Love in the times of rock. To speak of romance within the world rock scene is to speak of John Lenon and Yoko Ono. Perhaps one of the most famous couples in the musical world from which many urban legends have been woven and which we will tell the story in this article.
John Lennon was born in Liverpool, England, on October 9, 1940, amid World War II, the son of Julia and Alfred Lennon, a merchant marine who was absent at the time of the birth of their son due to his duty as a merchant marine during the war event. For her part, Yoko Ono was born on February 18, 1933, in Tokyo, Japan, the daughter of a family of Japanese bankers and her father was also a descendant of the Emperor of Japan.
From totally different realities they both had a love life before meeting. However, this past was not an obstacle to being able to be together in the future.
If there is a couple that embodies the concept of free love, freedom and, of course, controversy, that is the one they formed, from 1967 to 1980, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Their relationship raised many blisters from the beginning because they were both married when they met and fell in love, and also Yoko had to endure criticism for being considered the culprit of the breakup of the Beatles, a fact, which with time was shown that it was completely false.
Despite their detractors, the couple remained together for 13 years until the night of December 8, 1980, a crazy admirer of the musician, Mark David Chapman, ended Lennon’s life and ruined the love story that most rivers of ink had flown in the last decades of the 20th century.
John was already married to his teenage girlfriend, Cynthia Powell, whom he had met in 1957 when they were both students at Liverpool College of Art. The young woman became pregnant and although Lennon’s relatives advised him not to feel obliged to marry her, the couple married on August 23, 1962. Six months later, on April 8, 1963, Julian Lennon was born.
The happiness of the marriage did not last long since three years later, on November 9, 1966, Yoko met John Lennon at Indica Gallery, a London art gallery where the artist, who had already made a great fame as a conceptual artist, exhibited his work. Intrigued by what he saw, the musician toured the gallery until he found the author of the works that had so fascinated him. He found her in front of one of them bearing a sign that read “Drive a nail,” and he asked her if she could drive one. Yoko said, “You can do it if you give me five coins,” to which John replied, “I’ll give you five imaginary coins if you let me drive an imaginary nail.”
The attraction that both felt from that first moment was so intense that they did not hesitate to break up their respective marriages to begin their controversial love story. At that moment, a legend began that would unite their names in an iconic story that lasted beyond Lennon’s death. Although Yoko never regretted it, she did declare on occasion, “in a way we both ruined our careers by being together.”