Yoko Ono Meets Beth Ditto

Yoko Ono meets
Beth Ditto
Sunday October 14, 2007
Observer Music Monthly

Beth Ditto, larger than life frontwoman of the Gossip, has told someone who happens to know Yoko Ono that the venerable artist and musician is her all-time heroine. Then it transpires that the pair will both be in London the same week, and plans are put in place for a first-time meeting. OMM stands by as Beth, who is rather sweetly very nervous, hurls herself into the encounter ...

Beth: First, I have to say for me lately, living in America, that things are heavy, you know what I mean?

Yoko: It's a heavy time ...

Beth: It's a heavy time and I think what is so upsetting is that American culture has gone into this really desperate period. I feel scared, because I feel people don't know what to do right now. There was a previous time, when I wasn't alive, when people were mad and showed their anger and there was a whole youth movement ... well, not just youth but anti-war and civil rights. I can only speak for America because that's where I live. But it's really scary to see all this power taken away.

Yoko: We're all in the same boat, and we just need to cool down a bit. I think that us as entertainers relax people, and relaxation will help them forget the moment. And actually, instead of just fearing we have to go to the next step. Yes, fear is very good because that's an acknowledgement of something, but the next step is to make it well. To think that we don't have the power to make things well is already wrong. We can make it well.

Beth: That's the thing I felt with your album from earlier this year, Yes, I'm a Witch - it was so amazing. It really is the most empowering title I can think of. Nathan, my bandmate, said: 'Have you seen what she's called her record? It's going to blow your mind!', because I had just recently come in to this part of me that was about being a witch. About not just how empowering that was as a woman but with my connection to the earth.

Yoko: In the old days they used to burn witches, and I think the way in which we are living now, we don't burn witches but we are scared of them still.

Beth: We persecute still.

Yoko: And that is very strange. The male version - a wizard - is always respected and my feeling is that both witches and wizards are both magical people and the human race is a magical race and we just have to know that we're all witches and wizards and we can make it.
Beth: I absolutely agree with you. I'm not very well travelled - I've only been to Europe, that's it - but I read and try to educate myself as much as you can with the American media; but when you're talking about us being witches and wizards I completely understand and it seriously is like when George Bush was re-elected and no one knew what to do. And I remember people being mad at Gossip because we didn't speak out against the war so much. We were obviously against it and we'd talked about it - but we hadn't really done anything about it. I wasn't powerful enough.

Yoko: Yes, but you're the power. The way you were expressing yourself is all right; some people will always knock you because they are scared themselves so they want to somehow make you responsible. But you're doing everything that's possible and right by just being yourself, and so what Gossip are doing is right.

Beth: I feel it's hard to feel that way, that's why I feel like such a ... it's hard to say, I agree.

Yoko: If all of us in the world become artists and musicians and the judge and the lawyers judged each other by singing it would be a beautiful world.
Beth: That would be amazing!

Yoko: If you didn't say you have got a political training and just said you have to know how to sing, it would be great.

Beth: It's true!
Yoko: One day all of us artists and musicians are going to spread the art and the power of hearing in the world, and that's the only thing we can do.

Beth: Do you feel that you have to have a mission?

Yoko: Yes, and make everyone wake up to the fact that they are magicians, they are wizards and witches and they're artists.
Beth: I agree. Not only that, but connection is a spiritual thing - it just hangs over your head.
Yoko: I feel that we're almost in the same place, but you're in the position where people knock you, or what you're doing, but others admire you. You don't want to misdirect yourself and go that way and listen to the people who are knocking you, because they are angry about themselves.
Beth: Do you ever feel like you're alone?

Yoko: Well, you see, alone and loneliness are very different things. I have so much to do that I don't have time to think of another person all the time. I'm very happy to have this freedom to be allowed to do things.

Beth: When I think of being alone I think of being out on a limb for the struggle, whatever the struggle is, whether it's art or visibility or just to be quiet sometimes.
Yoko: The thing is, even the most supposedly beautiful women in the world are always saying 'Am I all right?' because they always have some excuse to not like themselves. It's very hard to find someone you respect. The thing is, you don't have to be afraid of what people are thinking because usually it's to do with themselves. They may say 'Hey, you're great' - but they don't mean it. This is so funny. One time someone came up to John [Lennon] and said: 'I loved your record.' So John said: 'Which one?' and they went, 'Errrrmmm.' They didn't know the title or anything. John was saying afterwards: 'You should never ask that question. They just want to say something so you'll love them.'
Beth: I see. I really appreciate honesty. People are like, 'I've never heard of you.' That's great! That's fine: you can't hear everything. One of the favourite things anyone ever said to me was, 'I didn't like your record.' Thanks, I really appreciate that.
Yoko: Did you ever hear the story about three pots of plants? Three pots of plants, each watered with certain thoughts: one watered with nothing, just water, the other watered with love and the other with hate. Which one do you think grew better?

Beth: Love.

Yoko: Well, you think that, don't you? Hate and love was equal, and the one you didn't do anything about died. You see, many people hated me supposedly, right? And people said: 'Well, how did you survive?' I just said: 'Well, I used that hatred as a power, as an energy, and it's a great power, my God. As long as you don't get distressed about it.' It was really amazing. I was told I look very young and people were asking, 'What do you do?' And it just dawned on me that ... you know, there is a Japanese saying - good medicine tastes bitter, it's true. The whole world was giving me bitter medicine for 40 years, and it was probably better than if they all kept giving me sugar.

