U2′s Controversies

In honor of Bono’s 53rd birthday today, we’re sharing some of U2′s more entertaining controversies, excerpted from the pages of U2 FAQ: Anything You’d Ever Want to Know About the Biggest Band in the World…And More! by John D. Luerssen (Backbeat Books).

1. Jamaica Mistake-a
On January 16, 1996, Bono and his family wound up on the receiving end of police gunfire when his plane landed in Negril, Jamaica. Planning to meet up with Adam Clayton on the island, somehow local police were of the belief that a plane loaded with drugs would be landing in the same area around the same time. When the gunfire finally stopped, the Hewsons, Chris Blackwell, and Jimmy Buffett were offered an apology by the local police, who had fired at the wrong plane.

2. Oasis Kiss
In March 1996, a photo of Bono and Liam Gallagher of Oasis sharing an open-mouthed kiss caused a stir. Taken backstage at the Point Depot in Dublin, fans of both bands quickly derived that it was an alcohol-fueled joke, but not before the media got a lot of mileage out of it. Bono confirmed this to Rolling Stone in 1999, saying, “Actually, what happened was he had a guitar pick in his mouth, and he dared me to take it off him while the paparazzi were standing around. I couldn’t resist.

3. Tabloid Trash
In September 1998, U.K. tabloid the Daily Star published photos of Bono’s bare ass. Bono had been changing his clothes on an Italian beach during a vacation with his wife Ali at the time the paparazzi snapped his bottom. The couple sued the paper for invasion of privacy.

4. Shut Up, Paul
In June 2008, after Paul McGuinness suggested that Radiohead’s 2007 pay-what-you-like download release of In Rainbows had backfired, Bono announced his disagreement with U2′s long running manager. Bono called the Thom Yorke-fronted band “courageous and imaginative in trying to figure out some new relationship with their audience,” in an open letter to the music weekly NME. Calling Radiohead a “sacred talent,” Bono added, “such imagination and courage are in short supply right now,” and explained that U2 “feel blessed to be around at the same time.”

In U2 FAQ, award-winning music journalist John D. Luerssen goes beyond the essential facts, delving into the legendary fables and unique anecdotes that make U2 FAQ an indispensable read for all U2 disciples. How did Bono recover his cherished suitcase of lyrics 23 years after its 1981 disappearance? What movie dialogue is sampled in the middle of “Seconds”? What effect did bull’s blood have on Larry’s drumming? How did Bono’s visit to Central America inform The Joshua Tree? What are the details of Adam’s 1989 marijuana bust? How did Mick Jagger wind up on All That You Can’t Leave Behind? These are just some of the topics U2 FAQ explores.

Happy Birthday, Billy Joel!

Today is music legend Billy Joel’s 64th birthday. Enjoy an excerpt from Hank Bordowitz’s book, Billy Joel: The Life and Times of an Angry Young Man. 

Billy was the first artist to perform, in 1990, to back-to-back, standing-room-only audiences at 54,000-seat Yankee Stadium. In 1992, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 1999 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1994, he received the Billboard Century Award, and he’s been awarded doctorates in humane letters. Billy’s popularity helped power the series of “Face to Face” tours with Elton John into some of the most successful live events of all time, setting attendance records around the world. Despite not having written a song in more than a decade and having turned his compositional talents to the composed classical music arena, he remains one of the few acts that can practically guarantee a sellout on the touring circuit.

If this weren’t enough, a Broadway show, Movin’ Out, featuring Billy’s songs and Twyla Tharp’s choreography to tell a story in the best tradition of ballet, has been running for nearly three years as of this writing, and has spawned a touring company, allowing Billy to have his music tour while he stays home in the Hamptons.

That said, anyone who has followed his career and his very public (much to his chagrin) private life doesn’t need to be Freud to figure out that Billy Joel has, as modern parlance would have it, issues. He has spent most of his career at war with the media in general and music critics in particular. Early in his career, he was not entirely wrong to rail. Critics didn’t “get” the musically mercurial Billy. “Critics have accused Joel of trying to have it all ways,” Time Magazine writer Tony Schwartz noted as Billy started flirting with stardom in the late ’70s, “but it’s precisely his capacity to blend old-fashioned melodies, literate lyrics and a rock ’n’ roll spirit that makes him special.”

