The album includes the singles "Mrs. Lennon" and "Mind Train." The track "Airmale" is the soundtrack to Lennon's time-lapse film Erection, while "Fly" is the soundtrack to Lennon and Ono's 1970 film Fly
The album was recorded around the same time as Lennon's Imagine.
In an article that Yoko wrote for Crawdaddy magazine, she explained that the songs on Fly are divided into two categories:
Yoko described most of the songs on Fly as being "pieces [...] centered around a dialogue between my voice and John's guitar". She commented that John had "brought in musicians that are fine samurais", who he pushed to "fly with me"
Retrospective reviews of Fly in later years have been more positive. Ned Raggett of AllMusic stated that "Perhaps the best measure of Fly is how Ono ended up inventing Krautrock, or perhaps more seriously bringing the sense of motorik's pulse and slow-building tension to an English-language audience. There weren't many artists of her profile in America getting trancey, heavy-duty songs like "Mindtrain" and the murky ambient howls of "Airmale" out." In a review of the 2017 reissue, Aaron Badgley of The Spill Magazinepraised the album and called it "complex" and a "a work of art", noting that if people took the time to listen to her music they would be surprised at how "brilliant and intelligent" it is. Badgley stated that "Don't Count the Waves" was "30 years ahead of [its] time" and highlighted "Mind Train" as a "brilliant piece that leaves you breathless." Marc Masters of Pitchfork named the 2017 reissue as "Best New Reissue" of the week along with Approximately Infinite Universe.
oko Ono born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York City in 1952 to join her family. She became involved with New York City's downtown artists scene in the early 1960s, which included the Fluxus group, and became well known in 1969 when she married English musician John Lennon of the Beatles, with whom she would subsequently record as a duo in the Plastic Ono Band. The couple used their honeymoon as a stage for public protests against the Vietnam War. She and Lennon remained married until he was murdered in front of the couple's apartment building, the Dakota, on December 8, 1980. Together they had one son, Sean, who later also became a musician.
Ono began a career in popular music in 1969, forming the Plastic Ono Band with Lennon and producing a number of avant-garde music albums in the 1970s. She achieved commercial and critical success in 1980 with the chart-topping album Double Fantasy, a collaboration with Lennon that was released three weeks before his murder, winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. To date, she has had twelve number one singles on the US Dance charts, and in 2016 was named the 11th most successful dance club artist of all time by Billboard magazine. Many musicians have paid tribute to Ono as an artist in her own right and as a muse and icon, including Elvis Costello, the B-52's, Sonic Youth and Meredith Monk.