PHOTO ESSAY

Rebel Yells

A protest music mixtape

By Matthew McKinnon

August 12, 2005

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John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Photo Getty Images/Keystone Features.

Give Peace a Chance, The Plastic Ono Band

(Live Peace In Toronto, 1969)

Our coda. John Lennon wrote Give Peace a Chance during a three-week “bed-in” with wife Yoko Ono at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel. The song was a chant — “All we are saying, is give peace a chance” — interspersed with fast, barely intelligible verses: “Ev’rybody’s talkin’ about / Revolution, evolution, masturbation / Flagellation, regulation, integrations / Meditations, United Nations, congratulations.”

Lennon and Ono recorded it first in their hotel room, with Timothy Leary, Petula Clark and a motley chorus of contributors helping on vocals, then again at a Toronto concert, where Lennon admitted to trouble remembering his cryptic words. The song was soon adopted by the anti-war movement. It is this mix’s fourth song linked to Vietnam, which seems like over-representation until you recall that the ’60s, despite or because of the war, was a high point in Western creative expression.

Sean Lennon, John’s son, organized a cover version of Give Peace a Chance in 1991, with 42 contributors (including Iggy Pop, Peter Gabriel and Bonnie Riatt) each singing a line of its lyrics. That song became a small hit, but failed to capture the magic of the originals.