 

Billy Joel: The Life and Times of an Angry Young Man is a look at the superstar’s entire career, including his troubled youth as a gang member; the controversy surrounding his first hit, “Captain Jack”; his legal problems; his storied marriage with Christie Brinkley; and his continued artistic frustration. “The Beatles did ‘Michelle’ and ‘Yesterday,’” he has said. “They also did ‘Revolution’ and ‘Helter Skelter’ and they weren’t pegged as balladeers. But because I had hit singles that were ballads, I became known as a balladeer. I’ve always resented it.”

Happy Birthday, George Clooney!

So, George Clooney is 52 today (we can’t believe it either). Enjoy an excerpt from George Clooney, by Kimberly Potts.

George Clooney had often told reporters he wouldn’t attend the Oscars until he was nominated for one. He didn’t expect, though, that one trip to the Academy Awards was all he’d need to take home one of the little golden guys.

After nearly twenty-five years in Hollywood, more than a dozen failed TV shows, a breakout role in a hit TV series that gave him his firstbig success at age thirty-three, and another decade of critical film hits (Out of Sight) and box-office misses (Batman & Robin), 2006 was the year that his industry cohorts decided Clooney was a genuine triple threat: he had become the first person in the history of the Academy Awards to be nominated for three different Oscars in two different movies. All of a sudden, in 2006 Hollywood had decided that Clooney was one of the best actors, one of the best writers and one of the best directors in the industry.

And all the big-screen triumphs he was at last enjoying had come not because he had motored along the usual path to success in Hollywood. Instead, Clooney had done things his way, shrewdly switching back and forth between projects with big box-office potential and smaller, more independent movies he felt passionately about, working with actors and filmmakers who shared his goals of turning out good work they could be proud of listing on their résumés and, in a reflection of his personal ethics, making it a priority in his professional life to treat people, at every stage and level of the filmmaking process, fairly.

Clooney had become a genuine movie star, one of the biggest in the world, one of the most beloved and most respected—and, judging from the crop of those coming up behind him, one of the last real movie stars in Hollywood. As unlikely as it might have seemed earlier in his career, when he felt lucky to land parts in movies like Return to Horror High and Return of the Killer Tomatoes! and to be playing sixth banana to Mrs. Garrett and the girls on The Facts of Life, Clooney had deftly managed to sustain and expand upon a career in an industry that is notoriously fickle. He’d become a better actor, one capable not only of genuinely terrific performances in movies such as Steven Soderbergh’s slick heist crime dramedy/romance Out of Sight and Joel and Ethan Coen’s comic adventure O Brother, Where Art Thou?, but also of aligning himself with filmmakers who could draw out his best acting efforts and who had likeminded commitments to making movies that mattered, that provoked, that entertained . . . that, above all, did more than just line a leading man’s pockets with an eight-figure payday.

He’s famous for twice being People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, for his penchant for practical jokes and his vow never to remarry, as well as for his Oscar-winning and Emmy-nominated acting career. But George Clooney’s reputation as a celebrity belies his essential seriousness, as a businessman, a humanitarian, and, of course, in his ascendancy to the Hollywood A-list.

George Clooney: The Last Great Movie Star 

In this updated biography of one of Hollywood’s most colorful leading men, pop culture expert Kimberly Potts traces Clooney’s life from small-town boy to big-screen idol. Clooney slowly and deliberately built a résumé that took him from TV stardom on ER to a winning film career as a serious actor, writer, producer and director. Along the way Potts fills us in on Clooney’s early attempts to break into film (including his Batman flop), his many well-publicized romances, his political and humanitarian efforts, plus a major fight with director David O. Russell on the set of Three Kings.

