Give Peace a Chance

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  On the 1st of June 1969, in Room 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, John Lennon sat on a bed with an acoustic guitar and dozens of journalists, celebrities, and curious onlookers packed around him. A Montreal recording studio owner named Andre Perry had arrived with four microphones and a four-track tape recorder. What emerged from that crowded, acoustically terrible hotel room would become one of the most recognizable protest songs ever recorded.

  "Give Peace a Chance" was not the product of a professional studio session or careful planning. It was born from a honeymoon stunt, credited to the wrong songwriter at its release, and pressed onto vinyl in time to reach shelves on the 4th of July 1969. Within five months, half a million demonstrators in Washington, D.C. would be singing it together.

  How did a spontaneous hotel room performance become the anthem of the American anti-war movement? And why did Lennon later say he felt guilty about the songwriting credit he chose to put on its label?

• 2. The Bed-In Recording

  ›

  The song's origin was an offhand remark. During the Bed-In honeymoon Lennon and Yoko Ono staged in Montreal, a reporter asked Lennon what he was trying to accomplish by staying in bed. Lennon answered without hesitation: "Just give peace a chance." He repeated the phrase several times over the course of the Bed-In, and it stuck.

  Lennon asked his press officer Derek Taylor to track down a recording engineer. Taylor found Andre Perry, owner of a local studio, who showed up at Room 1742 with a portable rig: four microphones and a four-track tape recorder, nothing more. The room was full. Attendees included Timothy Leary, Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, Petula Clark, Allen Ginsberg, Dick Gregory, Murray the K, and Rosemary Woodruff Leary, among many others. Several of their names ended up woven directly into the lyrics.

  Lennon played acoustic guitar. Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers was also there and joined in on acoustic guitar as well. Yoko Ono and others contributed handclaps, tambourine, and backing vocals.

  The recording itself was far from clean. Perry later recalled that the room's poor acoustics made the raw tape unusable on its own. He made the call himself to bring in three professional singers from Montreal the following day to add back vocals. Among them were Mouffe and Robert Charlebois, a well-known pop star in Quebec and France. Perry transferred the original four-track recording to an eight-track machine and used the remaining tracks for the overdubs.

  When he played the mix for Lennon, with just the three of them and Ono in the room, Lennon's verdict was immediate: he thought it was wonderful and wanted to keep it exactly as it was. Perry later said this was why Lennon gave him such a prominent credit on the single.

• 3. The Credit Dispute

  ›

  When "Give Peace a Chance" was released in July 1969, the songwriting credit read Lennon-McCartney, just as it had on every Beatles record. Paul McCartney had nothing to do with the song. Lennon knew this.

  Years later, Lennon expressed regret about the decision, saying he felt guilty about giving McCartney credit as co-writer on his first independent single rather than giving it to Ono, who he said had actually written it with him. According to author Ian MacDonald, the Lennon-McCartney credit was Lennon's way of thanking McCartney for helping him record "The Ballad of John and Yoko" on short notice.

  Later releases overseen by the Lennon Estate corrected the credit to Lennon alone. The change appeared on the 1990s reissue of the 1986 album Live in New York City, on the 2006 documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon, and on the 1997 compilation Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon and its DVD version six years after that.

  There was also a quieter lyrical adjustment Lennon made before release. One verse contained a reference to masturbation, which Lennon changed to "mastication" on the official lyric sheet. He later called this a "cop out" but said he wanted to avoid unnecessary controversy. The original impulse, and the awkward workaround, both survived in the public record.

• 4. Vietnam Moratorium Day

  ›

  Released on the 4th of July 1969 in the UK and a few days later on the 7th of July in the US, the single reached number 2 on the UK Singles Chart and number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100. Billboard described it as an infectious rhythm ballad with clever arrangement and performance.

  The song's real cultural weight arrived not through chart positions but through a crowd. On the 15th of November 1969, Vietnam Moratorium Day, half a million demonstrators gathered in Washington, D.C., and sang it together. Folk singer Pete Seeger led the crowd, and between choruses he called out directly to those in power, asking whether Nixon and Agnew were listening.

  The song became the chant of the anti-Vietnam-war movement and the broader counterculture. Shortly after Lennon's murder in 1980, fans gathered outside the Dakota in New York and sang it again. The single re-entered the UK chart in January 1981, reaching number 33. It is now listed among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, alongside two other Lennon solo tracks: "Instant Karma!" and "Imagine".

  More than five decades after its recording, the song was invoked again in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. On the 4th of March 2022, 150 European public radio stations broadcast it simultaneously, and on the 8th of March, 200 European private radio stations did the same. The Rockin' 1000 also performed it as the opening of the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 final, held in the same period.

• 5. Cover Versions and Legacy

  ›

  Hot Chocolate released the song as their debut single on the Apple label in October 1969, just months after the original, in a reggae arrangement credited to Hot Chocolate Band.

  The song has since attracted an unusually wide range of performers. Louis Armstrong recorded it on the 29th of May 1970 for an LP called Louis Armstrong and Friends. Elton John recorded it as a B-side in 1990 and had performed it live on his 1970 US tour with bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson. Joni Mitchell referenced it in "California" from her 1971 album Blue. The British group Yes wove the refrain into "Your Move" on The Yes Album in 1971.

  Paul McCartney has performed a medley of the song combined with "A Day in the Life" in his live shows since his 2009 album Good Evening New York City, including on Saturday Night Live on the 11th of December 2010. Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band often plays it as an encore after "With a Little Help from My Friends." U2 performed it in concert at least 27 times, first on the 13th of December 1980 at the Paradise in Boston, Massachusetts, and last on the 18th of May 1998 at Waterfront Hall in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

  Yoko Ono herself returned to the song multiple times. In 1991, in response to the imminent Gulf War, she organized a new recording involving dozens of musicians under the name the Peace Choir, including Peter Gabriel, Lenny Kravitz, Little Richard, Tom Petty, Iggy Pop, Bonnie Raitt, and her son Sean Ono Lennon, among many others. On the 1st of June 2008, the 39th anniversary of the original recording, Ono released a series of digital remixes through Twisted Records, with a newly recorded vocal by her. The final installment of that series was released on the 18th of February 2009, Ono's birthday. That 2008 release reached number one on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart on the 16th of August 2008.

  Stevie Wonder performed a snippet of the song at Madison Square Garden in 1972 in a joint performance with Lennon and Ono, a detail that places Lennon himself in the room for one of its many later revivals.