sublime spectacle ono disrupting beatles

#Sublime spectacle ono disrupting beatles series
#Sublime spectacle ono disrupting beatles tv

He was playing Seattle, Washington, about a three-hour drive from my city of Vancouver, Canada. On May 2nd, 2022, I went to see Paul McCartney live in concert. A final event marked the end of my Beatles' study for my first time ever I attended a performance by a Beatle. I revisited all the Beatles' official studio albums, sought out rare and early recordings, and brushed up on the four members' post-Beatles solo work, of which I'd only been largely familiar with Lennon's.

#Sublime spectacle ono disrupting beatles series

John Lennon (2006), John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky (2018), George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011), the 11-hour Beatles Anthology television series (1995), and Beatles-inspired movies like Backbeat (1994), Across the Universe (2007), Nowhere Boy (2009), and Yesterday (2019).Īnd then, of course, the music. I also watched a bunch of documentaries like The U.S. Incorporating a distinct visual accompaniment to every featured song, this musical art film was groundbreaking in pioneering the 'music video' and 'video album' formats that would become popular years later.

#Sublime spectacle ono disrupting beatles tv

Then I watched Lennon and Ono's 1972 film Imagine, a TV special released shortly after Lennon's album of the same name. And finally, I read John Lennon's three books: In His Own Write (1964), A Spaniard in the Works (1965), and the posthumously published Skywriting by Word of Mouth (1986)-collections of his absurdist poetry, comic strips, cartoon drawings, and short stories of the 'literary nonsense' genre.Īfter the Get Back docuseries, I watched over a dozen other relevant movies including the Beatles' official films A Hard Day's Night (1964), Help! (1965), The Magical Mystery Tour (1967), the cartoon feature Yellow Submarine (1968), and documentary Let It Be (1970). Then I read Ono's first book Grapefruit (1964), an early example of conceptual art as a series of 'event scores' and 'instructional poems'-short, whimsical passages instructing the reader to enact an idea, whether actually feasible, or abstract, or metaphorical. I also concurrently read the book that was released along with the art exhibit and serves as its counterpart, with the same title Growing Freedom: The Instructions of Yoko Ono / The Art of John and Yoko, which chronicles and examines, with text and photographs, the work of the Ono-Lennons. The instance of the art exhibit and docuseries' release coinciding renewed an interest I've long had with the group that many say-still, to this day, even fifty-plus years after their breakup-is the greatest, or at least the most influential, band of all time.Īnd so I started indulging in all things Beatles-related, including reading Philip Norman's in-depth book Shout! The True Story of the Beatles, considered by many to be the band's definitive biography. The fly-on-the-wall footage makes for the feeling of being right there in the room with the band as they write and rehearse their songs, smoke, drink, hang out, and alternate between bickering and showing creative support to each other. I took it in slowly over several weeks, rewinding and rewatching segments throughout, and savoured every second. The nearly eight-hour-long series utilizes unused footage recorded over twenty-one days in January 1969 for the feature documentary film Let It Be-during the making of Beatles' album of the same name-culminating with their legendary rooftop concert. The second occurrence which initiated my fascination with Lennon, Ono, and the Beatles-or more accurately re-initiated my fascination, for I've been a fan since childhood-was the November 2021 release of The Beatles: Get Back docuseries. The show started in October 2021 I viewed it twice that fall, and once more in its last week in April 2022.

Sometimes humourous, sometimes somber, often moving, and always mind-expanding, the work conveys profound messages of hope, peace, and love. The pieces collectively showcase a playful, fairy tale-like, optimistic worldview while alternately resonating as an urgent call to action, with antiwar, antiracism, antisexism sentiments anchored in love and compassion for the suffering. My mind was blown by her work, and theirs together, which included happenings, bed-ins, displayed objects, installations, performance, film, song, image, and viewer participation. The first of these occurrences was an exhibit at my city's biggest visual art venue, the Vancouver Art Gallery, entitled Growing Freedom: The Instructions of Yoko Ono / The Art of John and Yoko. More specifically, my fixation was with the story of John Lennon, and to only a slightly lesser degree, his wife Yoko Ono. Two recent occurrences sparked what would end up being my eight-month-long preoccupation with the Beatles-or as my girlfriend called it, my obsession. John Lennon ('Instant Karma! We All Shine On') 'Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear.'