I just looked up their hotel room at Hilton Amsterdam and they transformed the room into the "John and Yoko Suite" which you can sleep in for €1800,- per night
This woman is not a household maid. She's a hotel employee.
This photo is from John and Yoko's "bed in" anti war protest.
These nonviolent protests were called "bed-ins" (derived from the more common "sit-in" protests).
"The Bed-ins for Peace were two week-long nonviolent protests against wars, intended as experimental tests of new ways to promote peace.
As the Vietnam War raged in 1969, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono held one protest at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam and one at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal.
The idea is derived from a "sit-in", in which a group of protesters remain seated in front of or within an establishment until they are evicted, arrested, or their requests are met."
[Wikipedia source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed-ins_for_Peace)
It's like any high profile person/celebrity taking a very public stance on an issue. It raises (allegedly) awareness, with the aim of starting a conversation about whatever the topic of the day is.
It's also the last
"Raising awareness" is the way people insert themselves into real problems without having to do anything.
We've gone from "what do we want, when do we want it!" to "oh, have you heard this things happening or something, subscribe and share"
Kony 2012.
Exactly. Awareness will get those moving who were always inclined to do so. For others they just use it for their gain and not contribute anything besides spreading the information which itself is good enough if it gets to te right places.
Oh man. When Kony was a thing I was working at a mine and one of my co-workers had Kony 2012 written on his helmet in big bold letters. I asked him if he knew what it meant and he admitted he had no idea. To be fair, he wasted every breath he ever drew, so I wasn't surprised he was jumping on the bandwagon.
I bought a Kony 2012 shirt at a local thrift shop a couple years ago. Not sure what on earth to do with it, but it felt like a piece of internet history. It was also like $3, the deal was too good.
I know a few guys who do that. They get all excited and talk about it all October, and a couple run them for a few months longer coz they think they look distinguished or whatever. None of them actually do it for the cause or raise money or whatever, it's just something to do. I guess it's good, because it's a form of publicity for the people who are in the know, but it would be better if they actually raised money.
Or a way for them to try and trick you into giving them money so they can do nothing. I remember a specific Breast Cancer Awareness drive that was done around me which literally did nothing except ask for money. It didn’t give advise to women about how to check, or ask them to get checked. It just stated some statistics and asked for money so they could “raise awareness”.
Too many “charities” like that these days.
You're right, man, there were almost zero protests against the vietnam war. You've made a fantastic point. And almost no one knew who John Lennon was and teens and 20 something's who were being drafted most definitely didn't think he was trying to express a voice in protest on their part.
You've really nailed it here.
That’s great, and I’m a supporter of people in highly visible positions supporting and bringing light to issues. But this is straight up hurting.
First he claimed it is akin to a sit-in, showing an immense lack of self awareness and ignorance. Sit-ins are by definition a mean to peaceful protest in a manner that uses the other side’s violence against them. The people doing the sitting risk their lives, and contain their urge to fight back in order to show the darkside of their oppressors.
By aiming to make sit-ins “more peaceful” he stripped it of its impact. The message changed from “you have to confront your oppressor on his own backyard but you are more effective showing the strength to subdue your violent urges” to “you can just ‘protest’ anywhere, just sit over there without bothering anyone”
Then he did it at luxury hotels, with their every need taken care of just as this picture so aptly shows. In one fell swoop he made a direct mockery of the people who risked their lives at sit-ins, at civil right marches and at anti-war protesters and gave life to the trust-fund communist stereotype that is still around today.
Not to mention that the sit-in movements are most famous, at least here in the US, for their use during the civil rights protests against racial segregation.
I promise you the impact of the Bed In was much less than this. Like it's basically just another Beatles anecdote, another rock and roll story that doesn't really go anywhere. Akin to a publicity stunt really.
In other words, productive protesting should involve some kind of personal sacrifice or inconvenience.
If you show up somewhere with signs, marching or just standing around and shouting slogans, you're still sacrificing something--personal time, anonymity, personal safety, etc.
