NEW YORK -- Yoko Ono's first album since the slaying of John Lennon features on the cover a photo of shattered, apparently blood-stained spectacles and a song that opens with the sounds of four gunshots.
In the just-released album, 'Season of Glass,' Miss Ono sings an anguished tune called 'I Don't Know Why' in which she bitterly screams: 'You bastards -- hate us -- hate me -- we had everything, you.'
In a letter to fans, Miss Ono says when she started work on the album, her first since her husband was gunned down last Dec. 8, she noticed 'my throat was all choked up and my voice was cracking.'
'I seriously thought maybe I should quit making the album because as some people had advised me, 'It was not the time,'' she wrote.
But she said 'the question was, when would it be the time? I thought of all the people in the world whose voices were choking and cracking for many reasons. I could sing for them.'
Ms. Ono last February released the single, 'Walking on Thin Ice,' which she was working on with the former Beatle the night he was killed in front of their luxury apartment overlooking New York's Central Park.
Mark David Chapman, of Honolulu, is scheduled to stand trial later this month in the slaying.
The latestalbum, released last week under the Geffen Records label, features on the cover a photo of a pair of glasses on a table -- with one lens shattered and apparently blood-stained. In the background is the Manhattan skyline near Central Park.
A song called 'No, No, No' opens with the sounds of four gunshots and a scream. At the end, after Ms. Ono sings 'I don't remember what we promised -- but I miss you' the song features music that resembles an ambulance rushing off into the distance.
The album also contains a brief spoken passage in which the couple's 5-year-old son, Sean, repeatedly starts to tell a story he learned from his father. 'You see it can end anywhere -- it's just a little story,' he says.
In the song, 'I Don't Know Why,' Ms. Ono, in addition to her screams of anguish, sings:
'I don't know why
'Was getting so good with us
'The room's so empty without you
'My body's so empty
'The world's so empty without you.'
