During the 1960s, Al Hansen was among the leading members of the so-called Fluxus art movement, a dadaesque precursor to Conceptual Artwhose members (Yoko Ono among them) espoused an iconoclastic ideology and specialized in "happenings," interactive performances, and the use of video and found objects. During one such happening one day Hansen decided to push a piano off the top of a tall building, a piece of performance art which he later called "Yoko Ono Piano Drop."

(This soon became one of his favorite party tricks.)

["I remember being about five and my grandfather arriving at the house one day out of nowhere," Hansen's grandson Beck recalled. "He had a bag of junk with him, magazines, cigarette butts and refuse which he would use in his art pieces. I had some old toys out back, including a broken plastic rocking horse. The next day I came home from school and he had taken the horse, cut off the head and glued cigarette butts all over it, and then sprayed the whole thing silver. I think things of that nature showed me the possibilities that lie within everyday disposable objects, that we can act as alchemists and turn shit into gold."]