When John Met Yoko: Inside Music’s Most Infamous Love Affair
John Lennon and Yoko Ono shared one of pop music’s greatest love affairs. From the moment they met in the mid-1960s, the pair were inseparable. Together they were lovers, artists, and icons. But their relationship also endured the wrath of Beatles fans everywhere who believed it was to blame for the band’s breakup. The reality, of course, was much more nuanced that that. Let’s a look at the infamous romance, right the beginning.
Instantly smitten
John Lennon was drawn to Yoko Ono from the very first moment they met. At the time, he was part of the biggest band in the world, and she was an up-and-coming artist
“When I fell in love with Yoko, I knew, my God, this is different from anything I’ve ever known,” he told Playboy in 1980. “This is more than a hit record, more than gold, more than everything.”
Artist meets artist
John and Yoko were first introduced to each other in 1966 at London’s Indica Gallery, where Yoko, an artist, was exhibiting her work. The Beatle later told Playboy that he’d heard about “this Japanese avant-garde artist coming from America.”
John was intrigued to see what all the fuss was about, and apparently he was interested in seeing one of her pieces in particular, in which a magnifying glass sat on top of a ladder directed toward the word ‘Yes.’ Yoko, however, wasn’t as excited to meet John.
A meet cute?
In fact, despite The Beatles being the biggest band in the world at the time, Yoko had no idea who John was. She saw John at the gallery looking at her art, and she approach him. “She came up and handed me a card which said ‘breathe’ on it — one of her instructions — so I just went [pant]. This was our meeting,” John later explained.
From an outsider’s perspective, this must have looked like a pretty mundane moment, but for these two, it was anything but. This encounter was the start of something huge.
“A really strange situation”
Theirs was an instant connection; they immediately fell for each other in this moment. “I was very attracted to him,” Yoko later told The Scotsman. “It was a really strange situation.” Strange, partly, because they knew they shouldn’t be feeling what they were feeling.
Both parties, you see, were already married to other people at the time. Yoko was married to Anthony Cox, a movie producer and art promoter, who was also the father of her daughter Kyoko.