Denberg Jody - See Hear Yoko

It makes me very happy to be considered part of the family. For Yokos eightieth birthday Jody Denberg suggested that we could gather my favorite photos and combine them with quotes from his interviews with her to make a special book just for Yoko. I thought it was a great idea. This is the book we made. After we gave it to her, Yoko called and said she liked it so much that she wanted us to publish it. I must thank Hanna Toresson for creating the design of this book and Richelle DeLora for her extensive work researching my files and Jodys interviews to select Yokos quotes and the caption information.

BOB GRUEN, NEW YORK CITY, NOVEMBER 2014 I am a native New Yorker and turned thirteen shortly after Yoko Ono and John Lennon moved to the Big Apple together. They were a ubiquitous presence in the city during my teenage years, the first half of the 1970son TV, in the newspapers, and at political rallies and concerts. I never met either of them in those days but admired them from afar. I loved their albums. While Johns records were globally revered, I felt like Yokos musicas well as her art and writingswere personal communiqus. It was an illusion but a rewarding one.

After moving to Texas for college and becoming a broadcaster and a journalist, I was finally able to snag my first interview with Yoko, in 1984. Over the next quarter century we spoke more than a dozen times: for magazines and radio programs, on the phone and at the Dakota, in studios and in a hotel room. She always illuminated our conversations with candor and patience. Any fan of Yoko Onos is familiar with Bob Gruens definitive images of her, and I was no exception. After he agreed to collaborate on this project as a gift for Yoko, he sent me files of countless photographs of her, and I matched quotes from my transcripts to some of his pictures. I hope the result you are holding ultimately brings two key Yoko concepts to the forethat she always lives life as art, and that a dream you dream together is reality.

JODY DENBERG, AUSTIN, SEPTEMBER 2014

Moritz Hotel, New York City, 1972. Plastic Ono Elephants Memory Band, (LR) top row: Stan Bronstein, Gary Van Scyoc, Wayne Tex Gabriel, Jim Keltner, and Adam Ippolito. (LR) bottom row: Rick Frank, Yoko Ono, and John Lennon during the recording of Sometime in New York City at the Record Plant, New York City, 1972. (LR) Roy Cicala, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono during the recording of Sometime in New York City at the Record Plant, New York City, 1972. (LR) John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Dick Cavett, and Shirley MacLaine on The Dick Cavett Show, May 11, 1972. John and I just met and sort of like two cars crashing, we just did it.

But of course I was doing that kind of stuff before, but doing it with John was a different experience. Hear why and how he plays his guitar... his guitar and my voice having a dialogue. Thats something that Id never done before. John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Elephants Memory onstage at The Dick Cavett Show, May 11, 1972. John was very astute about anything in the record world.

He used to say, If somebody covered your song, theyre going to understand it. Theyre going to know that soul is going to communicate and theyre going to know youre a writer. John Lennon and Yoko Ono during the recording of