People Magazine

'Yoko,' a biography by David Sheff, hits shelves on March 25 from Simon & Schuster

Published on March 22, 2025 09:00AM EDT

John Lennon’s tragic death in 1980 forever changed the trajectory of life for his widow Yoko Ono and their son Sean.

The former Beatle was just 40 years old when Mark David Chapman shot and killed him outside the Dakota apartment building in New York City, where he lived with Ono, now 92, and Sean, 49.

The immediate aftermath was devastating for Ono, a prolific artist and musician whose life story is being shared as never before in Yoko, a new biography from journalist and author David Sheff (out March 25 from Simon & Schuster).

The intimate biography covers Ono’s incredible life story, from her early years in Japan and her progressive artwork to her love story with Lennon and the ways she rebuilt her life after losing him.

The book features interviews with Ono, her family, close friends and collaborators, and comes from a longtime friend in Sheff, who has known Ono since 1980 and who previously covered Ono and Sean for PEOPLE in the 1980s.

Read below for an exclusive excerpt from Yoko.

Police cars arrived within minutes and the assassin was arrested. An officer decided there wasn’t time to wait for an ambulance, so he and his partner gently lifted John and laid him down in the back seat of their squad car. They sped to Roosevelt Hospital on West Fifty-Ninth Street. Yoko was driven in a second police car.

At the hospital, Yoko was ushered into a private room down the hall from the trauma room to wait while doctors attempted to resuscitate John. She shakily called [producer, record executive and friend David] Geffen, and he rushed to the hospital and waited with her. “She just sat, frozen, and it was terrifying,” he recalled.

Fifteen minutes or so later, a doctor came in.

She pleaded with him, “Please tell me he’s okay.”

The doctor took a breath. “I can’t tell you that.”

"It’s not true,” Yoko cried. “You’re lying. It can’t be. I don’t believe you.”

But she believed it when a nurse gave her John’s wedding ring.

Yoko sobbed. She sobbed harder when she thought of Sean. Then it dawned on her: What if her son was awake and the TV was on? Through tears, she asked the doctor to delay announcing John’s death so she could get home and tell Sean what happened before he saw it on TV.

Accompanied by Geffen, Yoko left the hospital. Back at the Dakota, they took a service elevator that led to the landing on the seventh floor outside the kitchen. Richard De Palma had been working late when the shooting happened and was waiting for news. The live-in maid and Sean’s nanny were there too. When Yoko came in, she asked about Sean. Thankfully, he was asleep. Speaking numbly, she asked De Palma to call Julian, John’s aunt Mimi, and the other Beatles and tell them what had happened. She also asked Geffen to place the calls. Yoko was hysterical. She wanted to be alone, and she retired to her bedroom.

Yoko will be released on Tuesday, March 25, and is available now for pre-order wherever books are sold.