For most of her long life, Yoko Ono has been reviled by many rock critics and music fans as the dragon lady who glommed on to a lovesick John Lennon and broke up the Beatles. According to a new biography, “Yoko,” by West Marin author David Sheff, nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, Sheff argues, Lennon, her lover and later her husband, would have quit the band even earlier if she hadn’t been by his side in the studio for what would be the Beatles’ final two albums.

“He would have been gone if she hadn’t been there,” he said. “And we wouldn’t have had ‘Abbey Road’ and ‘Let It Be.’”

That opinion comes from an insider’s intimate perspective into the lives of this iconic couple. He first interviewed them as a young journalist in 1980, shortly before Lennon’s earth-shaking murder. In the years that followed, he would become Ono’s trusted friend, confidante, occasional traveling companion and now her biographer.

In his book’s introduction, he acknowledges the bias that comes with that kind of an enduring friendship as well as its benefits.

“I was walking a tightrope throughout this process because I had access and knew the truth about so much of what had been written about her, what was true and what wasn’t true,” he said in a phone conversation from Los Angeles, a stop on a book tour. “I saw her at times, for example, when she was having a hard time after John died, so I knew what she had gone through and I was able to tell stories that no one else could tell. At the same time, I didn’t want to write a whitewashed version of her story.”

‘Double Fantasy’

Sheff was 24 and just beginning his journalism career when he proposed an article on the world’s most famous and controversial couple for Playboy magazine. At the time, they were working on the album “Double Fantasy,” which marked Lennon’s return to the studio after five years in relative seclusion while he raised their son, Sean. That hiatus clearly inspired “Watching the Wheels,” a song on “Double Fantasy” that was released posthumously.

Playboy wanted the article, so now Sheff had to get them to agree to it. A fervent believer in astrology and numerology, Ono asked him to give her his birthdate and birthplace before she would agree to anything. Luckily for him, his numbers and stars aligned.

“She said that my number was nine, and that was John’s number,” he said. “He used it in his songs ‘Revolution 9’ and ‘#9 Dream’ and other work.”

In granting him entre into their world, she stressed how important this article would be — not for their image or the promotion of their album, but for his career and his life. And that turned out to be truer than the 69-year-old writer could have imagined. It was the beginning of a relationship that would span decades, numerous articles and now this biography.

For the Playboy interview, Sheff was given extraordinary access. Over three weeks, he interviewed them together and separately in the studio where they were working, New York’s Hit Factory, in cafes over coffee, in the kitchen of their apartment in Manhattan’s Dakota building, during walks in their Upper West Side neighborhood and in Central Park.

After reading an advanced copy of the piece, they phoned Sheff on Dec. 7, 1980, at his home in Inverness.

“They called to tell me how thrilled they were with the interview, how they felt it really captured what they wanted to communicate in their lives at that point about their relationship, the lessons they had learned, about what they had been through,” he said. “They were also very excited about the fact that the early reception for ‘Double Fantasy,’ which had just been released as an album, was positive. They were in great spirits.”

They hung up after making plans to get together the next time he was in New York for a follow-up article.

The next day, Dec. 8, 1980, Sheff was watching “Monday Night Football” when announcer Howard Cosell interrupted the game to announce that Lennon had been shot and killed. He had been gunned down in the entryway of the Dakota by a fan, Mark David Chapman, as he and Ono were walking into the building.

“I was like everyone else in the world who was just stunned beyond belief, horrified and devastated,” Sheff said. “It was like, ‘What? No, this can’t be true. This is not possible.’ But, of course, it was.”

After trying unsuccessfully to get through to Ono by phone, he flew to New York that night, got off the plane and headed straight to the Dakota.

“I couldn’t get near the building because by then thousands of people had gathered and they were all mourning together, singing John’s songs and crying,” he said. “I joined them.”

It wasn’t until a week later that he was able to get into the apartment and visit with his disconsolate friend.

The first album she recorded after Lennon’s death was titled “Season of Glass,” an apt description of her emotional fragility. The album featured the now-famous photo she took of Lennon’s bloodstained glasses.

“She said to me once, ‘If John died, I can’t imagine anything worse,’” he said.

But it would get worse. One of the most shocking revelations in the book is the terrible abuse Ono suffered after her husband’s murder. Employees and intimates wrote tell-all books, stole memorabilia and blackmailed her. Worst of all were the many serious death threats. A record album came in the mail that had been shot through with bullet holes. Someone was arrested who said he was coming to finish the job that Mark David Chapman started. Sheff reports that in the year after Lennon’s murder, Ono spent more than $1 million on private security.

“She was not only suffering the grief of losing her husband,” he said, “she was also terrified.”

Visiting Marin

When someone threatened to fly a plane into the Dakota to kill her and her son, she fled New York and settled for a time in San Francisco, staying in a suite at the Fairmont hotel while she looked for a permanent place to live in the city.

