http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6248757.ece
It's 40 years since the global antiwar anthem Give Peace a Chance was
created during John Lennon and Yoko Ono's celebrated bed-in. Here key
people in the room recount the story of that heady week
May 9, 2009
Gerry Deiter photographer
Like so many who streamed through the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in that
week in May 1969, I was there by chance. Life magazine was working
quickly to cover this unexpected event, and while normally I did a
lot of fashion photography, this was a sudden assignment anyone would
have been a fool to pass up. A few hours, I thought. I had no idea I
would be there for a week.
I stayed for two reasons: because John and Yoko wanted me to; and
because it seemed to me they were doing the right thing at precisely
the right time. It was only two years after the "summer of love",
when hope was never higher, when an entire generation of young
Americans, Canadians and Europeans believed they held the world's
future in their hands. It was a time of idealism, of optimism, of
pacifism. Yet the Vietnam War was at its peak; there were more than
half a million US soldiers in combat. Global opposition to the war
was coalescing.
John Lennon understood that his voice would count. But make no
mistake about it, even though he was a Beatle, immensely wealthy and
influential, he was still risking everything. He was viewed by much
of the world with as much suspicion, confusion and ambivalence as the
war itself . . . a man with a "strange" oriental wife whose art,
although innovative and original, was universally misunderstood and
largely ignored by the art world. And they were going to try to
convince people that the war really was over; all you had to do was
believe it. A simple message. So they took to a bed in a Montreal
hotel in a very public manner, inviting the world to join them.
The images remain crystal clear in my memory: a huge buffet in the
dining room, with pitchers of orange juice and bottles of champagne
cooling in silver buckets; in the master bedroom one wall was covered
with posters drawn in a primitive, yet childishly charming style,
combining peace slogans with self-portraits of John and Yoko. Flowers
bloomed in every corner of the crowded room, at the centre of which
was a king-size bed and a small bedside table, also covered with
flowers and bearing a small Buddha. It looked like a devotional shrine.
And then the central image: John Lennon Ono and Yoko Ono Lennon, both
with flowing dark hair set against white linen sheets. He wore his
trademark granny glasses and a full beard that made him look like a
holy man; her raven tresses fanned out around her head on the pillow,
and her dark eyes flashed warmly in greeting.
Having been present at the birth of Give Peace a Chance, I never
stopped feeling a profound responsibility to spread that simple
message. Perhaps as we raise our voices together, we'll be able to
hear an echo of John's voice singing, "Give peace a chance." That
voice still animates my days and flows through my dreams at night.
Alison Gordon TV producer
I recall the whole experience in a golden glow, not so much for the
ineffable shimmering of the experience, but because John and Yoko had
taped clear yellow gels over all the windows, so the light came
through warm as honey. They knew how to dress a set.
And a set it undeniably was. Despite the chaos everywhere else, the
bed their stage seemed somehow removed from it all. It was quite
extraordinary: despite the yappy disc jockeys broadcasting "LIVE!
From the Bed-In for Peace!"; despite the self-important people
coming and going like ants with urgent requests; despite the
room-service deliveries and starstruck fans always hovering; despite
the occasional incursions of Hare Krishna devotees with chanting and
drums; despite all of that, the bed and the two small people dressed
in white nightclothes curled up together on it seemed to be in a
bubble of calm, well, of peace, actually, throughout those strange
few days. It was as if there was an invisible box around them, and
they were insulated within it.
I was there for four or five days and I don't recall speaking
directly to either John or Yoko. I was part of a CBC television crew
filming a documentary for the weekly current affairs magazine The Way
It Is. The idea for the programme came as a response to the US
Government's refusal to let the couple into the country because of
Lennon's record of cannabis use. Some of the younger producers on the
programme hit on the idea of bringing the country to them, instead.
Working with Lennon's people, we invited a cross-section of Americans
to Montreal to be filmed with John and Yoko.
Among those we brought in were Tom Smothers, whose TV variety show
had just been cancelled by CBS for political reasons; Dick Gregory,
the outspoken black comedian; and Nat Hentoff, the left-wing jazz
critic and columnist for New York's Village Voice.
