Imagine all the people, living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one.
― John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; Liverpool, October 9, 1940-New York, December 8, 1980) was a British multi-instrumentalist musician and songwriter who rose to fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, recognized as the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed band in the history of popular music. Together with Paul McCartney, he formed one of the most successful songwriting duos of the 20th century.
He was born and raised in Liverpool, where as a teenager he was immersed in the British skiffle boom, forming the band The Quarrymen, which later in 1960 would become The Beatles. When the group disintegrated at the end of the decade, Lennon began a solo career, marked by several critically acclaimed albums, including John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and iconic songs like "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine ». After marrying Yoko Ono in 1969, he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. Lennon retired from the music scene in 1975 to raise his young son Sean, but re-emerged alongside Ono in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy. He was assassinated three weeks after its release.
He displayed a rebellious character and scathing wit in his music, film, literature, and drawing, as well as in his remarks at press conferences and interviews. In addition, controversy haunted him due to his constant peace activism with Ono. In 1971 he moved to Manhattan, where his opposition to the Vietnam War led to numerous attempts by the Richard Nixon government to expel him from the country; meanwhile, his songs were adopted as hymns by the antiwar movement and the counterculture.
Until 2012, Lennon's sales as a solo artist exceeded fourteen million units in the United States, and as a performer, author or co-author, he is responsible for twenty-five number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2002, he was placed on the 8th place in a BBC poll of the "100 Greatest Britons", while in 2008 he was rated by Rolling Stone magazine as the fifth best singer of all time. After his death he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock Hall of Fame in 1994.
During the Vietnam War, in 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono held two, week-long Bed-Ins for Peace, in Amsterdam and Montreal, 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 702 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.
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 (the CBC 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.
Bed-Ins for Peace
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.
On Dec. 08, 1980, Lennon was shot to death by Mark David Chapman. Chapman drew out his gun, aimed at his back and shot five bullets at his back and killed him. Chapman was an enemy, being a threat to Lennon. Lennon was assassinated. Lennon went to hospital and the doctors found that Lennon has died. Chapman was convicted of Second Degree murder and sentenced to 20 year life imprisonment.
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.