Potts also recounts how Clooney has gained success and acclaim with his shrewd strategy of alternating blockbuster movie roles, such as the Ocean’s franchise, with less lucrative “passion” projects – such as Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck – that reflect his personal ethics. He won an Academy Award for the former and rave reviews for the latter, and has continued to earn accolades and Oscar nominations for smart dramas such as Michael Clayton and Up in the Air.

Including fresh interviews, essential Clooney photographs, a filmography, a timeline, and a list of his favorite 100 films, this is the book no Clooney fan will want to be without.

How Filmmakers Stay Sane on Set

Toni Attell and Carl Gottlieb are the authors of The Little Blue Book for Filmmakers.  Enjoy an excerpt of their book below, provided by IndieWire.

The source of most drama outside of the script is the actors, and anywhere they congregate may be a hotbed of intrigue, gossip, and disinformation. This is also true of anyone who talks to actors, so view the makeup, hairdressing, wardrobe, and transportation departments as minefields. Even on a low-/no-budget production, where all the departments are combined in the person(s) of your overworked colleagues, a few misplaced or ill-chosen words will resonate throughout the production, and anything said in confidence is public knowledge as soon as it can be repeated. A favor for one will be expected by all, and any violation of boundaries will result in the loss of those limits.

This is not to say a director cannot speak or be spoken to; if that were true, directors would be the loneliest people on the set. Feel free to chat about wind and weather, but remember that in all close-knit male groups, from nineteenth-century British colonial armies to the crews of nuclear submarines, there are three topics deliberately ignored: women, politics, and religion. In a less gender-specific world, include members of the opposite sex as subjects to be avoided. Add to those topics these sources of friction: the problems of the production, the character of the personnel, and the personal lives of everyone on or near the set. The director’s problems are uniquely off limits; like the captain of a ship or the leader of a combat patrol, his or her thoughts must remain private. We discussed the director’s isolation before; it goes with the job, it even has a name: “the loneliness of command.” If you must share gossip and commentary, do it with someone far from the set or the production: a therapist, a life partner, a close family member, or an animal companion (these may all be the same individual). If you’re a writer, your closest confidante may be the director. If he or she is not sympathetic, the same limits apply to your options.

A strategy (or habit) that many executives (including directors) find useful is to acquire or maintain a group of friends or confidantes with whom you can share frankly and safely. The advantage of this is that the natural loneliness of command is softened by a close-knit circle of advisors, sounding boards, and lieutenants who can be trusted to keep people and things organized and functional (including yourself, on the bad days). But, beware—the inherent danger is that your group becomes a “posse,” a gang that gives the appearance of a support group but is, in fact, a barrier. These individuals are people whose principal interest is preserving their turf, influencing your decisions, and insulating you from all criticism and useful input. They become gatekeepers and relish the role.

Keep reading this excerpt on IndieWire!

 

Originally conceived as a workbook for young directors, The Little Blue Book for Filmmakers has become a handbook for easy reference, with all the information a student director/actor/producer needs to create a film, from inception through production, to sales, distribution, and exhibition. The book discusses issues faced by all beginning filmmakers, with a historical perspective that explains problems and solutions that reach back to the invention of movies at the turn of the last century, and stretch forward to include new digital technology and the popularization of videography as global self-expression. A valuable addition to the shelves of all film school instructors who’ve not had years of practical experience working in the trade, it’s also a syllabus in itself and can be the foundation for a course schedule. More important, it’s something every film student will want to own as a reference and guide.

David Tennant – The Tenth Doctor

It’s David Tennant’s birthday!  Below is an excerpt from Dave Thompson’s Doctor Who FAQ in honor of the Tenth Doctor.

At the same time, the Tenth Doctor remains the most personable of all his 
incarnations, well groomed and humorous, loyal and intense, capable of swinging from crushing sentimentality to seething rage on whims that are all the more alien for their sheer humanity. He is a Doctor who has imbibed the best qualities of every one of his predecessors, without weeding through them to discover which might actually clash with one another to set up a fresh internal conflict.