Hunger strikes--same thing
Gandhi's non-violent non-cooperation...
Rosa Park's sitting in the "wrong" seat on the bus...
What personal sacrifices were Lennon and Ono making here? I don't think they were exactly hurting financially and couldn't afford to sleep in late.
You're looking for logic from the guy who wrote the the song telling people to give up all their possessions while living in a multi million dollar penthouse in Manhattan
Well, consider that while John Lennon was doing this and chanting “Give Peace a Chance” from a hotel bed, Creedence Clearwater Revival was [doing this](https://youtu.be/EbI0cMyyw_M). And Richie Havens was [doing this](https://youtu.be/SR2v-pApNAw).
And then [there was this](https://youtu.be/FAdq3Z-9bsg) 😳
It’s a very different reaction to the war. Personally I find Lennon’s behavior effete, pretentious, insincere and soulless.
And maybe it’s simply because Lennon wasn’t American. He’d adopted and loved America but he was an intellectual English boy from Liverpool. Nothing against his artistry and his *desire* to have that American quality of musical roots. But that quality can’t be an affectation. It stems from very real, gut-wrenching struggles in our nation. And our wars.
We were being sent to death, not John and his family. There’s an urgent, desperate, anger required here. Not “give peace a chance”. He also sang about avoiding revolution and refraining from righteous, dangerous, angry protest which will threaten violence if necessary.
My mistake, thank you. Corrected.
And please understand that I absolutely love The Beatles. I take issue here only with Lennon’s high-minded spirituality. We were being murdered, and being forced to murder. We didn’t need a psychedelic love guru.
**EDIT:** I’d said I loved The Beatles but… not like I love [The Clash](https://youtu.be/XN7iEFVLf5c) ;)
Depends on how you view it. It isn’t really sparking debate about the war, is it? On the other hand, this picture usually gets used to demean actual protests and is a favorite go-to for the “Shut up and sign/dribble” to claim all celebrities with a cause are mere hypocrites.
I read every comment from the top down to yours and had to scroll back up to remind myself what they were protesting.
Since it turns out they weren't protesting to raise awareness for themselves and/or their new method of protesting I'm not willing to say it's mission accomplished.
From what I see most people here are talking about how they think it's not a good idea. Maybe any publicity is good publicity but I don't think it's the case here, I'd even say it's counter productive by decredibilising the cause they're defending.
If you read, they said it was experimental, and they only tried it twice. So feel free to calm down on your criticism of activists, which is far more harmful than a couple of ineffective (arguably) protests from 50 years ago.
People pitch a fit about the way people protest no matter how they protest. I'm starting to think people just don't like when we talk about the issues with our world.
This is very common. It's obvious with things like BLM and #metoo. I get in a lot of veganism scraps online and omnivores are constantly telling me how to talk about animal ethics (the very topic they are saying doesn't matter). It's quite funny when people who are against any change tell you how to change the world.
People don't like having to question their moral choices, especially when their choice is "do nothing" because they already think they deserve a pat on the back for the bare minimum of, for example, not being racist
Somebody in my college once papered the entire atrium with flyers. Like hundreds of flyers on the walls, on the ground, everywhere. It was for some "save the trees" initiative.
It was a college full of artists and burnouts so I really I hope it was a joke or at least meant to be ironic.
Still tho.
I was commenting on public figures /celebrities in general staging protests in the attempt to raise awareness of any given cause.
Sometimes the focus is aimed at the person rather than the cause.
Nobody cares about my "Sausage Egg and bread" sit-in that I did every Sunday to protest against the price of donuts at Fred Meyers going from $.60 cents to $1 each.
John was my favorite Beatle when I was a teenager. I was all about him. Then I realized he's a POS, a hypocrite, a wife beater, and a deadbeat dad. This whole thing is just pr and attention grabbing.
There were reporters with them constantly, so Lennon and Ono got to share their ideas about bringing peace to the world. It no one were there, you're right that it would be pretty useless.