It being the Sixties, my recall of the details of several days I
spent there tends to be a bit spotty. (I do remember being dazzled by
a sterling silver cigarette case with professionally rolled joints as
smooth as cigarettes, wrapped in pastel-coloured papers, the contents
of which made climbing the hill back to the hotel seem to be a feat
worthy of Sir Edmund Hillary, but that's neither here nor there, and
irrelevant to John and Yoko. In their bedroom the drug of choice
seemed to be Pouilly-Fouissé.) Which is to say that I don't quite
recall the circumstances surrounding the recording of Give Peace a
Chance. However it came about, there were a bunch of us 30 or 40,
maybe, including some of the visiting celebrities sitting on the
floor in the bedroom, on the walls of which John had taped big boards
with lyrics scrawled on them: all those crazy off-kilter rhyming
couplets in lists "evolution, revolution; masturbation,
flagellation; bagism, shagism; ministers, sinisters; bishops,
fishops; rabbis, popeyes, bye-byes".
As much fun as it was to sing along with the chorus hey, how much
cooler could cool get? I can't imagine that any of us thought we
were involved in music history. I didn't even think it would ever be
produced and aired. It was too clumsy, too unmusical. But I was
wrong, about the lasting impact of the song and about the quality of
the performance.
I now see the whole experience as a kind of pop-culture Stockholm
syndrome, in the most benign possible way. The gaggle of strangers
had been through a lot of weird stuff in the days that led up to the
recording; trapped in a room with the film crews, the interviews, the
lights, the delegations bearing gifts and babies to be kissed.
You can hear all of that in the recording. Whenever I hear it, there
are a couple of things I wonder about: how can it be that no one
among the leaders of the world has yet given peace a chance, and how
come I never got any royalties?
André Perry music producer
The phone rang shortly after midnight. Pierre Dubord, an executive
for Capitol Records, distributors of the Beatles' Apple Records
label, announced that John Lennon wanted to make a recording the next
day in his suite. Would I do it? I said: "Of course," my mind rushing
to co-ordinate the details.
When I arrived John and I discussed the recording procedure. I looked
at the low ceiling and sheetrock walls sceptically, thinking that
these must be the worst conditions for making a recording. I did the
best set-up I could in the circumstances. We recorded it only twice,
everyone in the room singing and banging on telephone books,
ashtrays, whatever.
The sun was rising when I left John and Yoko. I went directly to my
studio to mix the recording. I still hadn't slept a wink by the time
I returned. John thanked me and graciously gave me a signed Hair
Peace poster. More importantly, he ordered a special label for the
international release of the single, bearing prominently my name and
the address of my studio, a gesture of appreciation that won
international attention for the young engineer/producer that I was.
It was quite a boost to my career.
Yoko Ono
From the very first moment John and I saw each other, we knew
something was about to happen something big. We just didn't know
how big. John said about our meeting: "It was bigger than both of
us." That was the feeling we had. When John and I sang Give Peace a
Chance, we had no idea the song would become an anthem not only for
our time but for generations to come.
It went around the world, and made other songwriters realise that you
can convey political messages with songs. Millions of people got
together and sung the song in different parts of the world at
different times. The song connected us and made us realise that we
were a power strong enough to GIVE PEACE A CHANCE change the world.
Little did we know that that's when we, John and I, really made our
beds for life.
I still remember the beautiful full moon that John and I kept looking
at from the bed, after everybody went home. Did anybody think that a
man and a woman, a man from Liverpool, and a woman from Tokyo, would
do something crazy like that together to change the world? Maybe it
was written already on a stone on the moon or something. At the time,
we were laughed at and put down, in a major way, by the whole world.
Now all of us are standing at the threshold of a beautiful new age
that we worked hard for. It's not in our hands yet, but we know we
will make it happen. Let's make the best of it and have fun. I think
John would have been very pleased too.
IMAGINE PEACE WAR IS OVER, if you want it.
I love you!
--
Edited extract from Give Peace a Chance: John & Yoko's Bed-in for
Peace, compiled by Joan Athey, photographs by Gerry Deiter, published
by Wiley at £14.99. To order it for £13.49 inc p&p, call 0845 2712134
or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
.
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