‘They Pulled My Hair & Hit My Head’: Yoko Ono Details Her Abuse by Beatles Fans in New Doc

The documentary One to One: John & Yoko turns its lens to John Lennon and Yoko Ono during the period when they first moved to New York in the early 1970s, following the breakup of the Beatles. It was a time when the couple left London behind for a small apartment in Greenwich Village, where they began mixing with political radicals, free thinkers, and activists. It was a transformational period in their lives that led to the creation of some of Lennon’s most politically charged music.

At the time, Ono was receiving intense backlash from Beatles fans who blamed her for the band’s demise. In the doc, she details the abuse she endured at their hands, and why she believes the Fab Four themselves might have fanned the flames of public resentment—whether knowingly or not. Through archival footage, candid phone calls, and Lennon’s own reflections, One to One reframes the era as a deeply turbulent time where love, art, and politics collided.

Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’s documentary features audio from a phone conversation with musician David Peel, the anti-authoritarian performer the couple “discovered” in the early ’70s. Lennon and Ono later produced his album The Pope Smokes Dope.

In a recorded conversation between Peel and Ono, an exasperated Ono can be heard pleading her case, describing the harassment and hostility she was facing. “David, I’m supposedly the person who broke up the Beatles, you know? When I was pregnant, many people wrote to me saying, ‘I wish you and your baby would die.'”

“Really?,” Peel responds incredulously. “Yeah. And also, I got a rubber doll with lots and lots of needles in it. In the eyes, in the mouth, in the nose, and everything. And when I was walking down the street with John, people came to me, saying things like, ‘I’m an ugly Jap.’ They pulled my hair and hit my head. And I was just about to faint,” stated Ono in the recording.

“Was this in England?,” asked Peel. “Yeah, this is in England. And I had three miscarriages during that time,” revealed Ono.

She goes on to lament how the other members of the Beatles added fuel to the fire by refusing to speak up for her, despite knowing the truth of the situation.

“I know for sure that whenever the reporters meet Paul, George, or Ringo, they would ask, ‘What do you think about Yoko?’ Whenever they ask me about the Beatles, I said, ‘The Beatles are four beautiful, very intelligent, creative, artistic people…and they’ve outgrown the group,’ you know. Whereas none of the Beatles made any comment on me. Have you heard of any comment on me in the press by the Beatles? They ignored me. That’s male chauvinism.”

One to One: John & Yoko makes its streaming premiere on Friday, November 14, on HBO and HBO Max.

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