After Cage listened to First Movement he said “You know there’s a guitar player you should play with…John Lennon, have you ever heard of him?"...Trying to look non-plussed, but appropriately appreciative, I said “Yes, Mr. Cage, I know who John Lennon is”…
Yoko Ono, earlier, who lived literally next door, at 106 Bank Street, was also one of Cage’s students, but Mr. Cage had no real idea who the Beatles were or their significance. It’s funny, but I was less a star struck kid around Cage than I was of the possibility of John Lennon.
What I remember, secondly, about Yoko Ono was that she had been getting blamed for breaking up the Beatles.
Thirdly, what I remember was that she had worked with Cage in the early 60's and was an avant garde visual artist of note (Forget her musical stuff, guys...I know, I know). So that when Lennon got to the U.S. to live she was the only woman who kind of disdained him, for not being a serious artist...that was right in John's wheel house, coming from the abandoned childhood he had experienced.
What I remember mostly though was that she was making it hard for me and Cage to drink. It was impossible to gauge what kind of liquor to bring Cage. He was always changing. I'd bring bourbon and he'd be drinking wine. I'd bring wine and he'd be drinking Vodka, which later he seemed to prefer. Each time he would say that Yoko had 'recommended' something different for him. She was big into Macrobiotic at the time. All I knew at the time, as I as desperately trying to please Cage, was that I was wasting good drinking liquor.
Actually, he didn't require a lot of effort to be pleased. He had a genuine Lao Tzu-ian interest in people (it really looked more Taoist than Zen to me), but I did notice over time, that he seemed to like new people over repeat people, the same way he liked endless access to fresh new sounds.
Lennon never contacted me, which I frankly, and rather selfishly and self-centeredly, took personally. What I did not know at the time was that he was in the depths of his heroin addiction and was physically immobile most of the last five years of his life. Sad stuff.
Yoko and John