Category: Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono – Fly [2LP] (1971) [re-issue 1997]

posted by record facts

Fly is the second album by Yoko Ono, released in 1971. A double album, it was co-produced by Ono and John Lennon. It peaked at No. 199 on the US charts.

The album includes the singles “Mrs. Lennon“ and “Mind Train.” The track “Airmale” is the soundtrack to Lennon’s time-lapse film Erection, while “Fly” is the soundtrack to Lennon and Ono’s 1970 film Fly.

The album was recorded around the same time as Lennon’s Imagine. “Hirake” was a partially re-recorded version of the B-side “Open Your Box“, completed in response to a managing director of EMI calling the lyrics “distasteful”. The verse “Open your trousers, open your skirt, open your legs and open your thighs“, was changed to “open your houses“, “…church“, “…lakes“, and “…eyes“. Lennon and Ono didn’t complain about the change of words, and only “wanted to get the record out”, as a spokesman said.

The track “Don’t Worry, Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)” is dedicated to Ono’s daughter Kyoko Cox.

Side three of the LP features Ono performing with various automated sound machines created by Fluxus musician Joe Jones and pictured in the gatefold.

“Will You Touch Me” was first recorded during the Fly sessions. It was later re-recorded for Yoko’s shelved 1974 album A Story and for 1981’s Season of Glass. The original demo version was included on the Rykodisc reissue of Fly in 1997.

Yoko Ono’s follow-up to Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band is even more experimental than its predecessor. But you wouldn’t get that impression immediately.
It opens with “Midsummer New York,” which is a competent rock track with considerable power. The following track, “Mind Train,” is a seventeen-minute blues epic punctuated by Yoko’s staccato screams.
The track actually does chug along like a train. Side Two is the most accessible of the lot, featuring two songs of hers that backed John Lennon A-sides in “Don’t Worry Kyoko” (a vicious song that features Eric Clapton on guitar) and “Hirake” (aka “Open Your Box”), which has some fairly impressionistic guitar playing by Lennon. “Mrs. Lennon” is a dour tune that provides the melody for the Big Star weeper “Holocaust.”
By Side Three, Yoko Ono indulges herself in her Fluxus roots, incorporating the instrumental creations of Joe Jones.
In the liner notes, Yoko Ono says, “Joe built me 8 new instruments specially for this album which can play by themselves with minimum manipulation. (turning switches only).” “Airmale (Tone Deaf Jam)” is buoyed by these instruments, foreshadowing PiL’s percussion experiments on The Flowers of Romance.
The track also features John Lennon’s most abstract guitar playing. Now, if Fly were only three sides long, this would be one of my favorite albums.
Sadly, the deal-breaker for me is the twenty-three minute long title track, which features aimless, wordless vocals for probably a quarter of an hour until, subtly, in the background, we can make out the faintest of skronky chords emanating from Lennon’s guitar.
It’s only slightly more interesting than the failed vocal experiments featured on the weakest of Lennon and Ono’s collaborations, The Wedding Album.
The unnecessarily long track is just plain boring, whereas the rest of Fly is dominated by spikey blues rock and intriguing abstract musical expressionism.
Ultimately, fans expecting the catharsis of the previous album might be a little disappointed. However, those fans who like a challenging listen will definitely take to this.

Side one

Midsummer New York – 3:50
Mind Train1 – 6:52

Side two

Mind Holes – 2:45
Don’t Worry, Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow) – 4:55
Mrs. Lennon – 4:10
Hirake (previously released as “Open Your Box”) – 3:32
Toilet Piece/Unknown – 0:30
O’Wind (Body Is the Scar of Your Mind) – 5:22

Side three

Airmale – 10:40
Don’t Count the Waves – 5:26
You – 9:00

Side four

Fly – 22:53
Telephone Piece – 0:33

1997 reissue bonus tracks

Between the Takes – 1:58
Will You Touch Me (Demo) – 2:45

All songs written by Yoko Ono.