Losing the companionship of Rose Tyler and her family would become the single defining moment of the Tenth Doctor’s life span, just as her companionship was the single most important relationship. Subsequent cotravelers Martha Jones and Donna Noble attempted to break through the resultant isolation, but they were never going to do so, while the other “friends” who passed through his life would likewise fall a long way short of the Rose-shaped ideal, no matter what depths of pathos they descended to in their attempts to pierce his armor. Rather, he recruited them for what he could get out of them, maintaining their presence until they asked to be released, but disdaining their friendship in his rugged pursuit of a higher goal.

Even Donna’s grandfather, a whiskery old gentleman with a kitbag full of war stories, only briefly captured the Doctor’s attention, while a cynical viewer might think that Martha entered the Doctor’s life only so there could be a personal side to his oncoming confrontation with her sister’s employer, the fast-rising politician Harold Saxon. If we were discussing the Seventh Doctor, by the way, that would not even have been in doubt.

Doctor Who FAQ

Doctor Who is indisputably the most successful and beloved series on UK TV, and the most watched series in the history of BBC America. Doctor Who FAQ tells the complete story of its American success, from its first airings on PBS in the 1970s, through to the massive Doctor Who fan conventions that are a staple of the modern-day science fiction circuit. Combining a wealth of information and numerous illustrations, Doctor Who FAQalso includes a comprehensive episode guide.

Gender Wars and Some Big Ideas from Howard Hughes

The following is an excerpt from Film Noir FAQ by David J. Hogan, as posted on Bookgasm. Visit Bookgasm to read this entire excerpt.

One of the most highly regarded films noir, RKO’s The Narrow Margin (1952), came perilously close to oblivion after being completed. During thirteen days in May–June 1950, studio contract director Richard Fleischer shot the suspenseful story of a Chicago police detective who risks his life to transport a hoodlum’s wife to Los Angeles, via train, so that she can be a witness in a mob trial.

Most of The Narrow Margin is restricted to the train’s passenger cars, a marvelous construction of claustrophobic sets (by Albert S. D’Agostino and Jack Okey) with breakaway sections that allowed full camera access. The narrative is tense, and although many interludes are violent, the tale isn’t contrived. After the shoot was complete, RKO owner Howard Hughes suggested, with great enthusiasm, that the male protagonist, Detective Sergeant Walt Brown (Charles McGraw) leave his charge (Marie Windsor) in order to conduct a (literally) running gun battle with murderous mobsterson top of the train, as in innumerable westerns. Though cinematic, the added sequence would have removed the story from the realm of the plausible and turned it into a comic book adventure. Richard Fleischer thought it was one of the worst ideas he’d ever heard.

Well, Hughes abandoned that notion. Then he came up with a bigger one. Because The Narrow Margin had turned out so well, Hughes wanted to scrap all footage with McGraw and Windsor. The editors would salvage as many other sequences as possible, and the leads would be recast with RKO’s two biggest assets, Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. In a commercial sense, the idea wasn’t without merit, but it would obviously have meant the destruction of an exceptionally well-done B thriller. Fleischer, still typecast around the studio as a B-picture director, would probably have been cut out of the revamped project. He knew he could do Bs and ached to step up to the A-picture level. Hughes’s idea would be a setback to Fleischer’s career, particularly because rumors would spread that the McGraw-Windsor footage was deficient. Fortunately, the ceaseless activity of Howard Hughes’s mind brought with it some positive ramifications. Project ideas, endless memos with editorial revisions, a never-ending search for new starlets—all of that and more bubbled in his head like a stew. He eventually decided against—or simply forgot—the Mitchum-Russell idea, but time had passed. The Narrow Margin had been sitting on the shelf for nearly eighteen months.

Keep reading this excerpt on Bookgasm.com! 

