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The note sees John accuse the EMI record label of blocking distribution on his 1968 experimental album ‘Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins’, because he appears nude on its cover with Yoko Ono, who became his wife in 1969.
In the letter, John angrily writes: “EMI (who have the real control) wrote warning letters to all their puppets around the world telling them not to handle it in any way.”
John’s ambition was to ensure that he would avoid a repeat of his experiences with EMI, which also distributed The Beatles’ Apple Records releases.

Of the letter, Moments in Time dealer Gary Zimet told the New York Post newspaper’s Page Six column: “This is Lennon’s handwritten draft letter … The letter is angrily written, and this album was the very first non-Beatles album that Lennon made.”
And ultimately, ‘Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins’ – which was released with brown paper-bag packaging – was distributed by another record label.

source:celebretainment

John and Yoko Ono, 1980.

German police say they have arrested a man suspected of handling stolen objects from the estate of John Lennon, including diaries. Berlin police said the 58-year-old suspect, whom they didn’t identify, was arrested in the German capital on Monday. They said another suspect lives in Turkey and is currently “not available” for law enforcement authorities, without elaborating. Police said in a statement that the objects, including diaries written by the late Beatle, were stolen from Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, in New York in 2006.

They reappeared in Berlin, and authorities this year launched an investigation of suspected fraud and handling stolen goods and the objects were seized.

Jonas Mekas: ‘At the time I saw a lot of John and Yoko, and I always enjoyed our time together.’ Photograph: Jonas Mekas/Gretchen Berg/Courtesy Anthology Editions Copyright Jonas Mekas

I began taking pictures in a serious way just after the second world war. I had been in a labour camp and, when the war ended, a displaced person’s camp in Germany; so my earliest images depicted the life of refugees.

I came to the US on 30 October 1949, aged 27. I knew someone in Chicago and he guaranteed me a job so I could get my green card. But when I landed in New York I decided it would be foolish to go anywhere else: it was electrifying, exciting. Everything was changing in the arts world – it was about to explode, with Marlon Brando, Ginsberg, the beat generation.

I didn’t care for the city itself; I barely noticed it. It was the intensity of life that caught me: I immersed myself in poetry, theatre, ballet and cinema. A few weeks after I arrived, I bought a 16mm film camera and started to make movies. The war had taken my growing-up period away from me, so I decided to catch up.

By 1960, I was editing Film Culture magazine, and that’s when I first met Yoko Ono. She was studying in New York and making her earliest work. In order to settle here, she needed a green card, so she came to me for a job. I was her sponsor.

A few years later, she went to London and met John Lennon. They returned together, and on his first night in New York, we all met for coffee. In December 1970 they came to the Invisible Cinema, a specially designed theatre I had just opened on Lafayette Street. I organised a little film festival and Yoko made two films for me in 10 days: one called Legs, and one called Fly. Legs consisted of a camera panning around different legs, mostly belonging to John and Yoko’s friends; Fly followed a fly in close up as it walked over the body of a nude female.

The cinema was designed for 70 people; when you were in your winged seat, you saw only the screen – not your neighbour or the person in front of you. The walls and seats were black velvet so that during the projection everything was dark but the film. In this photograph, we’re waiting for a movie to start.

At the time I saw a lot of John and Yoko, and I always enjoyed our time together. He was open, relaxed, very spontaneous. It felt like anything could happen, at any moment. Yoko was more controlled, but she was very warm and we remain good friends. She loved New York as much as I did. She once wrote to me from Japan, where she was working: “I’m coming to the end of my wits,” she wrote. “New York is my only town. Kiss the pavements… for me.”

It was through her that I came to dance with Fred Astaire, for her 1972 film, Imagine: he danced across a room, and I followed him, with no rehearsal. It was brief, but memorable.

I think Yoko is misunderstood. Those who blame her for the breakup of the Beatles – that’s not the woman I know. She and John were very sweet, very much in love. I’m lucky to have met them; I was lucky, too, that I had to leave my country, and arrive in New York when I did.

source:TheGuardian

Yoko Ono will share the story of the making of John Lennon’s album “Imagine” in a “landmark publication” with Thames & Hudson.

The book is due for release in October 2018 and will contain “unseen photographs, artefacts and new interviews” with the people who were there when the album was conceived and recorded.

This year Ono belatedly received an official co-credit on the album’s title track, in accordance with Lennon’s wishes.

Ono said: “A lot has been written about the creation of the song, the album and the film of ‘Imagine’, mainly by people who weren’t there, so I’m very pleased and grateful that now, for the first time, so many of the participants have kindly given their time to ‘gimme some truth’ in their own words and pictures.”

Tristan de Lancey, head of illustrated reference at Thames & Hudson, signed the title directly from Ono.