"Give Peace a Chance" - Plastic Ono Band (1969)

My favorite protest songs from the 60s and early 70s

This is the seventh in a series about my favorite protest songs from the sixties and early seventies.

We’ve already listened to these songs, in case you missed them:

• “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Bob Dylan (1963)

• “Masters of War” by Judy Collins (1963)

• “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire (1965)

• “For What It’s Worth (Stop, Hey What’s That Sound)” by Buffalo Springfield (1966)

• “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones (1969)

• “Sweet Cherry Wine” by Tommy James & the Shondells (1969)

I’ve also shared NickS’s post asking “What makes a good protest song?” in which he gives his own list of favorites, and Jackie R’s post sharing a song that makes fun of protest songs.

Today we focus on a song I love for its playful lyrics and the outlandish way in which it was performed and recorded — not to mention its enduring cultural impact.

Protest song of the day

In a 1969 CBC interview, John Lennon, with new wife Yoko Ono by his side, explained why they were conducting a campaign for peace:

“I believe sincerely, as soon as people want peace and are aware that they can have it, they will have it. The only trouble is they’re not aware that they can get it. They really think it’s inevitable the way things are, that there’s nothing they can do, you know? But they have all the power… [John makes a reference to their fathers’ generation going on strikes and the interviewer cuts it off as ‘history,’ so John changes tack.] The people have the power. All we’ve got to do is remind them that they have the power of stopping everything. They can stop everything by going to bed, or anything… Now you can stop everything by stopping, slowing the whole place down, giving people the time to think. There’s no hurry.”

On May 26, 1969, John and Yoko, accompanied by Yoko’s five year-old daughter, Kyoko, did just this — stopping everything by going to bed — as soon as they’d checked into a suite in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Canada. A little over two months into their honeymoon, this would be their third high-profile “peace tour” activity. They had already conducted a week-long Bed-In in Amsterdam and a Bag-In press conference in Vienna. Their next activity here in Montreal would be another Bed-In but with an even higher profile, because they also had a special event planned. They would be debuting a new song, John’s first single outside the Beatles.

What is a Bed-In or a Bag-In, you may ask? The Bed-In was conceived by John and Yoko as another way to engage in nonviolent protest against the Vietnam War, inspired by the “sit-ins” and “sit-downs” used to great effect in the civil rights, disability rights, and anti-war protest movements. Although it was a disappointment to members of the press expecting something more risque (given that the couple had appeared nude on the front and back covers of their Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins album released the previous November), the bed-in consisted of the two of them sitting in a hotel room bed in their pajamas “like angels” talking about peace with journalists and invited guests. [Other bed-ins have been held since, including one in 2018 involving Yoko, former Beatle Ringo Starr, actor Jeff Bridges, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.]

A Bag-In, on the other hand, is a way they devised to make a satirical statement about stereotyping and prejudice by covering the entire body in a bag so no one can judge and discriminate against the wearer on the basis of their attributes or appearance, and so that the only communication is the message itself. (Although their heads are visible in the image below, in a true bag-in they would be completely inside the bag.)

John and Yoko had attempted to demonstrate this at an event for underground artists at London’s Royal Albert Hall in late 1968, enclosing themselves in a bag together, facing and cross-legged, without moving for 45 minutes. But it didn’t quite work out the way they had expected. As artist Lee Harris reported, “All mayhem broke out when a young female member of the audience stripped off her clothes and danced in naked delight. When the police were called and attendants tried to remove her, groups of people started stripping off their clothes in solidarity. There was a retreat and a truce was worked out, and no-one was arrested. The nude girl incident, with accompanying photo, made the front pages of the London evening papers.”¹ Not quite the message John and Yoko were intending to get across.

You can see a Bag-In example in John’s “Nobody Told Me” video below at around 3:00, and something that looks like it might become a Bag-In at 1:55. (This is a great song and a fun video to watch all the way through anyway.)

The next big stop on their peace tour after Vienna was intended to be New York City, but the U.S. denied them entry because of John’s 1968 cannabis conviction. He was already considered persona non grata by Richard M. Nixon’s government as a “Peacenik,” and, as later revealed, was being actively wiretapped and surveilled.

Instead, they checked into the Sheraton Oceanus Hotel in the Bahamas, intending to hold the Bed-In there, but after one night of sweltering heat they decided to move on. Next stop, Canada, ending up in Montreal “by chance” and beginning a one-week residency at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. John didn’t carry money, so the hotel floated their stay until Apple Records came up with the dosh. (As of two years ago, the hotel was charging $4,000 per night to stay in the two-bedroom John Lennon and Yoko Ono Suite, so Fairmont has benefitted nicely from their impromptu visit, as has the first stop on their peace tour, the Amsterdam Hilton.)

As preparation for the Bed-In, they dragged the bed mattress onto the floor of the living room and hung signs on the windows behind them saying “Hair peace” and “Bed peace” (below). They then proceeded to conduct interviews with journalists from the comfort of their bed. As John explained, “Yoko and I are quite willing to be the world's clowns, if by doing it we do some good.”

