The Day a Beatle Took a Back Seat: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Cambridge, 1969

This post is not about Yoko Ono’s effect on The Beatles, nor is it an attempt to “justify” her work with John Lennon by pointing out its artistic merit. Those topics have been covered elsewhere. Rather, this post concerns what it meant the day Lennon showed up unannounced, as Ono’s sideman, to perform at Lady Mitchell Hall at Cambridge University.

That day in March 1969, Ono was the headliner. Scheduled to play before an audience of academics, and other members of the artistic “elite,” she and Lennon improvised for close to 27 minutes, Lennon adding  feedback guitar to Ono’s vocal experimentation to create the piece we now know as “Cambridge 1969,” the first track on the duo’s second album, Unfinished Music No.2: Life With The Lions. 

By the time of their appearance at Cambridge, Lennon & Ono’s artistic relationship was well established. They had performed together at the Rolling Stones’ Rock ‘N Roll Circus the previous December, and had released their first joint album, Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, in November 1968. Still, according to Barry Miles (2016) in his excellent book The Zapple Diaries, his appearance at Cambridge came as a surprise to those in attendance.

Why surprising? The most obvious answer is that Lennon, the leader of the world’s preeminent rock group, had not performed live since August 1966, save his appearance on the Stones’ television special the preceding December. Therefore, seeing Lennon on stage in any context was unusual.

A more telling explanation is that his appearance as a backing musician for an artistically obscure (except for her work with Lennon) female artist was completely unexpected because, although the individual Beatles had begun to pursue projects outside the band by the time of Cambridge performance,  none had done so with a permanent partner outside the group, much less a female partner. 

Notwithstanding second wave feminism and the concurrent “women’s lib” movement, western society in the late 1960s, including Britain, was a bulwark of patriarchy. Male dominance was also evident in the arts, including rock ‘n roll. So when John took up his guitar, and turned his back to the audience, facing his amplifier to generate his accompaniment to Ono on that winter day, he was making at least two statements which challenged social norms. 

First, he was publicly embracing the validity of non-traditional music. To those familiar with the history of so-called “serious” 20^th century music, not much about the Lennon/Ono performance of that day was groundbreaking, at least not sonically. From Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system, to John Cage’s “chance music,” by 1969 much work had been done which challenged the very notion of what music "was." That said, for a rock star to perform work in this genre in public was to risk much, and to face at best bewilderment from their traditional audience. Still, Lennon persevered. 

More significant, perhaps, was that he undertook this artistic experimentation in partnership with a woman. In fact, Ono took center stage that day. While some will certainly argue that she served as a buffer against the potential backlash he might face for his musical adventure, Lennon’s tacit recognition of her as an equal artistic partner challenged prevailing societal beliefs about gender, including those of the macho world of Rock ‘n Roll. 

Did it make a difference? Establishing historical cause and effect is a difficult task, and that is not the point of this post anyway. What is important is recognizing that, in taking his first steps outside the protective artistic cocoon of The Beatles, Lennon confronted society on two cultural fronts. Musically, he asked his audience to look beyond pop music and consider other sounds as musically valid. Further, he said, through his actions, that he had a new partner, and that the fact that she was female had no impact on his choice to work with her artistically.

So why did John Lennon show up at Cambridge in 1969? Was he there to make a bold statement about gender equality? Was he there to establish his credentials as an experimental musician? We will never know all his motivations. What we are fairly certain of, however, is that he did not speak to the audience that day, and that he did not direct the musical proceedings. He just made music.

Wasn’t that enough?