https://youtu.be/n4QSYx4wVQg?t=295
And equated it with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgZiPO9V_aQ
What he didn't get was that "kookiness" by itself doesn't make good music which can be reflected in the stark differences in the careers of the B52s and Yoko Ono outside of her work with John Lennon.
Haute Couture works great on the runway but it's not meant to be worn on the street. John and Yoko's art for art's sake was never going to work outside of the art circuit.
I came to the comments to find something that further challenged my preconceptions of Ono, as the article did, and then I see the usual cartoonish example carted out when criticizing her, which everyone has already seen before. A better example is elsewhere in the comments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlY4oxfma_Y
I get it. It's the stuff that only music nerds would be interested in. But I'm not sure why Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart aren't anywhere near as maligned as Yoko is, but celebrated as mavericks. And even still, experimental artists like these push the artform as a whole forward, to the point that their original innovation becomes co-opted into the mainstream sound and forgotten.
I think that's the crux of it. What I find particularly confounding, is that these explanations remove the agency from John Lennon. To say that he was tricked by Yoko into bad ideas, is to cast doubts on his artistic merit. Whatever creative chops he had that shaped the Beatles into being more than just some long forgotten cover band, are the same that led him to seek new creative directions. If you listen to punk and post-punk bands in the wake of their collaborations, it seems like he and Yoko were on the right track. I'm certain that if John was alive, there'd be decades more interesting stuff in his back catalogue... definitely better than a cover of "Got My Mind Set On You"
You're saying that John Lennon thought kookiness made good music? That seems pretty simplistic for one of the world's leading songwriters and musicians, and doesn't seem to match his oeuvre.
When he was done with the Beatles he tried to do more avant guarde work with Yoko Ono. To him that was the future. But the result was commercial and critical failure. His Plastic Ono Band album did OK but Yoko's received universal disdain. A few records later and a few more failed attempts to get people to like Yoko's music and John Lennon essentially retired. He didn't want to make albums by himself.
Now, keep in mind that "retired" is relative. The Beatles released 21 albums in 10 years. Not recording an album in a couple of years was an eternity for John.
The linked article talks about how John thought that Rock Lobster by the B52s was similar to Yoko's Why. He thought that society had finally caught up and was ready for the music that he wanted to make with Yoko Ono.
The result was Double Fantasy which received bad initial reviews. Sales of the album skyrocketed but only after John was murdered. And to this day when people listen to the album they listen to John's more conventional songs but skip Yoko's more "kooky" music.
That's the crux of my comment. John assumed that people didn't like their "kooky" music not because it was bad but because people weren't ready for it in 1970. And he thought that people would be ready for it in 1980. And he was wrong. People didn't mind "kooky" music as evidenced by the success of bands like the B52s. They just didn't like his.
No one remembers John Lennon for the "kooky" music that he made with Yoko Ono. They remember John Lennon for Come Together and Imagine.
Many people see little relationship between the popularity of music and its 'quality', whatever that means, including me. The more sophisticated my understanding becomes in anything, the more I diverge from the public norm: in any domain, the public is unsophisticated because most people are unsophisticated - i.e., that includes me; you can't be sophisticated in more than a few things. We might expect Lennon had much different taste than others. I'd sure love to learn to see it from Lennon's perspective.