Beth: One thing that Lou Reed said was, 'I wish someone had told me that the things I was doing at a certain point in my career sucked.' I feel like when you meet people who are famous and you're mean to them, they are a lot more appreciative because people don't do that with them.
Yoko: Well, I really appreciate that.

Beth: Me too. But my growing up was my bitter medicine. I'm glad I had it, it was different, completely different, but I'm glad.

OMM: Sorry to interrupt, but with John, I guess, what was great for him was that you challenged him.

Yoko: Well, we challenged each other.

Beth: That's the thing. I was afraid to approach the subject of John. You just don't know people and when you see this one-dimensional picture of a person and you don't really know where their boundaries are ...
Yoko: It's OK. It's funny - recently I went to an elementary school in Denver because my grandchild was in this class of six-year-olds, and the teacher said: 'Well, she's an artist so you should ask her artistic questions.' So I said: 'Well, if you want to ask about the Beatles then that's all right.'
Beth: I bet everyone was, like, sweet!

Yoko: And you know one question they asked me was, 'Have you ever met Ringo?' So I said yes and this girl just fell on the floor, just fainted. Just because I said I'd met Ringo!
Beth: As a feminist, I wanted to ask you about your music, and what you do, and about you. But of course all those things shaped you, you can't deny that. I guess I just wanted you to dictate the conversation and I just wanted to listen.

Yoko: I'm more interested in your life and what you've been through. Also, by the way, we both know a little bit more about my life ...
Beth: When they said we were going to do this thing I was like, 'How the hell!' We should probably play a game of Twister first to get acquainted, but I feel like my questions are more about what activism was like then compared to now.
OMM: Did the Sixties feel different to how things feel now?

Yoko: Well, we tried our best, and I think the younger generation now are more powerful and better placed for that because they know what we did and they know where we failed too. There was the Sixties sexual liberation but there was the other thing, the drugs, and we were really conned into it. We had no awareness.
Beth: I think there were other things too - from what I've read, there were actually marches. But if you ask people to stage a boycott now, it's like pulling teeth because people just want their cable [TV] - if they have cable, they feel enlightened. There is this weird sense of complacency. Even, like, my mother, who has this amazing sense of the world, there's still fear in her. She's afraid to lose her job - that's held over people's heads. But I feel like we're on the brink of something, although I don't know what, and I feel like I'm in this position. Like, I teach at this rock'n'roll camp for girls, teaching little girls to play music.

Yoko: This conversation is a real eye-opener for me. I didn't know you were a feminist, I didn't know you were this political. All this is very beautiful.

Beth: Well, that's the thing. People forget I'm from a punk scene of stinking vegan radicals. We have our own things, and we're all gay, and I think it's all interesting because the media forgot about it.

Yoko: The media likes the idea of concentrating on things the reader would like to know, and readers like to know about scandal and trashy stuff and some weirdos. But we're fine.

Beth: We're upstanding citizens.

Yoko: And it's a way of trashing, you know. Trash them and the readers will feel better.

Beth: But they can't pull a fast one with me; they can't tell me I'm fat because I know and that's fine with me, and you can't tell me I grew up poor because I've heard it all before. You can't call me lazy, as I know I'm not. There's nothing you can tell me that I don't already know.

Yoko: But it's a way of looking at things. There was a time when people were very polite to us. And those days might come back, who knows? And the more you are active about something you love the world is going to be a better place.

Beth: That's the best thing I've ever heard. I feel like I'm of this generation that is in this gap and I want to turn people on to what people my age know about you. These little girls ... I do a vocal class where they learn not to have an amazing voice but how to run vocals through an amp in a garage so you can hear yourself sing. We learn how to ask about things. We're not going to teach them to sing like an opera singer. I bring them in Nina Simone, Antony and the Johnsons and you, and I think it's really important. I hope I'm doing this generation as good a job as you did.

Beth Ditto: don't eat this at home

1. Ditto, who hails from Arkansas, recently put to bed the question of whether or not she has ever eaten squirrel. 'You kill it, you eat it, people get ready for the squirrel- hunting season, you fry it like chicken,' she told Jonathan Ross on his BBC1 chat show last month.

2. The Gossip's breakthrough single, 'Standing in the Way of Control', was written in response to the US government's refusal to allow homosexuals to marry.

3. Ditto's partner, Freddie, is a transgendered individual who was born female but identifies as a man. 'I call Freddie he. You can call her she.'

4. She once sold T-shirts for a company called TeesMe. 'Every morning a man would call at 9am and I'd say "TeesMe" and he'd hang up. I'm pretty sure he was a dirty old man.'

5. According to Ditto, the Gossip's fourth album will be called Fat Bitch. This may have been a joke.



Yoko Ono: buttocks help the mind

1. Ono attended Tokyo's exclusive Peers School, entrance to which is only afforded to descendants of aristocrats.

2. In 1962, Ono married Anthony Cox, a US jazz musician, film producer and art promoter, who found her in a psychiatric hospital in Japan, where she had been placed by her family.

3. In the Sixties, as a member of the avant-garde art movement Fluxus, she made a film comprising numerous shots of buttocks and a sales list of imaginary artworks. 'It would be very good for someone's mental health to buy something that didn't exist,' she said.

4. Her first solo album, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, includes the song 'Why', on which she repeats the word 'why' for five minutes.

5. Ono finds men inherently amusing. 'They have this delicate, long thing hanging outside their bodies which goes up and down by its own will. If I were a man I would always be laughing at myself.' ·

Yoko Ono has just unveiled a 'Peace Tower' in Reykjavik.
See www.imaginepeace.com