YOKO
A BIOGRAPHY
Coming April 2025
From the publisher:
John Lennon once described Yoko Ono as the world’s most famous unknown artist. “Everybody knows her name, but no one knows what she does.” She has only been important to history insofar as she impacted Lennon. Throughout her life, Yoko has been a caricature, curiosity, and, often, a villain—an inscrutable seductress, manipulating con artist, and caterwauling fraud. The Lennon/Beatles saga is one of the greatest stories ever told, but Yoko’s part has been missing—hidden in the Beatles’ formidable shadow, further obscured by flagrant misogyny and racism. This definitive biography of Yoko Ono’s life will change that. In this book, Yoko Ono takes centerstage.
This book was nearly a half century in the making. In 1980, David Sheff met Yoko and John when Sheff conducted an in-depth interview with them just months before John’s murder. In the aftermath of the killing, he and Yoko became close as she rebuilt her life, survived threats and betrayals, and went on to create groundbreaking art and music while campaigning for peace and other causes. Drawing from his experiences and interviews with her, her family, closest friends, collaborators, and many others, Sheff shows us Yoko’s nine decades—one of the most unlikely and remarkable lives ever lived. It shows Ono’s place in history and her profound influence on art, music, feminism and activism.
Reviews:
“There have been other biographies of Ono... [but] Sheff’s is the closest to an authorized one the world will get... Sheff’s book as an important corrective to years of bad P.R. He’s done the opposite of a hatchet job, putting his subject back together branch by branch, like a forester... He argues convincingly for her as survivor, feminist, avant-gardist, political activist and world-class sass.”
-The New York Times Book Review
“In this unfiltered, unvarnished portrait of the artist, Sheff succeeds magnificently in bringing one of popular music’s most divisive and misunderstood personae to life.…Yoko is required reading for die-hard Beatles fans and music lovers, to be sure, but it’s also a master class about assembling the evidence and rethinking the manner in which we think about our culture’s most iconic figures.”
-Salon
“An intimate and perceptive portrait.”
-Publisher’s Weekly
“Sheff offers an expansive portrait of Ono as avant-garde artist, vocalist, and peace activist... [an] in-depth and compelling biography.”
-Booklist
“Yoko Ono has long been accused of breaking up the Beatles, but David Sheff offers a different perspective in YOKO, his compelling biography of the artist, musician, activist, and, most famously, widow of John Lennon.”-
-Christian Science Monitor
“Until now, books on Ono have largely been limited to sketchy histories from a former tarot card reader or a takedown by a dismissed assistant. YOKO is the first significant biography of the Japanese-born artist... The strength of Sheff’s book is simple journalism, connecting the dots that existed only vaguely before YOKO.”
-Washington Post
“[Yoko's] life story is nervy, compelling and shockingly sad... David Sheff’s new biography depicts the avant-garde artist and activist from a surprising vantage point... What emerges feels sympathetic yet honest and occasionally humorous.”
-USA Today
For more reviews of YOKO, click here: News…