In what is either a brilliant conceptual piece about the notion of identity or just kind of a greedy bitch move, Yoko Ono is suing little-known singer-songwriter Lennon Murphy for trademarking "Lennon" as the name of her nu-metal band. According to a blog posted by Murphy on her MySpace page—and backed up by court documents filed last month—Ono is accusing Murphy of "falsely representing" herself, "diluting" the Lennon legacy, and "causing confusion in the marketplace," presumably amongst John Lennon fans who somehow never heard that he died more than a quarter-century ago. Murphy, who was indeed named after the famous songwriter (not the Beatle, her mother rather oddly stresses, but the "man who baked bread with his son"), has already received a pledge of "full support" from Julian Lennon (who had to bake his own damn bread) on his own MySpace blog, and now everyone from TMZ to Rolling Stone has picked up on the story. In her statement to the press, Murphy says she is "pissed and hurt that someone in Yoko's position has nothing better to do than fuck with my life, and collect the $25,000,000 a year that the John Lennon estate brings in." Well, that and construct bizarre and pointless monuments that—whaddaya know—trade on the Lennon name and dilute his legacy.
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