Sneak peek: My interview with Yoko Ono...

By this time, I've interviewed so many famous people that I rarely get nervous about it. But today, I got nervous.

At 12:15 p.m. PST, I called Yoko Ono at her home in The Dakota for a column I'm doing on John Lennon's artwork which is going to be on exhibition next month in SoCal. I'll post the finished column in a few weeks but wanted to give you guys a little preview.

Yoko was a little more open than I thought she'd be and actually very easy to talk to. My nerves were gone about 30 seconds into the interview.. We started out by talking about Lennon's artwork:

"He was just being himself and himself was a guy who had an incredible sense of humor. It wasn't about trying not trying to impress critics, he was just having fun doing it and it shows. People who see his work, the first thbing they do is smile or laugh. There's a warmth to his work. At a gallery, usually you see work that is very serious, there's a lack of a sense of humor in art world."

Yoko is 75 years old. You would not think so by looking at photos of her or seeing her on television. I wondered what the secret was to her fountain of youth:

"I have no idea, I'm just very lucky. I think it has a lot to do with the way I think about things. There was a time when I was really feeling bad, the fact that John passed away. But I thought, 'I have to not drown in this. I'm a mother. I think I have to stay alive for Sean."

And how is her son, musician Sean Lennon, doing these days?

"Sean is very well," Yoko said. "At one time he wasn't, he was feeling so bad about the fact that his father is so big and it was difficult for him. But now he's got his own gig and he's happy about it."