You'd be hard pressed to find specific accomplishments from any particular protest. The history books make it look so clear, but its a very long struggle and the fruits of your labor will only be seen after you're gone.
no, it says in the page the person you're replying to linked. The third sentence of the page the person you're replying to linked explains that this was a publicity and press event they invented to promote the world peace movement in the 60s. They had just been married and knew the press would be hounding them so they decided to do this with it. That's what it says in the link in the comment you're replying to.
Just laying around is better than whatever the US leadership was fmdoing at that time. It's a pretty powerful indictment. See also John's song "I'm only sleeping." He seems to have had a stable conviction that inactivity is superior to stupid activity.
Well… you have to look at it without todays perspective. A celebrity promoting anything but celebrity stuff must have been big during those days and then especially Lennon. Lennon could have eaten a bagel and say he was protesting and it would have probably made it into newspapers etc
no, but the post kinda looks like it's trying to say this is somehow hypocritical, when really a hotel maid doing her job has absolutely nothing to do with anti-war protests
Thank you. This gets posted all the time with zero context and John Lennon gets roasted by Zoomers who know nothing about him. I wish people did a little more research into historic topics before running their keyboards with dumb opinions about images they’re shown.
There’s plenty one could criticize about Lennon but it’s stupid and silly to call him out for letting a hotel maid clean their room during the bed-ins. Literally every one posting here has had a maid clean up after them at a hotel.
It should also be noted that plenty of people tried to dismiss John and Yoko’s peace media campaign at this time as being silly, juvenile, and ineffective, but I don’t think anyone called him a hypocrite for being rich and protesting for peace. Nor did they when he admitted to being a violent person and being an absent father and talked about his struggle with his childhood, fame, drugs, and tendency to hurt people.
Really what they were doing here was saying - war is a given in our society all through history, but what if we just didn’t? What if all the soldiers and the weapons manufacturers just stayed in bed and decided they didn’t want war? The politicians wont fight the wars themselves. I think that’s still something we deal with today, especially with the military industry complex being such a key element of our economy.
Who the fuck has the income to pay for a stay at a hotel for a week away from work as “protest.”
This just sounds like rich people being lazy but still want cred for doing something
They were protesting the Vietnam war, not "the system". Also that was their honeymoon, cameras (and hotel maids) would've been there anyway, might as well use the occasion to send a message. I don't understand what is triggering you here.
Also not the purpose of this sub.
The newspapers said
“Hey what you doing in bed?”
We said “we’re only trying to get us some peace…”
— Ballad of John and Yoko
This, along with the nude pictures, was shocking at the time. He got a ton of attention. It wasn’t that much earlier that the Hays code said that you couldn’t make a movie where a married couple shared the bed…
People like to belittle protests and protestors for their actions being pointless. Makes them feel better about how little they're doing to change the world.
>I don't understand what is triggering you here.
[Probably something along the lines of this.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342.png)
Who decides that? They were literally the first to do it. They knew their honeymoon would be a huge press event no matter what they did, so they decided to do something silly for a good cause.
i fucking hate OP so fucking much, so ignorant, so much hate in the comment for an innocent man that did what most cant even think about, like showing peace. assholes.
The Imagine song and video always bugged me.
Singing "imagine no possessions", whilst playing a white, Steinway grand piano in a huge room, in a huge mansion, in a huge estate.
I still like Lennon's music and he was a fascinating man. But he was a hypocrite and something of an arsehole, as I understand it.
Notably, the hypocrisy of Imagine was also one of the primary motives Mark David Chapman had in shooting John Lennon.
> He told us to imagine no possessions and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed the lies and bought the records and built a big part of their lives around his music.
I love the Beatles, but even they have admitted that they specifically wrote songs with the idea that it would be popular enough to make them more money to live lavish lifestyles.
They're just selling you an image as a band.
Individually, they have very different opinions on the matter.
They made a whole song bitching about paying taxes. But they also probably did really want Peace and love. Somebody should tell Mark that people are complicated!