Film Noir FAQ celebrates and reappraises some 200 noir thrillers representing 20 years of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Noir pulls us close to brutal cops and scheming dames, desperate heist men and hardboiled private eyes, and the unlucky innocent citizens that get in their way. These are exciting movies with tough guys in trench coats and hot tomatoes in form-fitting gowns. The moon is a streetlamp and the narrow streets are prowled by squad cars and long black limousines. Lives are often small but people’s plans are big – sometimes too big. Robbery, murder, gambling; the gun and the fist; the grift and the con game; the hard kiss and the brutal brush-off.

The Truth About Vocal Style

Tim Carson is the author of The Worship Vocal Book. Below is an excerpt from his new book as provided for by Live 2 Play Worship. Please see their site for the entire excerpt.

Vocal style is one of the most powerful tools we have to help us express our hearts through song. Style is the palette of colors that we use to express emotion. When style is used at its best, we capture the essence of a song, connect our hearts to what we are singing, and find a full spectrum of colors that will communicate to our congregations. Style not only allows others to hear the language of the heart, but invites them to engage their hearts in the same way. But style can alienate and distance our congregations as much as it can invite and engage them. The right song, the right message, and the wrong style can render all of our efforts in rehearsal and preparation (and even in vocal development) a profound waste of time. Our voice can sound amazing, and we can develop all of the range, dynamic control, and technical ability in the world, but if we do not have control over style, we may as well be a pastor at a church in Texas, preaching in Japanese. That pastor could have passion and skill, and the right heart and motivation, but people just aren’t going to get it. The inability to effectively use style can be just as much of a hindrance to our ministry in worship. For most singers I begin working with, style is an elusive aspect of singing that they feel they have very little control over. They would explain style as the unique quality that defines their voice. It’s what you hear when they sing—it’s their style. Other people on their worship team have their own style. Someone on their team sounds really good on a certain type of song because that is their style. Another person sounds best on another type of song because that is their style. But style isn’t something they feel they have any control over. Style is what defines them.

But this is not the case for those vocal artists who see style as a tool bag of resources that help them communicate their hearts through their voices. Style serves vocal artists but does not define them. Style is the palette of colors that they get to use as they create a work of art, painting a picture and communicating a message through song.

So how do we make that shift? How can we develop the ability to be served by style rather than defined by it? Can style be learned, or do you just do the best you can with what you’ve got?

Breaking Down the Mystery of Vocal Style

The first step in mastering style is to break style down into manageable pieces. We all have a broad understanding of style. We like certain styles and dislike others. We recognize when we move from one stylistic genre to another. But what are the specific characteristics that really define style? Nearly all of what defines style can be broken down into four stylistic tools:
• Diction
• Tone Color
• Vibrato
• Pitch Fluctuation

Keep reading this excerpt on Live 2 Play Worship!

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At a wide range of conferences and sessions, the principles presented in The Worship Vocal Book have proven to produce better singers, time and time again. The techniques in this book draw on four-hundred years of classical, foundational vocal instruction and yet they are fresh. Tim presents them in a way that is different from any other method available today, particularly as it pertains to the contemporary worship singer, leader, songwriter, or performer. The information is presented in a way that is easy to follow, and it works!

Patrick Troughton: The Doctor, The Clown

To celebrate Patrick Troughton’s birthday we have posted an excerpt from Dave Thompson’s new book Doctor Who FAQ. Please enjoy!

The Clown was the Second Doctor, formally introduced to his audience still lying on the TARDIS floor, where he fell at the end of the previous adventure.

In what we might call “the real world,” that in which BBC writers, pro- ducers, directors, and crew fuss around to bring the Doctor’s adventures into our living rooms, it was a moment of unparalleled drama, anticipation, and probably fear.

The outgoing William Hartnell was more than a popular actor, after all. To everybody and anybody who had any awareness of the show, he was the Doctor. White-haired and wrinkled, smartly attired and condescending. Whereas now he was dark-haired and shorter. Craggier, with the kind of face that could be described as lived-in. Kindly but a little lugubrious. The eyes sparkled, and the cunning of the First Doctor was a lot less pronounced. Politely, the Second Doctor looked a bit of a bumbler.

Who ever would accept it was the same man?

Certainly not Ben and Polly, his latest companions. And the man who called himself the Doctor didn’t seem too sure, either.

