The trailer for the upcoming One To One: John & Yoko documentary has been released.
Directed by Kevin Macdonald, the film maker best known for The Last King Of Scotland and Touching The Void, as well as Bob Marley and Whitney Houston documentaries, it covers John and Yoko’s first year in the US, in the run-up the One To One benefit concerts of August 1972. These shows, at New York’s Madison Square Garden, would be the last full-length gigs Lennon played.
It was a time of intense political activity for the couple, who were living in Greenwich Village and had fallen in with radicals such as Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. This in turn was putting them under the scrutiny of the Nixon administration, who were on their tail with a view of deporting them. It would be several years before they obtained a green card that allowed them to stay in the United States.
For Lennon it was a time of forging a new role for himself, away from his past and the burden of being a Beatle. “I fell in love with an independent creative genius,” he says in the trailer. “I started waking up.”
For Yoko’s part there was still the prejudice she faced – partly racial, partly due to her supposed role in ‘breaking up the Beatles.’ “I was considered a bitch in this society,” she says sardonically. “Since I met John, I was upgraded into a witch.”
The shows were a benefit for the children of the Willowbrook institution on Staten Island. A recent TV news report had uncovered shocking neglect and physical and sexual abuse at the home and Lennon was keen to improve his public image after the critical mauling the Some Time In New York City album had received.
One To One, which also featured Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack and Sha Na Na, was by all accounts, a huge success. Lennon’s set ended with Give Peace A Chance and fans streamed out onto the Manhattan streets still singing and chanting the anthem. It could have been 1969 again.
Sean Ono Lennon was also involved in the new film - he produced and remixed the concert audio for the movie - which also mixes home movies and phone calls, as well as footage of an intricate reconstruction of the John and Yoko's Greenwich Village apartment and snippets of 1970s television.
One To One: John and Yoko is out in cinemas and on IMAX screens on 11 April.
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