Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and BMI calculated that radio stations had played it 3 million times from seventeen continuous years of airplay. "Billboard" ranked it as the No. 1 song for 1973. It also reached No. 1 in the UK and Australia, and has sold 1 million copies in the UK. In New Zealand, the song spent 10 weeks at number one. In the Philippines, the song was best known for its use in the return of exiled politician Benigno Aquino, Jr. to the country in 1983, during which Aquino supporters tied yellow ribbons on trees in anticipation
An Oak Tree Catholic background and was an altar boy. He sees belief of both artist and viewer as having a key place in art, and that in "An Oak Tree" he had "deconstructed the work of art in such a way as to reveal its single basic and essential element", namely this belief. "An Oak Tree" was a turning point in his artistic development: prior to it his concern had been deconstruction, and afterwards he was "trying to put the pieces together again." Subsequently, using the rationale of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain", he worked with drawings of utilitarian objects and flat areas of