A black and white picture of Yoko Ono and John Lennon leaning against a bridge together.

Celebrity

Yoko Ono Held a Private, Two-Person Memorial Service for John Lennon

John Lennon died after leaving the studio with Yoko Ono. Two days later, Ono returned to the studio to honor her late husband.

by Emma McKee

Published on December 12, 2023

2 min read

Yoko Ono had an intimate memorial service for John Lennon

Mark David Chapman shot and killed Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980. Lennon and Ono had just left the studio where they were working with Douglas on the song “Walking on Thin Ice.”

“He was very positive,” Douglas told People. “They were both just so happy.”

Shortly afterward, Douglas received the news that Lennon had been killed. Two days later, he and Ono returned to the studio to honor Lennon.

A black and white picture of Yoko Ono and John Lennon next to each other. They look sideways at one another.

Yoko Ono and John Lennon | Susan Wood/Getty Images

“We went to the studio, 11 or 12 at night, and I had an assistant bring out everything we could find in the vault,” he said. “It was talking, his music, anything. And we sat there until dawn just listening to different things that John had done. And that was the only service that there was. It was just Yoko and I.”

Douglas felt these recordings, particularly Lennon’s music, helped bring them closer to him.

“I once asked [John], ‘What’s your secret of writing a really great song?’ And he said, ‘Tell the truth, and make it rhyme,’” Douglas said. “The reason why so many people felt close to him was because they always felt they knew him, because he sang about what he was going through. There was just this great truth about his music.”

Yoko Ono also invited fans to honor John Lennon with a moment of silence

After Lennon’s death, fans gathered in droves outside Lennon and Ono’s apartment building, The Dakota. She invited them, and other fans across the globe, to join her in a silent vigil for Lennon.

“There is no funeral for John. Later in the week we will set the time for a silent vigil to pray for his soul,” Ono said in a statement the day after his death, per The Independent. “We invite you to participate from wherever you are at the time … John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him. Love. Yoko and Sean.”

Thousands of people gathered across the world. Over 30,000 people attended a memorial concert in Lennon’s hometown of Liverpool. In New York, mourners left candles and flowers in Central Park.

There is a memorial for the musician near his apartment building

Soon after Lennon’s death, New York City named the area of Central Park across from The Dakota Strawberry Fields after Lennon’s 1967 song. Per Central Park Conservancy, Ono then began working with landscape architect Bruce Kelly to design a memorial. They settled on a mosaic with the word “Imagine” at its center.