“They came out to Inverness and West Marin to visit us,” Sheff said. “When we went to town in Point Reyes, people recognized her. It was pretty funny because on our sleepy country street, there was a limousine sitting outside, waiting for her and Sean and me and her boyfriend at the time. We went to Muir Woods and we went to the Wine Country. She loved it here. I think it was like they had a little bit of a break from that stress. She was feeling lighter and freer.”

But that relief was as ephemeral as one of her conceptual art pieces.

“The terror had followed her to San Francisco,” Sheff said. “At one point, the police said they had found somebody who had guns and was threatening to kill Yoko and Sean. They headed back to New York at that point.”

As she worked through her grief, she would often call him at all hours for long conversations. He offered support and empathy, but so did she. Their friendship was mutual. It wasn’t a one-way street. Most dramatically, she came to his aid when his son Nic was in the throes of methamphetamine addiction, a traumatic period that Sheff recounts in his harrowing 2008 memoir, “Beautiful Boy,” titled, with Ono’s permission, after a song Lennon wrote about his son.

“It was one of the worst times when he was on meth in San Francisco,” Sheff said. “I couldn’t find him, and he was on a course that absolutely, easily could have killed him at that point. It was devastating.”

Ono, who happened to be in San Francisco for an art show at the time, stepped in, using her resources to find him, pick him off the street and fly him back to New York with her and Sean. He stayed at the Dakota and at their upstate New York farm while she got him into treatment for his addiction and arranged for him to see a psychiatrist.

“I really believe she saved his life at one of the times when his life was in danger,” Sheff said.

Her generosity is just one act of kindness and consideration that Sheff recounts to dispel the villainous reputation that has followed Ono though her life.

“People don’t think about her as somebody who would be a very warm and open, kind and loyal friend,” he said. “But she is.”

It was that desire to show the real Yoko Ono that motivated him to write the bio, which he began to work on during the pandemic in 2021.

“I recognized that these stories about Yoko, these prejudices about her, had endured despite everything she had done and everything she’d accomplished,” he said. “My hope is that people will look at Yoko again and understand that what they think about her is wrong for most people, even people you would think would know better, who are sophisticated about art and know about music.”

Sean Lennon, representing his mother, gave his blessing for the bio and helped with the project, as did Ono’s daughter, Kyoko, by a previous husband.

“Sean said it was really hard for him to get through,” Sheff said. “It was really emotional for him. He was in tears at different points. He felt it did his mom justice and is the definitive work that he’d hoped someone would do.”

While there have been other Ono bios, the New York Times review said “Sheff’s is the closest to an authorized one the world will get.”

While his book generally shows Ono in a sympathetic light, Sheff did not leave out or minimize the scandals and problems that she and Lennon went through during their relationship.

“She and John talked about everything openly,” Sheff said. “There were no secrets as far as they were concerned. They talked openly about their drug use, their marital problems, John’s infidelity. They talked about their deepest and darkest secrets.”

‘Cut Piece’

He tells Ono’s story from her childhood in Japan at the end of World War II through her career as an avant garde musician, peace activist, feminist and pioneering conceptual artist.

He opens the book with an account of Ono’s first major work, “Cut Piece,” a daring piece in which Ono sat cross-legged onstage, dressed all in black, and invited the audience to come up one by one and cut off a piece of her clothing with scissors.

“There was a guy in Japan when she performed it for the first time who mimed stabbing her,” Sheff said. “And then when she performed it a couple of years later in London, men came up and cut off all her clothes until she was stripped naked. The piece was partly about trust and giving of yourself. But she’s so vulnerable up there. And people take advantage of that.”

In a sense, the piece foreshadowed what would befall her in her life, especially after she became a wealthy widow. She trusted people and they betrayed her.

Last year, a video of the piece was included in a career-spanning retrospective, “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” at the Tate Modern in London. It’s set to open at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in October.

‘Imagine’

As a singer, Ono is notorious for screaming and screeching through her songs, letting her primal emotions out, which critics have repeatedly derided as “caterwauling.”

But she is beginning to be credited for being in the vanguard of punk rock, and her songs have been remixed for popular dance tracks.

She may be finally getting her due after sexism and misogyny minimized her contributions to art rock.

The most glaring example, Sheff notes, is her lack of credit for co-writing “Imagine,” the now-classic peace anthem that was the bestselling song of Lennon’s solo career.

“Even John admitted that it was sexist,” he said. “Because she was the wife, he didn’t give her credit for being the co-writer of one of the most important songs ever written.”

At 92, Ono has retired from public life and is living in quiet seclusion on her farm in upstate New York.

As the media talks of a “Yokossance,” she spends time with her children and two grandchildren. Sheff hasn’t spoken to her for quite some time but keeps updated on her through her family.

“By all accounts from the people around her, she’s living very quietly,” he said. “She’s very content and has this peaceful life.

Her daughter said that for somebody who devoted her life to peace, she finally has some peace.”

Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net