 "Photo: Spin.com")
On Monday, Feb. 16, two days before her 77th birthday, Yoko Ono and the current manifestation of the Plastic Ono Band took the stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for the two-hour We are Plastic Ono Band Dress Rehearsal, a practice session for the performance that would follow the next day.
The show began with a video that pieced together interview and documentary footage, along with clips of Ono’s art films. Most poignantly, it included home videos of Ono with her late husband, music legend John Lennon, and their son Sean.
This veritable “life story” video didn’t seem to be placed there to introduce the audience to these intimate pieces of a life they already know so well, but rather to put everyone in the same frame of mind: this is the Ono you knew, you are about the see the Ono she has become.
Once Ono finally took the stage, along with the rest of the Plastic Ono Band, she was all of five feet tall and skinny as a rail – but she still holds an aura of greatness and her legacy always precedes her. While she was just hours away from turning 77, Ono moved like she was still in her 30s, her voice completely unchanged from the very first time she sang with John Lennon.
Her attitude toward her age was entirely refreshing as she told the crowd, “Tomorrow is my 77th birthday… and I only say that for those of you who are concerned, saying, ‘I’m turning 40! What am I going to do?’ There is a long life ahead of you. You will be fine.”
While it is sometimes hard to stifle a laugh at Ono’s famous guttural noises and near geriatric dance moves, it’s also clear that Ono is proud of every verse she has written, and her shrieks are a result of the fact that she has always had bigger ideas than simple words can express. Her strings of screams and random phrases of thought are her way of baring her soul.
The backing band consists of, in part, Sean Lennon, whose awesome talent quietly shines behind his mother’s. Throughout the first act, he kept a low profile, sticking mainly to the stage’s exterior, deftly moving between soaring guitar, groovy bass and twinkling piano while mostly refraining from singing.
The soft-spoken Lennon is noticeably more confident as the second act begins, taking it upon himself to introduce the guest acts, tell little stories about the songs and make jokes.
Upon introducing musician Justin Bond, Lennon told the audience that Bond had never performed the song live and that, “we are calling this the dress rehearsal, because it really is one … although not all of us are necessarily dressed.”
Bond, dressed in drag, took the stage after the Scissor Sisters performed “The Sun Is Down!” from Ono’s new album. He was not only a crowd favorite, but Lennon clearly could not contain his excitement at accompanying Bond on the piano as he sang “What a Bastard the World Is,” a song Lennon said was “one of my favorite songs my mom wrote.”
Ono then returned to the stage in a brown cloak, pulled over her head like a children’s ghostly Halloween costume. As she found her place on the stage, Lennon told the crowd that Klaus Voorman, an original Plastic Ono Band member, would soon be joining them on stage. As he told the audience that Voorman and Ono had not played together for 35 years, his mother shouted “40 years!” through her cloak, correcting her son.
This adorable mother-and-son dialogue was a constant throughout the entire show, making it clear to the audience that Lennon and Ono are extremely close. Anytime Ono would leave the stage she made it a point to hug her son and they would often whisper to each other.
Lennon seemed in constant awe at her talent, but Ono seemed to respect his judgment. He is now her main musical collaborator, the director of the Plastic Ono Band, and he organized the guest musicians that performed with them. In the second act, the show became just as much his as it was Ono’s and the crowd seemed to gravitate toward the 34-year-old.
The trio first broke into an original Plastic Ono Band track, with Voorman accompanying Ono on bass, Lennon on guitar and background vocals, and Ono on lead-vocals. This moment, all about the original feel of the band, was introduced with Lennon saying, “I call it OGPOB.”
Next, Lennon was finally given the chance to sing a song solo, a real treat for the audience, as he is a talented recording artist in his own right. The beginning chords of “Yer Blues,” a track written by Lennon’s father John and recorded by The Beatles on the second side of The White Album, generated a new wave of excitement among the audience.
While his strong and capable voice stands apart from his father’s style, which stuck to a much harder rock tone, when Lennon crooned the line, “Girl you know the reason why,” it was as if the Beatle himself was singing into the microphone.
After some more performances from Ono, including “Death of Samantha,” which had never been performed live (although there was some disagreement about this fact between Lennon and Ono) and during which Ono never seemed to tire, Lennon prepared the crowd for another special moment saying, “We’re going to try something we’ve never tried before — I think it will be okay, though because it’s only two chords. We’re going to do ‘Give Peace a Chance.’”
As Lennon began to explain that the song was important to his father and he hoped it would catch on, Ono interrupted to tell the audience that she and her husband used to change the verses of the now-famous song based on the day’s newspaper headlines.
Ono carried the day’s New York Times on stage with her, but as Lennon said “I’m going to try to conduct this and assign verses to everyone,” Ono tossed the paper aside, knowing her son had taken control of the stage full of musicians.
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