Personnel

Yoko Ono – vocals, claves on “Airmale” and “Don’t Count the Waves”
John Lennon – guitar, piano on “Mrs. Lennon”, organ, automated music machines on “Airmale” and “Don’t Count the Waves”
Klaus Voormann – guitar, bass guitar, bells on “Mrs. Lennon”, cymbal on “O’Wind”, percussion on “Don’t Count the Waves”
Bobby Keys – claves on “O’Wind”
Eric Clapton – guitar on “Don’t Worry, Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)”
Jim Keltner – drums, tabla, percussion
Ringo Starr – drums on “Don’t Worry, Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)”
Jim Gordon – drums on “Hirake”, tabla on “O’Wind”
Chris Osborne – dobro on “Midsummer New York” and “Mind Train”
Joe Jones – automated music machines on “Airmale”, “Don’t Count the Waves” and “You”
George Marino – mastering engineer

Notes
Released: 21 September 1971
Recorded: 1969–1971 Studio Abbey Road, London / Ascot, Berkshire / The Record Plant, New York City
Genre: Rock, avant-pop, krautrock
Length: 94:52
Producer(s): John Lennon, Yoko Ono

Label – Apple Records

Yoko Ono – It´s Alright (I See Rainbows) (1982)

posted by albums-update

Its´s Alright (I See Rainbows) is the sixth solo album by Yoko Ono, and her second release after the death of husband John Lennon. As a variation of a theme concerning its predecessor, the back cover features a transparent image of Lennon in a then-contemporary photo of Yoko and Sean, depicted in Central Park. This album marks her first foray into new wave sounds and 1980s pop production. It charted at #98 in the US.

All songs were written, composed, arranged, produced, and sung by Ono.

Although still mourning the death of John Lennon, Yoko found herself looking toward the future with It’s Alright. With a more upbeat pop approach, Yoko found herself played on some radio stations with the cut “Never Say Goodbye,” even if it contained soundbites from John calling out her name. She’d gone through hell and now was finding her own place in the world of rock music.

Here we have a fifty-year-old Japanese woman performing synthesizer-based pop that’s more adventurous than much of the music currently being ground out by Europersons half her age. Indeed, “Dream Love,” the most aurally striking of the ten songs on Yoko Ono’s second solo album since John Lennon’s death, is a lush, electro-seaside chant that puts one in mind of those masters of British lunar elegance, Ultravox. And the eerie electronics concocted for such cuts as “Never Say Goodbye,” “Let the Tears Dry” and “Spec of Dust” sometimes suggest Kraftwerk in their most spectral mode.

This committed and convincing avant-gardism is all the more intriguing when considered alongside Ono’s ongoing affinity for the American girl-group sound of the early Sixties. Inasmuch as her precariously pitched voice — which is not unattractive — does tend at times to drift into “Angel Baby” territory, this predilection for simple hooks and light, bouncy harmonies may be instinctive.
Whatever the case, it’s genuinely charming, and “My Man,” the album’s single, is as forthright and engaging in its woozy sentimentality as, say, “Bobby’s Girl.”

This is not to denigrate Ono’s latest batch of lyrics, the bulk of which deal with her unabated feelings of loss over Lennon. But as that senseless event recedes in time — along with the bad old buzz about her being “the woman who broke up the Beatles” — we may begin at last to see Ono as an artist of unique resources in her own right.
Ono could hasten this perception by assembling her own recording band: the array of studio pros she currently employs are certainly slick, but they add no saving grace to such marginal tracks as the tuneless sub-reggae “Wake Up” and the equally anemic “Tomorrow May Never Come.” Ono’s quirky gift for melody, her engaging experimentalism and her refreshing optimism are qualities that could win her an audience well beyond the hard-core Lennon cult.

Tracklist

1. “My Man” – 3:56
2. “Never Say Goodbye” – 4:25
3. “Spec of Dust” – 3:31
4. “Loneliness” – 3:47
5. “Tomorrow May Never Come” – 2:26
6. “It’s Alright” – 4:23
7. “Wake Up” – 3:47
8. “Let the Tears Dry” – 2:24
9. “Dream Love” – 4:53
10. “I See Rainbows” – 3:15

All songs written by Yoko Ono.

Personnel