“You’re the Doctor!” said Polly, in answer to one of his rambling remarks. “Oh, I don’t look like him,” replied the Doctor. And the introductions could have gone on all night were it not for one slight problem. There were Daleks about, and if the Doctor had learned one thing over the past three years of television, it was that Daleks—his oldest and most lethal enemy—did not have time for small talk.

That was how this new man was to be introduced, not through the force of his personality, or the delight of his sense of mischievous humor, but through the sheer populist weight of his most implacable foe, the single most popular creation in the show’s entire history and still, all these years later, one of the most beloved (if a metal tin packed to bursting with unrepentant malice could ever be described as “beloved”) aliens in science- fiction history. We will get to know them better later in this book; for now, suffice it to say that the very inclusion of the Daleks’ name in an episode title was worth a million or so extra viewers every week, and The Power of the Daleks did not disappoint.

It still doesn’t. With hindsight, it’s difficult to say which future story was most heavily influenced by The Power of the Daleks: the Ninth Doctor’s Dalek, in which the time traveler’s pleas for an inactive Dalek to remain inactive are ignored, or the Eleventh Doctor’s Victory of the Daleks, in which stupid humans (Britain’s wartime hero Winston Churchill among them) convince themselves that it is they who call the shots, and that the Daleks are simply theirs to command.

Either way, in terms of storytelling, action, and excitement, the Second Doctor’s debut is at least the equal of the former and effortlessly superior to the latter, with the Daleks seemingly even more sinister than usual simply by virtue of behaving so helpfully.

Of course, they will soon be at their screeching, screaming best as well, but what is important here is less the manner in which the Doctor, Ben, and Polly defeat them than in the nature of the understanding that quickly comes to bind the three of them so closely. After all, this Doctor is still a total stranger to them, and while Polly is willing to accept that he might be the same man, Ben is considerably more suspicious. And it will take more than a silly hat and an annoying recorder to win him around.

But somehow, the Doctor succeeded. Yes he was a clown, and in sharp contrast to his prickly predecessor, a lovable one as well. But by the end of his first season, which concluded with another encounter with the Daleks, the Doctor was again the Doctor, and memories of his past personality were just that.

Doctor Who is indisputably the most successful and beloved series on UK TV, and the most watched series in the history of BBC America. Doctor Who FAQ tells the complete story of its American success, from its first airings on PBS in the 1970s, through to the massive Doctor Who fan conventions that are a staple of the modern-day science fiction circuit. Combining a wealth of information and numerous illustrations, Doctor Who FAQ also includes a comprehensive episode guide.

Cher: All I Really Want to Do

Daryl Easlea and Eddi Fiegel are the authors of Cher: All I Really Want to Do. Below is an excerpt from their book, as provided by Something Else! Reviews.

The year 1969 was like a whirlwind for Sonny and Cher. By now their commercial stock had fallen, and they were deep in debt. But they had little option but to work hard, especially as they had a new baby to support: Chastity Sun, born on March 4. Within weeks of Chastity’s birth, Cher would be back in the studio recording one of the most interesting albums of her career.

As Harry Young puts it in his liner notes for the Rhino reissue of the album, Sonny and Cher were “running for their lives, pursued by an erupting volcano of debt that roared like a wounded behemoth, heaved like a tortured titan, and then burst into flames as it threatened to bury their career and future prospects.”

To fit into the changing times and make some money, they had launched a new, more adult-oriented act in Las Vegas. They were also searching for a new direction for Cher that was more in keeping with the times. Folk-rock was out, and as Cher later put it: “Son’s straight-ahead, upbeat music started to sound simplistic and corny.”

Ahmet Ertegun was delighted that Cher’s Imperial contract had come to an end after five albums and a compilation. She could now finally be incorporated into the Atlantic family, where Sonny & Cher had recorded since 1965. They celebrated the union with an announcement in Cashbox magazine on February 1 1969.

