Dear John — Yoko Was Right

Letters to John, No. 4

Dear John. It's David.

I owe Yoko an apology. I think a lot of us do.

When she sat between you and Paul in the studio, we said she broke up the band. When she put you in a bag on television, we said she was making you look foolish. When she screamed into a microphone at the David Frost Show, I was sitting right there, John, right there on that stage with you and Jerry, and I remember thinking what is she doing. I'm sorry it took this long to say it. She was twenty years ahead of every one of us. That's what she was doing.

The bed-ins. That was performance art before anybody used that word. Two people lying in bed for a week talking about peace while the cameras rolled. We thought it was a stunt. It was the blueprint for every protest that uses media as a weapon. Every livestream, every viral moment, every kid who points a camera at injustice and says look at this. Yoko did it first. In pajamas.

Imagine. Your song. Except it wasn't just your song, was it? It was her concept. She'd been writing instructions like that for years. Imagine a sky full of holes. Imagine a thousand suns in the sky at once. She handed you the frame and you wrote the melody and the world gave you all the credit.

She was the bravest person in every room she walked into. Including the rooms you were in, John. And that's saying something.

Yoko was right. About the art. About the peace. About the future. About all of it.

Miss you both.

See also: The David Frost Show — Yoko on the couch, the FBI watching. The Pope Smokes Dope — "John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Producers." December 8th — the walk to the Dakota, every year. The Apple — they were one person.

David Peel Letters to John — No. 4

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