John Lennon’s Family Release Rare 1969 Performance Of ‘Oh Yoko!’
Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by Press
John Lennon‘s family have released a rare acoustic cover of ‘Oh Yoko!‘.
Dedicated to Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono, the song originally appeared on the Beatle‘s best known solo album Imagine in 1971.
This performance was filmed at the Sheraton Oceanus Hotel in the Bahamas, 25 May 1969.
Present for the impromptu rendition were Lennon, Ono, and Beatles publicist Derek Taylor.
The clip originally appeared as a bonus scene accompanying the home release of 2018 Lennon and Ono documentary Above Us Only Sky, a film which documented the making of Imagine.
“John & Yoko had arrived in the Bahamas the previous day,” reads a blurb accompanying the clip. “They would decide to leave the following day for Toronto and ultimately Room 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal – closer and easier for the New York American press – where they began their famous weeklong Bed-In for Peace, culminating the writing and recording of ‘Give Peace A Chance’ on the 31st of May.”
John Lennon viewed the song as a companion to his earlier song ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)‘ which famously appeared on the Beatles’ Abbey Road.
Unlike his previous song, ‘Oh Yoko!’ shed light on a softer side of the pair’s relationship.
“It’s a very popular track,” John Lennon recalled on the song to biographer David Sheffield in 1980, “but I was sort of shy and embarrassed and it didn’t represent my image of myself as the tough, hard biting rock ‘n’ roller with the acid tongue. Everybody wanted it to be a single – I mean, the record company, the public – everybody. But I just stopped it from being a single because of that. Which probably kept it in number two. It never made number one. The Imagine album was number one, but the single wasn’t.”
Lennon finishes his 1969 performance with a spontaneous tribute to rock ‘n’ roll icon Little Richard‘s 1956 single ‘Tutti Frutti‘, singing “awopbopaloobop alopbamboom” in the song’s closing moments.
PREMIERING ON YOUTUBE TODAY – OH YOKO!
This is a rarely-seen clip of John & Yoko performing an acoustic version of 'Oh Yoko' with press agent Derek Taylor at the Sheraton Oceanus Hotel, Freeport, Bahamas, 51 years ago today on 25 May 1969.https://t.co/Y2I5Aybrp9— John Lennon (@johnlennon) May 25, 2020
