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The Inner Sleeve: William Bennett
Yoko Ono - Fly (Apple LP 1971)
Photography by John Lennon
I have a theory that I call ‘the transparent concession’. In brief, it’s that great art functions by affecting us enough to elicit a meaningful response, not from what we consciously perceive, but through everything that we are unable to consciously notice, including the artwork itself.
It was while wandering around the vibrant streets of Cologne where, among other metropolitan activities, I had been perusing the wares of one of the city’s delightfully numerous art book emporia. Negotiating my way past vertiginously piled-up stacks of the ubiquitous Taschen publications, I suddenly wished that I had pre-booked extra baggage allowance on the flight home. It’s that feeling you know of having to have something and bring it home with you.
Like David King’s Red Star Over Russia, a massive Egon Schiele anthology, a couple of gorgeous large-format African fetish photography books, and, shining proudly on its shelf, a veritable object of desire: YES YOKO ONO. This big, beautifully bound hardback (with CD) is full of so much; so much on the exceptional life and career of Ono – material so long left largely undocumented, so often overshadowed by the Fab Four connection.
Many commentators and fans used to say that Yoko was the cause of the The Beatles’ break-up – yet to me, it was the other way round: The Beatles were the worst thing that could have happened to her (or at least her art). She remains one of my favourite and, seminally, most influential artists.
Albert Goldman – the author extraordinaire of Disco, in my opinion the best music-related literary work – also wrote the first widely available biographical material on Yoko’s pre-Lennon years. The Lives Of John Lennon contains an extended section of fascinating and, importantly, sympathetic and appreciative coverage of her background, her work with Fluxus, and her conceptual and performance art. At the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, at a recent exposition of Ono’s original 1960s artworks and films, it was remarkable how well most of it had transcended the years.
But we’re really working backwards here, because my first encounter with her work was when I had such little access to music that I made do with solely imagining it. In fact, as a teenager, I would look lovingly at LP covers in stores, caressing them, reading reviews, talking about them with friends – all to the extent where, without regular access to a record player, one could but form auditory hallucinations of the sounds. Naturally, one’s aural expectations were lifted to the sublime; later disappointment therefore being, in most cases, inevitable.
Not with the Fly double LP, however. At the age of 16 or so, when my awareness was still limited to Yoko’s celebrated relationship with Lennon and that her music was ‘a bit weird’, I finally purchased a copy of the US Apple edition, kinaesthetically preferable thanks to the reassuringly thick board then common to American sleeves. Sonically, while I did find the more mainstream rock approach on disc one captivating, the songs on the more avant garde second disc featuring Fluxus artist Joe Jones’s incredible self-playing instruments (some are illustrated inside the gatefold) blew my fucking mind – and still do. Yoko’s amazing music was by far the biggest influence on me, and Whitehouse, in the formative years (despite what some would have you believe).
Fly’s outer covers, front and rear respectively, feature two enigmatic sepiatoned close-ups of Yoko (one of her face, the other her feet) taken by Lennon himself, that for a mainstream record in 1971 must have seemed pretty unusual. On the front, there’s the pale skin of her visage, whose tone almost matches the bare brick wall background, in turn sharply contrasted with the extravagant cascade of dark hair, and the submissiveness the black choker and waiting stillness suggest. Yet overleaf we notice, as with the dark tone of background shade, the inversion of the relationship: we are now domesticated pets at ground level intimately focusing on her feet (and rather pretty floral heels) as she sits side-on to us, apparently ignorant of our presence.
There is nothing to be consciously seen betwixt the light and the dark, the extremities of face and feet. The higher and the lower. It is the invisible space where the mystery resides, and which indeed we secretly yearn for – yet feel despair whenever that magic is made overt or explicit. And it all seems to perfectly symbolise her contradictory reluctance – the transparent concession – which is the quality I most love about her astonishing work. Art is not something to be merely looked at, nor music something to be merely heard; it’s something to be experienced.
