The Way It Is
John and Yoko's Montreal bed-in
Broadcast Date: June 8, 1969
Montreal wasn't their first choice.
In fact it wasn't even their second.
When John Lennon and Yoko Ono checked in to Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel at midnight on May 26, 1969, it was, in part, due to heat and marijuana.
John and Yoko's Bed-in was originally conceived in Holland two months earlier.
The newlyweds hosted a honeymoon "bed-in" for peace at the Amsterdam Hilton, wanting to use their celebrity for good.
The gesture was part honeymoon, part performance art, interlaced with a protest against the Vietnam War. Spurred by the momentum of the first bed-in, they were keen to do another.
The notorious duo originally headed for the Bahamas, but Lennon found the island too hot to stay in bed for a week.
They wanted to go to New York but the U.S. authorities axed that plan, repeatedly denying the ex-Beatle a visa because of a previous marijuana arrest.
So Montreal became the chosen city for their second bed-in. Throughout the week the couple, along with Ono's five-year-old daughter Kyoko, entertained guests including U.S. black civil rights advocate Dick Gregory, Quebec separatist Jacques Larue-Langlois and American cartoonist Al Capp.
In this footage, Capp gets in a shouting match with the "famous freaks." The self-described "dreadful, Neanderthal fascist" essentially summed up the bed-in as a publicity stunt and a gimmick.
The end of the bed-in was capped by a spontaneous recording of Give Peace a Chance.
Sometime between eight at night and three the next morning, alongside a roomful of people including Timothy Leary, Toronto Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, musician Petula Clark, and members of the Canadian Radha Krishna Temple, the anthem for peace was recorded.
Give Peace a Chance reached No. 14 on Billboard's chart -- and would inspire an entire generation to sing a song of peace.
John and Yoko's Montreal bed-in
• Lennon and Ono settled in at the corner suite rooms 1738-1740-1742 at the stately Queen Elizabeth Hotel. The hotel currently offers a John & Yoko Getaway Package which includes accommodations in the John Lennon suite and breakfast for two. (In 2007, it cost $600 per night plus tax.)
• Every year on Dec. 8, the day John Lennon was murdered, two dozen roses, half red and half white, are left anonymously by the door of the suite.
• John Lennon and Yoko Ono tied the knot on March 20, 1969, in Gibraltar.
• The first bed-in for peace took place in room 902, the presidential suite of the Amsterdam Hilton.
• Lennon's The Ballad of John and Yoko chronicled the Amsterdam bed-in.
John and Yoko's Montreal bed-in
Medium: Television
Program: The Way It Is
Broadcast Date: June 8, 1969
Guest(s): Al Capp, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Derek Taylor
Host: Patrick Watson
Duration: 11:46
Last updated:
March 10, 2008
Al comes off looking like an arrogant, aggressive jerk. Too bad, because he could have used his ample intellect to get some revealing answers from these two...
Submitted by: Dee