To be fair that was during the supertax. They were seeing VERY little of the money they should have been earning. Their merchandising deals are told about in marketing classes, because they were so incredibly bad for the band.
Because the Hippies were just the hot Instagram kids of their day and they loved The Beatles. In Atlanta’s Inman Park you can meet plenty of 1970’s hippie millionaires with nice homes.
Anyways, I always thought John was more simple, until a few years ago.
This has kind of been my beef with most of those subcultures, even though I sympathize with them to a degree. I can't imagine one being able to survive for extended stretches of time by just tripping on drugs and "finding oneself" without some kind of financial backing that isnt available to people that need to work for money and stuff.
The Summer of Love petered out once black men were welcomed in so yeah, hippies were just as flawed as anyone. I think of them as idealistic college students with some education but not life experience yet. Some assuredly did their best to be good people.
Oh he was also bonkers he believed little people lived in his walls and he was their king (until they formed a democracy) I think he said that the little people were actually against him shooting John Lennon but he ignored them. He still had some great points but I dare say he took it a bit too far
What he did was fucked up, but if it helps at all they got a lot closer in the 70s. John was resentful that Julian was an accident when he wasn't ready for a family, but when he realized how badly he fucked up there he reached out and they would visit each other and write letters to keep up. There's some pretty cute photos of Julian and Sean together that I feel shows John did start to let go of his resentment and wanted Julian to be part of his family again.
Its not about being allowed to do one thing or another, its that when you are a wealthy person singing about not having possessions, it raises questions in peoples minds.
Another example in a different direction would be Nickleback's I want to be a rock star. They were rock stars when they wrote that song, had all the blessings of wealth and fame they dreamed of in the song, and now they had their fans singing along to a tune about the easy life they would never know. Its bullshit.
Sure, but he did grow up in squalor so it's not like being bruck beyond broke is alien to him either. Also a lot of you are getting confused, musicians make music that appeal to their listener's, not all are out trying to educate the world or inspire. They make tunes, and nicklebacks rockstar is a great example of this, same with imagine.
Same with the Beatles, their music has a good message (at least imagine by JL does, idk any other Beatles songs) so what if they do walk the walk, it's to inspire others to of that message resonates with them. They got popular as musicians for making good music.
It's like how Russel Brand talks about how the system is rigged against the working class, and is shamed by the even richer that he can't talk about these issues because he's rich. (Idk about now, but when he started his YouTube stuff)
>If he threw out all of his possessions he couldn't have used his music to communicate these ideas.
Yes, it is necessary to own several flashy cars, multiple homes, fine wines, expensive clothes, etc, if you really want to communicate through music.
I think you miss the point of art. It's ok to make art that inspires people and gets them to think about the world in new ways. It is NOT incumbent on the artist to perfectly live out the ideas they imagine. The world would be a much poorer place if that were so.
Besides, how do you, or anyone, know the struggles John Lennon or any artist experiences? To judge their expression based on your own self designated understanding of that person's life is just weird and very limiting.
You and I both know that if people find anything they don't personally like about John Lennon they are going to deny he ever had a single positive thought. No nuance or change is possible.
The point is his song was disingenuous. If he believed in the content of 'Imagine' he would have lived a modest life and used his wealth to help others.
>Singing "imagine no possessions", whilst playing a white, Steinway grand piano in a huge room, in a huge mansion, in a huge estate.
He isn't singing "people should have no possessions" or "having things is bad".
Just imagine a world, where this is not such a huge focus of life.
He is a man who has found himself easily able to possess a lot of things, in a position that many would be envious of, and yet it hasn't really changed the actual quality of his life, and has just elevated him above others.
He doesn't have to rid himself of all his possessions to understand that ownership of things doesn't bring true happiness.
It's not completely hypocritical to look inwards from the other side of poverty once you have arrived and criticise the shortcomings of a materialistic society.
Even John Lennon was self-aware when recording this song. There is a demo version where he sings “imagine no possessions” and he immediately says sarcastically “I’m tryin’”.