The first release of this new phase of Cher’s career was her cover of “Yours Until Tomorrow,” a 1966 hit for Dee Dee Warwick, backed by the easy-listening schmaltz of “The Thought Of Loving You.” But Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler had bigger ideas for Cher. One of the most successful producers in the history of rhythm and blues — a term he coined himself in his early career as a writer for Billboard magazine — he had helmed records by Ray Charles, The Drifters, and Ruth Brown, and had received universal acclaim for turning Aretha Franklin into one of the most revered singers on the planet.

Keep reading this excerpt on Something Else! Reviews.

 

Cher: All I Really Want to Do takes readers through the ups and downs of a career that spans more than 50 years in show business. Beginning with her breakthrough alongside husband Sonny Bono in the ’60s, it takes in the high highs – and low lows – of the ’70s, the big-screen success of the ’80s, and global superstardom in the ’90s, and continues right up to her latest comeback alongside Christina Aguilera in Burlesque. There’s detailed coverage of every major album, film, and tour, from “I Got You Babe” to “Believe,” “Half-Breed” to Moonstruck, “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves” to Mermaids, and beyond.

Yoko Ono’s Birthday

To celebrate Yoko Ono’s 80th Birthday we have shared an excerpt from Lisa Carver’s new book, Reaching Out with No Hands: Reconsidering Yoko Ono. Please enjoy!!!

This book is not about Yoko Ono. It’s about what she isn’t. What she doesn’t do, and what she will not be. Yoko Ono is not pretty, she is not easy, her paintings aren’t recognizable, her voice is not melodious, her films are without plot, and her Happenings make no sense. One of her paintings you are told to sleep on. One of her paintings you are told to burn. One of her paintings isn’t a painting at all—it’s you climbing into an outdoor bathtub and looking at the sky. Most of her stuff is not even there. This is why I love her. This is why we need her. We have too much stuff already. It clutters our view, inward and outward. We need more impossible in our culture. Go out and capture moonlight on water in a bucket, she commands. Her art is instructions for tasks impossible to complete.

We already have a billion lovely things and a million amazing artists who have honed their talent and have lorded it above us. People who have achieved the highest of the possible. People wearing their role as artist or writer or filmmaker or spokesperson as a suit of armor or an invisibility cloak or an intimidatingly, unacquirably tasteful outfit. Even other artists can’t figure Yoko out or accept her as legit, nor can she obey the club rules. Her stuff is all wrong. Grow a weed and admire it. “Listen” to a two-minute song of recorded silence, music lovers. And you, the most imperialist and arms-profiteering superpower in the history of the world, give peace a chance.

When you tell someone to do the undoable, you’re really only showing them how impossible it ever was that anyone wanted us to use our lifetime to follow orders, to accept what is agreed is reasonable. We already have a million people telling us what to do and what to believe. Yoko is telling us, “You don’t have to.” She proposes the idea that all we thought had to be done didn’t have to, doesn’t have to. And maybe some exploitative things we did to maintain order, our position on the job and in the family, were not necessary and normal after all. Life might not be arranged along one certain pyramid of hierarchical order.

Reaching Out with No Hands: Reconsidering Yoko Ono

John Lennon once described her as “the world’s most famous unknown artist: everybody knows her name, but nobody knows what she does.” Many people are aware of her art, and her music has always split crowds, from her caterwauling earliest work to her later dance numbers, but how many people have looked at Yoko Ono’s decades-spanning career and varied work in total and asked the simple question, “Is it any good?”

From her earliest work with the Fluxus group and especially her relationship with John Cage, through her enigmatic pop happenings (where she met John Lennon), her experimental films, cryptic books, conceptual art, and her long recording career that has vacillated between avant-garde noise and proto-new wave, earning the admiration of other artists while generally confusing the public at large who often sees her only in the role of the widow Lennon, Reaching Out with No Hands is the first serious, critical, wide-ranging look at Yoko Ono the artist and musician.

A must-read for art and music fans interested in going beyond the stereotyped observations of Yoko as a Lennon hanger-on or inconsequential avant noisemaker.