Aussie Journalist, Peace Activist Ritchie Yorke Dies

Ritchie Yorke, longtime music journalist in Australia and Canada, and a close collaborator with John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their late ’60s peace initiatives, died in a Brisbane, Australia, hospital from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 73.

Yorke began his career in Queensland as a presenter on the government-owned ABC Radio in the early ’60s. He was fired for locking himself in the studio and playing Stevie Wonder’s “Fingertips Pt 2” eight times in a row, against management orders.

– Ritchie Yorke

He moved to London where he was promotions manager for Island Records. Turning down an offer to manage Steve Winwood’s new band Traffic, he moved to Toronto in 1967.

During his 18-year stay in Canada, he was music columnist for The Globe and Mail and Canadian correspondent for Rolling Stone and England’s NME.

He was named journalist of the year at the Juno Awards, helped push for the country’s radio quota legislation in 1971 and penned a book on the Canadian music scene called “Axes, Chops & Hot Licks” the same year.

Aside from being one of the few media identities allowed into the inner sanctums of media-shy acts such as Van Morrison and Island Records, about whom he penned profiles, he was particularly close to Lennon and Ono, instrumental in organising their Montreal bed-in for peace and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert.

He related these days in his 2015 book, “Christ You Know It Ain’t Easy: John & Yoko’s Battle for World Peace,” for which Ono wrote the foreword.

“Lennon’s powerful appeal for peace with the current bombing, fighting and killing in the Middle East is as needed today as it was during the Vietnam War,” he said.

Yorke continued his peace initiatives, some with Ono, after returning to Australia where he also served as senior music writer for Brisbane’s Sunday Mail until 2007.