William Bennett is a member of Whitehouse, whose 1985 Great White Death LP is rereleased on vinyl on Susan Lawly
Photography by John Lennon
I have a theory that I call ‘the transparent concession’. In brief, it’s that great art functions by affecting us enough to elicit a meaningful response, not from what we consciously perceive, but through everything that we are unable to consciously notice, including the artwork itself.
It was while wandering around the vibrant streets of Cologne where, among other metropolitan activities, I had been perusing the wares of one of the city’s delightfully numerous art book emporia. Negotiating my way past vertiginously piled-up stacks of the ubiquitous Taschen publications, I suddenly wished that I had pre-booked extra baggage allowance on the flight home. It’s that feeling you know of having to have something and bring it home with you.
Like David King’s Red Star Over Russia, a massive Egon Schiele anthology, a couple of gorgeous large-format African fetish photography books, and, shining proudly on its shelf, a veritable object of desire: YES YOKO ONO. This big, beautifully bound hardback (with CD) is full of so much; so much on the exceptional life and career of Ono – material so long left largely undocumented, so often overshadowed by the Fab Four connection.
Many commentators and fans used to say that Yoko was the cause of the The Beatles’ break-up – yet to me, it was the other way round: The Beatles were the worst thing that could have happened to her (or at least her art). She remains one of my favourite and, seminally, most influential artists.
Albert Goldman – the author extraordinaire of Disco, in my opinion the best music-related literary work – also wrote the first widely available biographical material on Yoko’s pre-Lennon years. The Lives Of John Lennon contains an extended section of fascinating and, importantly, sympathetic and appreciative coverage of her background, her work with Fluxus, and her conceptual and performance art. At the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, at a recent exposition of Ono’s original 1960s artworks and films, it was remarkable how well most of it had transcended the years.
But we’re really working backwards here, because my first encounter with her work was when I had such little access to music that I made do with solely imagining it. In fact, as a teenager, I would look lovingly at LP covers in stores, caressing them, reading reviews, talking about them with friends – all to the extent where, without regular access to a record player, one could but form auditory hallucinations of the sounds. Naturally, one’s aural expectations were lifted to the sublime; later disappointment therefore being, in most cases, inevitable.
Not with the Fly double LP, however. At the age of 16 or so, when my awareness was still limited to Yoko’s celebrated relationship with Lennon and that her music was ‘a bit weird’, I finally purchased a copy of the US Apple edition, kinaesthetically preferable thanks to the reassuringly thick board then common to American sleeves. Sonically, while I did find the more mainstream rock approach on disc one captivating, the songs on the more avant garde second disc featuring Fluxus artist Joe Jones’s incredible self-playing instruments (some are illustrated inside the gatefold) blew my fucking mind – and still do. Yoko’s amazing music was by far the biggest influence on me, and Whitehouse, in the formative years (despite what some would have you believe).
Fly’s outer covers, front and rear respectively, feature two enigmatic sepiatoned close-ups of Yoko (one of her face, the other her feet) taken by Lennon himself, that for a mainstream record in 1971 must have seemed pretty unusual. On the front, there’s the pale skin of her visage, whose tone almost matches the bare brick wall background, in turn sharply contrasted with the extravagant cascade of dark hair, and the submissiveness the black choker and waiting stillness suggest. Yet overleaf we notice, as with the dark tone of background shade, the inversion of the relationship: we are now domesticated pets at ground level intimately focusing on her feet (and rather pretty floral heels) as she sits side-on to us, apparently ignorant of our presence.
There is nothing to be consciously seen betwixt the light and the dark, the extremities of face and feet. The higher and the lower. It is the invisible space where the mystery resides, and which indeed we secretly yearn for – yet feel despair whenever that magic is made overt or explicit. And it all seems to perfectly symbolise her contradictory reluctance – the transparent concession – which is the quality I most love about her astonishing work. Art is not something to be merely looked at, nor music something to be merely heard; it’s something to be experienced.
William Bennett is a member of Whitehouse, whose 1985 Great White Death LP is rereleased on vinyl on Susan Lawly
Posted 02/11/09
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