People react to the moment Chuck Berry heard Yoko Ono scream singing for first time

Virgin Radio

24 May 2023, 13:31

Anybody got any ear plugs? A clip from The Mike Douglas Show in 1972 starring Chuck Berry and John Lennon singing onstage has gone viral – and it's all thanks to the not-so-calming tones of Yoko Ono.

Boasting 21 years of rock 'n' roll icons, the show knocked out more than 4000 episodes and featured legendary musicians from Frank Zappa to Sly Stone and Genesis to ELO. 

In February 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared in a week's worth of sessions in which they shared the stage with a celebrity co-host.

“It’s become a cliche that Woodstock was the defining moment of the counterculture,” says

Erik Nelson, who is behind the new documentary Daytime Revolution about the five shows, told Variety: "This week in 1972, when John Lennon and Yoko Ono essentially hijacked the airwaves and presented the best minds and dreams of their generation to the widest possible mass audience of what was then called Middle America, was as far as the counterculture would ever get.

"Not just music but a prescient blueprint for the future we now live in."

A clip from the run of five shows features Lennon performing the 1959 classic Memphis, Tennessee along with writer Chuck Berry - but all hell breaks loose when Ono starts her infamous stuttering and screaming, while Berry's shocked face has captured the imagination of viewers and a sound engineer famously turns off Ono's mic.

Fans responded: "I plug my ears just looking at this pic."

Another wrote: "Yoko is like an out-of-tune tuning fork."

A third penned: "John and Chuck singing, Yoko screeching."

"You need to watch the video of this on YouTube to fully understand the sheer horror on Chuck Berry’s face when Yoko starts 'singing'," suggested a fourth.

Ono said previously about the recording: “We wanted to do the shows to show that we are working for peace and love and also to change the world, not with violence, but with love,” she explained.

“And everybody that we selected is participating in efforts to change the world.”

Read here about the former Beatles bassist Chas Newby who has died aged 81.