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Edited By Barry A. Jeckell. September 16, 2005, 10:25 AM ET 'Lennon' Musical To Close On Broadway "Lennon," the musical about the life and music of John Lennon that earned dismal reviews, will close just six weeks after it opened on Broadway. Created with the help of the former Beatle's widow, Yoko Ono, the show had a troubled road to Broadway that involved major rewrites after it was first produced in San Francisco. Critics slammed it for what The New York Times called its "Ono-centric" view of Lennon's life, and audiences have dwindled since its Aug. 15 opening night, falling...

How interesting ... Yoko Ono stands in front of a painting called Grapefruit (Yoko Ono) by Mustafa Kunt in the exhibition Dream Universe in the Portikus gallery in Frankfurt/Main. Photo: AFP

Lennon, the new musical about John Lennon's life set to open next August, will have two unpublished songs that Yoko Ono, Lennon's widow, has given to Don Scardino, writer and director of the production. The songs, India, India and I Don't Want to Lose You, exist only on private recordings that Lennon made in his last years. I Don't Want to Lose You, a slow, introspective ballad, was one of three songs Ono gave to the surviving Beatles when they reunited in the early 1990s to complete a few Lennon songs for The Beatles Anthology. An electronic hum in the...

Yoko Ono has joined the chorus in support of gay marriage by recording "Every Man Has a Man Who Loves Him," a gay-friendly version of a song she wrote nearly a quarter-century ago. The song "Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him," included on her last album with John Lennon before he was killed in 1980, was also retooled into another version: "Every Woman Has a Woman Who Loves Her." It's both a political statement and a tribute to an audience that has improbably made her a hit act in the dance clubs at age 71. "I should think...

NEW YORK (Billboard) - In 1985, Yoko Ono (news) released "Hell in Paradise." The disco/rock jam, which appeared on the artist's Bill Laswell (news)-produced album "Starpeace," peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart.   Fast forward to now, and "Hell in Paradise" is the latest vintage Ono track to be remixed for today's club culture. It follows in the footsteps of "Open Your Box," "Walking on Thin Ice" and others. The timing could not be better to revisit "Hell in Paradise." Consider the song's first verse: "This is hell in paradise/We're all asleep or paralyzed/Why...

This just in - US military to use Yoko Ono music for Saddam interrogation. France, Germany, Berkeley, National Council of Churches up in arms - to protest at UN and European Union over alleged US abuse of Geneva Convention rules. Story developing...

<p>YOKO Ono still knows how to get a man to take his clothes off. Peter Jennings was interviewing Ono at last week's ArtWalk event for the Coalition for the Homeless when she somehow talked the news anchor into getting inside a giant black bag with her in front of 500 people at Cooper Union's Great Hall. A few moments later, both emerged with Jennings struggling to put his shirt back on and Ono's own garb disheveled. While no one's quite sure what happened in the bag, everyone was craning their necks to get a glimpse of Jennings bare-chested - including his wife, Kayce Freed, seated in the front row with her mother.</p>

Imagine That! A New John Lennon Musical A musical exploring the life of John Lennon is on the way to Broadway after his widow Yoko Ono gave her blessing to the project, it emerged today. Tracking his change from rocker to meditation guru, 12 actors will play the different personalities of the former Beatle. Most of the songs which will feature in the production, yet to be named, will be hits penned by Lennon after the Beatles broke up. The show’s producers, Edgar Lansbury and Don Scardino, who are calling the musical The Lennon Project for the time being, said...

Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon, former member of 'The Beatles' arrives for a screening of 'Concert for George', a new documentary film celebrating the music of George Harrison through performances by legendary musicians Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California September 24, 2003. The film opens October 3 in New York and Los Angeles.

You may say he was a dreamer John Lennon's Imagine is the most popular song ever – but it is also among the most loathed. Yoko Ono talks to Mick Brown about her role in its creation John Lennon's song Imagine is the great tabula rasa of pop music: an anthem to some, anathema to others. It's a hymn, an atheist tract, a dirge, an example of celebrity hypocrisy ("no possessions"? The most successful rock artist in the world?). It's the song everybody loves to love, or to hate. To filmmaker Fred Baker, it is "the most populist piece of...

Frightened by the aftermath of 9-11, Yoko Ono has repeated a famous performance piece she first did in 1964. On the stage of a small theater Tuesday in Paris, she sat in a chair wearing a long black silk skirt with a matching long-sleeved top. One by one, the 200 members of the audience filed onstage with scissors and snipped away pieces of clothing from Ono, the widow of late former Beatle John Lennon. Among them was their 27-year-old son, Sean Lennon. Ono was left sitting in the aftermath of the performance in her black undergarments. She said that by...