Press and public reaction to their campaign to this point had not been as positive as they hoped, with words such as “naive” and “a waste of time” being thrown around. Canada was the first place where they felt they were treated as human beings, not dismissed as just an entertainer and an avant garde artist, not made fun of for the sake of making fun of them, and given real help in getting their message across.

The media interviews were not the main event at the Montreal Bed-In as they had been earlier. At John’s request, Beatles publicist Derek Taylor found a local recording engineer, André Perry, to come to the hotel and capture the first performance of John’s new song, “Give Peace a Chance.” John also invited a who’s who of celebrity friends who supported the message, including Phil Spector, Murray the K, and the Canadian chapter of the Radha Krishna Temple (see a list of attendees in the credits below).

Also there as a backup singer was mega pop star Petula Clark — see my post “Petula Clark - The Other British Invasion” on this incredible artist — who happened to be in Montreal at that time doing concerts and came to John for advice on how to deal with audiences heckling her for her bilingual performance. He invited her to the recording session.

On that historic day of June 1st, André Perry brought his four-track recorder and placed four mikes around the packed room. The recording was done in one take, with John on his Gibson acoustic accompanied only by musical comedian Tommy Smothers on acoustic guitar, Yoko on tambourine, and everyone else singing, clapping, and banging along.

In a 1980 BBC interview with Andy Peebles just two days before his death, John recalled, “And there was like Tommy Smothers and Tim Leary and Dick Gregory, and all people sort of clapping along and singing on the chorus. And if you hear the record, it's funny actually, because my rhythm sense has always been a bit wild, and halfway through it, I got on the on-beat instead of the back-beat and it was hard because all the... there were non-musicians playing along with us. And so I had to put a lot of tape echo to double up the beat to keep a steady beat right through the whole record, so it goes Bo-boom, bo-boom, instead of Ba, Ba.”

John also had to put cue cards up on the walls because the song was so fresh he couldn’t remember the lyrics. The chorus reportedly came from a rabbi saying, “John, you must give peace a chance.” For the last verse, John forgot the lyrics and improvised with whatever names came to him, some of people in the room, some not.

He later explained about the wording, “It wasn’t like ‘You have to have peace!’ Just give it a chance. We ain’t giving any gospel here, just saying how about this version for a change? We think we have the right to have a say in the future. And we think the future is made in your mind.”

When pushed about what peace actually means, he replied, “Peace on earth, that implies no violence, no starving children, no violent minds, no violent households. No violence, no frustrations, no fear… all its aspects. Peace of mind, peace in the street. Peace in your own home. Peace throughout the world. Really means no violence, or violence that’s channeled and doesn’t hurt. That’s what I mean by peace… don’t hurt people.”

The single of the song was rushed into production, debuting in early July on the Billboard Hot 100 at #62, two months ahead of the Beatles’ final album, Let It Be. The Radha Krishna Temple in London, whose Canadian chapter had participated in the song, within weeks would also have a UK Top 20 hit with their “Hare Krishna Mantra” single, produced by George Harrison for Apple Records.

“Give Peace a Chance” reached #2 in the UK and #14 on the Billboard Hot 100. The peace movement, as attendee Rabbi Abraham Feinberg noted, was very happy with the song as a means to reach the “silent majority,” and especially the young who were enamored with the Beatles. It became a standard for the peace/anti-war and counterculture movements, with Pete Seeger leading half a million demonstrators in singing it at the Vietnam Moratorium Day in Washington, D.C. in November of that year. The song re-charted and reached #33 in the UK following John’s death. It has also been covered by many artists over the intervening 55 years.

Others might choose “Imagine” as their favorite John Lennon peace-oriented song, but for me it’s “Give Peace a Chance” with John’s signature humor and the unbelievably novel and outrageous way in which it came about.

But also because this is not so much a song as a pro-peace chant — perfect for aspirational and uplifting demonstrations and protests. The official video for the song below does what I think is a brilliant job of conveying the ultimately successful anti-war and pro-peace movement that John and Yoko were aiming to inspire. You be the judge: did they achieve what they set out to do on their peace tour?

Song credits

Songwriter - John Lennon

Producer - John Lennon, Yoko Ono, André Perry

Musicians:

• John Lennon – lead vocals, acoustic guitar

• Tom Smothers – acoustic guitar

• Yoko Ono and others – handclaps, tambourine, backing vocals

• Timothy Leary, Petula Clark – backing vocals

• André Perry – percussion, production

Other attendees:

• Radha Krishna Temple, Canadian chapter

• Allen Ginsburg, poet

• Phil Spector, record producer

• Derek Taylor, Beatles publicist

• Murray the K, New York radio DJ and rock ’n’ roll impresario

• Dick Gregory, comedian and activist

• Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, activist

• Roger Scott, Montreal DJ (later BBC Radio 1 host)

• Paul Williams, Crawdaddy! music journalist

• dozens of journalists

• Queen Elizabeth Hotel staff

1. "Lee Harris' involvement with the Arts Lab and Alchemical Wedding".