Give Peace a Chance
Give Peace a Chance is a song by John Lennon recorded by Lennon, Yoko Ono and a few others, including "LSD Pope" Timothy Leary , during bed- in at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal on June 1, 1969 has been. Although the song is not a title of the Beatles , the authorship was initially officially with the composer duo Lennon / McCartney , as was usual with Beatles songs at the time. In some later publications, only Lennon was mentioned.
Emergence
After their wedding on March 20, 1969 in Gibraltar , John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their several months of campaigns for peace, which caused major international press coverage. While they were still on their honeymoon in Amsterdam , they invited selected press representatives to their hotel room, to whom they laid out in bed their motives for a “campaign for peace”. The action was quickly referred to as "bed-in".
During the next few months Lennon and Ono continued their bed-ins, held a “bag-in” in Vienna, where they presented themselves to the audience in a white sack, and recorded various experimental compositions.
During her stay in Montreal at the end of May, Lennon replied to a reporter when asked what he was aiming for with his protests: "All we say is: give peace a chance," from which the song spontaneously developed.
admission
On June 1, 1969, the last day of the actions, John Lennon and Yoko Ono had a recording device brought to their hotel room and played the song live with everyone in attendance, including Allen Ginsberg , Timothy Leary , Derek Taylor and Petula Clark . While Lennon was sitting on the bed with his guitar alongside Ono and sang, danced members of the Canadian Radha - Krishna TEMPLE across the room.
publication
After the Beatles single, which was released in May (although only John Lennon and Paul McCartney were involved in the recording ), The Ballad of John and Yoko documented their wedding and the subsequent peace campaigns, Give Peace a Chance was released as the first solo single in July of a Beatles in general - published under the name "John Lennon & Yoko Ono with The Plastic Ono Band " - the latter was up to this point a pure fantasy construct. This and the increased appearance of Lennon without the other three Beatles fed the rumors of separation that had been going on for some time - in fact, the Beatles were only supposed to exist for a few more months. In late summer of the year, Lennon announced to the other band members that they no longer wanted to continue.
The single, which contained the Ono composition Remember Love on the B-side , was released on July 4, 1969 and reached second place on the charts in Great Britain. In the USA it only reached up to 14th place. The song is still a popular anthem in peace protests.
In 1971 a quote from the chorus was found in the song I've Seen All Good People by the band Yes , included on The Yes Album .
The composer and arranger Colin Towns released a new setting of Give Peace A Chance in 2010 together with the NDR Bigband . He backed the recording with quotes from today's politicians such as Gerhard Schröder , Angela Merkel , Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin on the subject of the ' Iraq War '.
Others
The song was in 1970 in the film The Strawberry Statement by students intoned . Sitting in a circle, rhythmically clapping their hands and the floor, they appealed against the threatened evacuation of their university. Following the example, young people in the GDR also sang this song in discos and at the largest youth protest on Republic Day on October 7, 1977.
Web links
- Tanja Kniepert: Give Peace a Chance. Song dictionary, accessed July 7, 2020
Individual evidence
- ↑ See "Elvis always flirted!" - Petula Clark had them all. At: n-tv , September 17, 2016.
- ↑ release date