YOKO ONO

After a lifetime of artistic adventures, a restless innovator finds a new home on the dance floor

“Never!” replies Yoko Ono when asked if she ever imagined she might someday become the toast of the dance floor—but that’s precisely what she has become. To a new generation of club kids who know little of her many decades of creating visual art, poetry, performance art and music—or of her marriage and collaborations with late Beatle John Lennon—the 77-year-old is a nightclub favorite who has enjoyed nine Top 10 hits on Billboard magazine’s Hot Dance Club chart over the last seven years. “It’s like a new type of clothes,” she says. “It was given to me and now I’m wearing it.”

Like most of her dance hits, her latest chart-topper, “Wouldnit (I’m a Star)” is a new remix of a vintage Ono track. “I think it’s beautiful,” says the Tokyo native. “I never thought the dance field would be that creative artistically, but it’s really amazing. It’s fantastic. I really respect all the remixers.” Her dance hits mark only the latest unexpected twist in a musical career that actually predates her relationship with Lennon—reaching back to her early 1960s work with innovative composers like John Cage and Ornette Coleman. During the late 1960s and 1970s, often in collaboration with Lennon, she recorded a series of albums that were often dismissed in their day but later proved to be influential for many younger acts—including the many remixers eager to reshape her sound for a new generation.

Ono also continues to make albums in her more typical experimental rock context, including 2009’s Between My Head and the Sky. That album found her reconstituting the Plastic Ono Band label once employed as the moniker for the backing bands she shared with Lennon. The current lineup includes the couple’s son, Sean Lennon, who served as producer and played a variety of instruments. Ono is perfectly pleased with the younger Lennon’s choice to follow in his parents’ musical footsteps. “I wouldn’t have minded if he became an archeologist or something,” says Ono, “but it’s in his blood.”

Ono also remains busy celebrating the life of her late partner. Lennon would have turned 70 in 2010, and the landmark was recognized with new Ono-approved remasters of his solo album catalog. As to what’s next for Ono herself, she looks forward to continuing to be productive. “I have no idea what’s next, but it will come to me,” she says. “You’ll see.”

–Jeff Tamarkin