certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up,” said McCartney, even crediting Lennon’s song “Imagine” with Ono’s influence. “When Yoko came along, part of her attraction was her avant-garde side, her view of things, so she showed him another way to be, which was very attractive to him. So it was time for John to leave, he was definitely going to leave [one way or another].”

The Us Weekly feature includes other interesting quotes such as Ono’s admission that she didn’t do drugs until Lennon gave her her first cigarette at age 34. She also says they “wasted 15 years eating macrobiotic and drinking soy milk, when all I wanted was a little half-and-half.” If you’re curious about her ranking of Beatles albums, Ono says she prefers The White Album to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band… and doing the Dougie to krumping. See the full list below: