Today marks the 50th Anniversary of John Lennon’s marriage to Yoko Ono, only a few weeks after the anniversary of Lennon’s first post-Beatles performance, at Cambridge University in 1969. A celebration of experimental music, the concert was led by Yoko Ono where Lennon supported her as her “band” and was one that made up the 26-minute intro to their joint album, ‘Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions’.
Fast-forward 50 years later and the concert’s mark in musical history is commemorated in the unveiling of a plaque at Lady Mitchell Hall, Cambridge, where the couple’s performance was held all those years ago.
The plaque was unveiled 50 years after John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s concert
A Beatle’s wife who has had to continue without John Lennon by her side, Yoko Ono was disparagingly called the ‘Dragon Lady’ by Lennon fans, irrationally being blamed for splitting the band up in 1969 when Lennon informed the group that he would be leaving. Since then, Ono’s contribution to Lennon’s work has been more and more recognised as a creative mind behind the music, rather than the ‘muse’ that she was previously labelled, culminating most recently in her recognition as co-writer of the iconic peace anthem that is ‘Imagine’ in 2017.
In an interview with Andy Peebles in 1980, Lennon made it clear that Ono was equally responsible for the song as himself, stating;
“Imagine should be credited as a Lennon-Ono song because a lot of it – the lyric and the concept – came from Yoko. But those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho, and I sort of omitted to mention her contribution. But it was right out of Grapefruit, her book”.
Ono’s concepts of idealism flooded soundwaves worldwide and ‘Imagine’ grew to have the powerful reputation it has today – yet, despite the song’s international recognition, Ono’s contribution took 46 years to be recognised.
Photograph: Ian Macmillan © Yoko Ono
Ono’s example of female musicians slipping into the shadows of their male contemporaries is sadly not the only of its kind and in the music industry particularly, it is not hard to find cases where women were robbed of their deserving credit by its transference to other (male) musicians.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe is one of these ‘lost’ musicians. An American singer, songwriter, guitarist and recording artist, Rosetta attained popularity through her gospel recordings in the 1930s and 1940s that were characterised by rhythmic accompaniments that stood as a significant precursor of the later rock n roll phenomenon. Her appeals for daring guitar techniques and her distortions of electric chords garnered her the name the ‘Godmother of rock and roll’.
Her innovations were the main influences of rock n roll musicians Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, yet her legacy was lost amongst the domination of her fellow male musicians.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Another notable musician is Carol Kaye, a musician often called the ‘First Lady of Bass’, she was the lone woman behind The Beach Boys legendary ‘Pet Sounds’. Kaye was very much a woman in a man’s world and she fought for her talents to be recognised – seeing her as the genius behind the famous baselines of Ray Charles, Phil Spector, Ritchie Valens, Simon & Garfunkel and The Monkees, yet her name is not one we know.
But we don’t necessarily need to dig into the past to find an imbalance of credit given in the music industry. Bjork has brought up the issues of sexism she faces time and time again. On releasing her album ‘Vulnicura’, Arca was labelled as the sole producer, when in fact he was co-producer alongside Bjork – a fact that he himself had confirmed many times. Solange Knowles fell to this judgement during her interview with Pitchfork, where they relayed the credit of her music to her co-producer Dev Hynes, referring to Solange as a ‘ideal female muse’. And let’s not forget Kanye West’s song ‘Famous’ where he publicly degraded Taylor Swift’s talents in his one line “I made that b**ch famous”.
Movements such as #MeToo where women have took hold of the cultural conversation have helped raise these issues, yet women still remain massively unrepresented at Grammys and Billboard charts. Last year the #GrammysSoMen hashtag made an appearance after Academy President Neil Portnow’s comment that women need to “step up” to achieve recognition – but are these social media movements enough? Do you think change has plateaued? Subscribe and comment in our discussion!
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