DJ Ron Slomowicz: You've always been on the cutting edge of art and technology. How did you decide to make your music available on the Internet and through iTunes?
Yoko Ono: I thought it was a very logical step. I didn't have any kind of resistance with it and its worked wonderfully.
RS: A friend of mine mentioned the Water Talk Event you did in 1971 and was thinking how remixing is similar. Both reflect how you collaborate with other artists and shape your art into new venues and configurations.
Yoko: I know, I love that. There's an album I put out in two versions with John, Out to the Lions, was it? All those albums I said were unfinished music. The reason for that was because I felt that people should put their own thing on it before it's finished, so it's unfinished music. But nobody did that then, they just felt that all of my albums are going in the trash can, so to speak. That's just funny when you think about it now. So now it's happening and it's great. You should really be very careful what you wish for because you wish it and you think it's never going to happen, and sometimes it takes some time but it does happen.
RS: You're always ahead of the game. You're definitely raising a lot of messages in your music. What about dance music do you think makes it such a great medium for political change?
Yoko: I think so, definitely. I'm so glad that people are remixing my song, I think it's thirty-nine remixes, is it? I mean it's just staggering to hear remixes of "Hell in Paradise" and all the bands feel that it's very important to put that out now. To know that people are dancing to
"Hell in Paradise" is great.
RS: You decided to take on same-sex marriage by changing the words to "Every Man has a Woman" What about that issue means a lot to you?
Yoko: Well that issue means so much to me. I had to do it because it's a very difficult time for all of us and love is getting more scarce in a way and love is not going around too much.
So if two people love each other so much that they want to get married, I mean marriage is a gamble, let's be honest, I think they should be able to do it. To try to stop it is incredible. So that's when I thought, I'm going to make "Every Man has a Man" and "Every Woman has a Woman" and its turned out very good. I have many friends who are gay and they never told me. There was a friend of mine who said his mother was always saying, well Yoko says, "Every man has a woman." Now he's saying, "Well, she's saying every man has a man dear," which is great.
RS: How are you deciding which songs to have people rework for your current releases? Like why Walking On Thin Ice, for example?
Yoko: It wasn't me who went around saying why don't you do "Walking On Thin Ice." "Walking On Thin Ice" I think was a certainty, it was a natural for this kind of thing. There were many bands that kept asking me if it was alright for them to remix it. That was going on from 1981 and I kept saying no, because I was kind of hung-up on the fact that John remixed it with me and everything. It was just kind of one-sided stuff. But then when I decided to remix my other songs for dance music, they came back and said well what about "Walking On Thin Ice? " They kept asking, what about it? So I said alright, let's do it. I was kind of softening a bit by then.