Sean Lennon cuts away with scissors a piece of his artist mother Yoko Ono's dress as she repeats her 1960s performance 'Cut Piece', in Paris Monday Sept.15, 2003. The appearance repeats Ono's famous performance in Japan, which captivated the media and art critics at the time for its boldness. Sean Lennon is the son of the late Beatle John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

The Associated Press PARIS Sept. 15 — Lots of things have been done in the name of world peace. Here's one that hasn't been tried in nearly 40 years. Yoko Ono will invite an audience today in Paris to cut off her clothing with scissors in the name of world peace. The "Cut Piece" performance repeats a legendary show she did in 1964, well before she met and married late Beatles' star John Lennon. The 70-year-old Ono will stand on stage alone and ask each member of the audience to silently cut a piece of her clothing and "send it...

PARIS (Reuters) - John Lennon (news)'s widow Yoko Ono (news) could end up stark naked on a Paris stage Monday as she performs her one-woman art show "Cut Piece," in which members of the audience are to cut off pieces of her clothing. Ono, 70, who accompanied her Beatle husband in numerous controversial anti-war campaigns including the "Bed-In for Peace" against the Vietnam War, first performed her "Cut Piece" show in 1964 in Japan as a protest for peace. At the end of the show, she stood naked before her audience. "Come and cut a piece of my clothing wherever...

Sir Paul McCartney has revealed to the Sunday Herald that he will no longer seek to have the famous Lennon-McCartney songwriting credits reversed in his favour, which he did on his last album. The musician, who caused outrage last year when he reversed the credits on the 19 Beatles' songs on his Back In The US Live 2002 album, changing it from Lennon-McCartney to Paul McCartney and John Lennon, said he has changed his mind and is now happy to keep the original order of the 'rock'n'roll trademark'. At the time, the action prompted a furious response from Lennon's widow,...

Saddam has fallen. But Fidel Castro has never been more popular -- at least among Hollywood elites. So says cyber-journalist Andrew Breitbart -- co-author of the forthcoming book Hollywood Interrupted. As Castro's latest crackdown on dissidents reaches fever pitch, HBO has announced the May broadcast of "Comandante" -- a documentary about Castro co-directed by Oliver Stone and the Cuban dictator himself. Given the country's patriotic mood, it hardly seems likely that HBO expects "Comandante" to make money. This one is definitely for love. At least, Hollywood insiders will enjoy it. Breitbart notes in an OpinionJournal.com op-ed, that "media moguls, celebrity...

Lennon would have criticised Blair, Bush over war LONDON (AFP) - John Lennon, would have "told off" British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush for waging war on Iraq, the Beatles' widow Yoko Ono revealed. Ono, an ardent peace campaigner, was speaking in Liverpool, northwest England on Thursay, where Lennon's childhood home was officially being opened to the public. "I'm sure John would have been terribly upset" about the war, if he were still alive, Ono told BBC radio. "And I'm sure that he would have expressed his anger and told them off", she said, referring...

<p>Yoko Ono paid $42,000 for a full-page ad in today's Chronicle, because "it is a pretty urgent message," she said by e-mail Tuesday. "It is my contribution to the community."</p> <p>The San Francisco version of Ono's message is "Imagine Peace Spring 2003." Ono has taken out identical or similar ads making brief statements in last week's Los Angeles Times, the L.A. Weekly and the Village Voice, and another will appear in the Washington Post this weekend.</p>

Anyone who has submitted themselves to the agony of watching the US Security Council debate has surely concluded the UN is not only incapable of fulfilling its primary mission to avert wars, but is criminally negligent. UN supporters have accused their opponents of over-stating the case about the threat it poses to national sovereignty, the right of ours and other nations to self-governance. They dismiss documents like the Charter for Global Democracy as merely a "wish list" of private organizations that do not reflect the true UN agenda. If, however, one accepts UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as the official...

Dread ripples through me as I listen to a phone message from our manager saying that we (The Doors) have another offer of huge amounts of money if we would just allow one of our songs to be used as the background for a commercial. They don't give up! I guess it's hard to imagine that everybody doesn't have a price. Maybe 'cause, as the cement heads try to pave the entire world, they're paving their inner world as well. No imagination left upstairs. Apple Computer called on a Tuesday--they already had the audacity to spend money to cut "When...