Bed-In

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

During the Vietnam War, in 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono held two, week-long Bed-Ins for Peace, which were their non-violent ways of protesting wars and promoting peace.

Knowing their March 20, 1969 marriage would be a huge press event, John and Yoko decided to use the publicity to promote world peace.

They spent their honeymoon in Room 902 at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel for a week between March 25 and March 31 and invited the world's press into their hotel room every day between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. After their other stunts, such as the naked cover of the Two Virgins album, the press were expecting them to be having sex, but instead John and Yoko were sitting in bed talking about peace with signs over their bed reading "Hair Peace" and "Bed Peace". After seven days, they flew to Vienna, Austria, where they held a press conference while eating chocolate cake while they were inside a white bag, a promotion for Bagism, another of their concepts which called for social change.

During April 1969, John and Yoko sent acorns to the heads of state in various countries around the world in hopes that they would plant them as a symbol of peace. For eight months, the couple was not granted a single visit with any world leader.

John and Yoko's marriage, their first Bed-In, the Vienna press conference and their acorn event were all mentioned in the song The Ballad of John and Yoko. Their second Bed-In was planned to take place in New York, but John was not allowed into the country because of his 1968 marijuana conviction. Due to its proximity to the United States, they decided to hold their Bed-In in the Bahamas at the Sheraton Oceanus Hotel. They flew there on May 24, 1969, but after spending one night in the 86°F (30°C) heat, they decided to head to Toronto, Canada.

Recording Give Peace A Chance By Roy Kerwood [1]

Eventually, they flew to Montreal on May 26 where they stayed in Room 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. During their seven day stay, they invited Timothy Leary, Tommy Smothers, Dick Gregory, and Al Capp and all but Capp sang on the peace anthem Give Peace a Chance, recorded in the hotel room on June 1. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation conducted interviews from the hotel room and has released this content for paid downloads to computers and iPods.

In December 1969, they spread their message with a billboard reading "War is Over! If You Want It - Happy Christmas From John and Yoko". The billboards went up in eleven cities.

The Lennons meet the Prime Minister of Canada.

On December 23rd 1969, the Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was the first world leader to grant the couple a visit. They spoke for 50 minutes about world peace. Afterwards Lennon said that Trudeau was "a beautiful person".

Their peace campaign was met mostly with derision, and most journalists simply dismissed it as a publicity stunt. Lennon, who was accused of doing this for money or attention, countered by saying that he could write a song in an hour and make more money than he could spending seven days in bed talking about peace.

The Bed-in performance has since been re-interpreted and re-used in protests by a number of artists since 1969, most notably Marijke van Warmerdam with her gallerist Kees van Gelder at the same Amsterdam Hilton in 1992 and the Centre of Attention in 2005 in Miami. A fictional Bed-In protest was also featured in a 2006 Viva Voce music video.

In late 2006, Billie Joe Armstrong, lead singer of Californian punk-rock band Green Day, and his wife, Adrienne Armstrong, did a similar bed-in. Featuring Billie Joe and Adrienne laying on the bed, with a poster above their heads saying "Make Love Not War" in spanish.