No matter how notable a celebrity someone becomes, they’re never immune to crushing heartache and embarrassment—something Yoko Ono learned the hard way as she listened to Bob Dylan’s 11-minute ballad, “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” one fateful night in Greenwich Village. The already melancholic lyrics to Dylan’s 1966 track from Blonde on Blonde became even more devastating given the context of the situation: Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands, where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes.
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Listening to a depressing Dylan song while getting your heart stomped on would be tough alone. Unfortunately for Ono, she was at a party with friends who were all acutely aware of the emotional turmoil she was going through.
Yoko Ono and Bob Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”
Although John Lennon and Yoko Ono were certainly one of the most iconic couples of the late 1960s and ‘70s, they weren’t necessarily the healthiest. Between their collaborative art, activism, and family building, there were plenty of relationship lows for the couple. One such valley occurred in the early 1970s, during which time Lennon, fresh from his split from the Beatles and facing expulsion from the United States, began falling deeper into debauchery rabbit holes. Parties were plenty. So were the women.
Radio personality and friend to Lennon and Ono, Elliot Mintz, recalled a particularly harrowing moment for Ono in his memoir, We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me. A group of friends gathered at activist Jerry Rubin’s apartment in Greenwich Village to watch the results of the 1972 U.S. presidential election. “As the vote totals started piling up and it became clear that Richard Nixon would win reelection by a landslide, the mood grew bleaker, and the crowd began drinking more heavily,” Mintz wrote.
That was a problem for Lennon, who often grew reckless when he drank. “John had hit it off with some girl at the party and had slipped into a bedroom with her, where they proceeded to have such loud, raucous sex that everyone sitting around the TV in Jerry Rubin’s living room—including Yoko—could clearly hear them going at it. At one point during the noisy indiscretion, a well-meaning party guest put a record on the turntable: Bob Dylan’s eleven-minute ballad “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and played it at high volume, trying to drown out the rhythmic pounding. Throughout it all, Yoko sat on the sofa in stunned, mortified silence,” he continued.
She Would Forgive Him, But She Wouldn’t Forget
While their emotional turmoil paled in comparison to what Yoko Ono must have been going through that night in Greenwich Village, the other party guests were disaffected in their own way during the noisy debacle. As partygoers began awkwardly trying to leave the get-together, they soon realized everyone’s coat was being stored in the same room where Lennon was having his, er, tête-à-tête. Elliot Mintz learned about the drama from Lennon, who called him the next day to inform him Ono had kicked him out of the bedroom to sleep on the couch. “A bloke cheats on his wife,” Lennon told Mintz. “If I weren’t famous, nobody would care.”
Ono wasn’t so convinced. Mintz recalled asking her if she was alright, to which she replied, “There is no answer to that question. I can forgive him. But I don’t know if I can ever forget what happened. I don’t know if it will ever be the same.”
Nevertheless, the couple appeared to go about their business as usual—from the outside looking in, anyway. “Yoko tried to forgive, even if she ultimately couldn’t,” Mintz wrote. “And John, perhaps finally feeling an appropriate level of guilt, had never been a more doting husband.”
We suspect Yoko Ono’s ability to sit through all eleven minutes of Bob Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” also changed after that night.
Photo by Susan Wood/Getty Images
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