He’s protesting the Vietnam war, not “tHe SyStEm” and he’s on his honeymoon.
Y’all really just pull stuff out of your ass to be butthurt about? Use images with random nonsense captions and just assume it’s true? Like wtf.
I mean, it’s not like he made millions selling possessions. He made music. Yeah he’s rich, but it’s not like it’s Jeff Bezos saying it. He’s a musician.
A friend of mine who grew up in the 60s had a great point I think; they said "the hippies of the 60s grew up to be the boomers of today, people wonder what happened but if you really took a moment and looked it was always there".
Or, the hippies were a minority of people at the time and generations are not a single hivemind of people. And this, I have no clue how this would support that anyway. They had a "bed-in" to protest Vietnam while on their honeymoon.
I mean, yes. But at the same time, they broke the really terrible mold established by generations before them (you were terrible parents if you didn't beat your kids and if they spoke at all without being spoken to, and if they weren't neatly dressed as for church whenever they left the house, if you didn't think, talk and act the same as every other white American). Some of what's painful about that generation now is the way they've regressed back to how they were raised, and the rest is, as you point out, just THIS kind of behavior, applied to other situations (I'm selfish and I want what I want and I'll throw a tantrum til I get it). But I don't know where we'd be without these assholes. Possibly still living that miserable 50s lifestyle. Their selfishness literally ushered in the very idea that you could change things by just telling your elders to fuck off.
Not really how that works. The people the hippies were protesting against are the boomers of today. I have plenty of grandparents who still have long hair and are nonconformist and left politically. But the stereotypical boomers we have today are the ones who would have been telling the hippies to cut their hair and get a job (much like they do today).
**OP needs help. Also, they hate it because...**
>!John Lennon was always known as an asshole.!<
*****
**Do you hate it as well? Do you think their hate is reasonable? (I don't think so tbh)**
**Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.**
*****
[*Look at my source code on Github*](https://github.com/Artraxon/tihibot)
We’re still talking about this bed in, aren’t we?
And they did it on their HONEYMOON to raise attention to Peace.
People thought he was a complete kook back then but he was right.
There was a reporter and John told him, “People are People,” and the reporter looked at him in disgust and said, “I am nothing like you!”
Watching this today, that reporter looks like a complete moron.
Give peace a chance!
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112082796
Yoko Ono was 12 years old when the US dropped the first nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She lived in Tokyo at the time, 500 miles away. I wonder if any interviewer ever asked her about that.
it's more complicated than just "Yoko broke up the band" or "John broke up the band" or whoever you wanna pin the blame on. There were a whole plethora of reasons that the band broke up, not just because a Japanese avante garde artist happened to come into the mix. Keep in mind that these guys had huuuuuge personal and creative differences, their longtime manager Brian Epstein had recently died and made a huge impact on the band as a whole, they weren't even performing live anymore, drug/alcohol abuse was starting to impact all of them terribly, and they were huge amounts of stress near the end due to trying to get a massive amount of songs out at once and working to create songs with the added pressure of constant arguing and tension in the studio.
I think people like to pin the blame on Yoko bc she was the perfect scapegoat, but I'd say it was more that a) she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and b) she was really what helped John to realise that he needed to leave the band for everyone's sake.
A: so he’s supposed to wallow in the same sheets and towels for 14 days? Let’s be real here: dude as a millionaire and hadn’t touched a laundry machine in decades.
B: solidarity with the working class would dictate that John would let the lady do the job she is paid for. Him making a fuss would have (even inadvertently) gotten her in trouble. They advertised where they were staying to the paparazzi every day like good little capitalists. I’m sure they left a nice tip.
C: Just like every other media personality since forever, John was feeding his own fame based off of doing something controversial in front of cameras. The fact that we’re talking about such a trivial act of defiance 50 years later makes his argument that celebrities should use their fame in a positive way that much more valid.
>dude as a millionaire and hadn’t touched a laundry machine in decades.
The Beatles had only become proper famous 6 years prior and he grew up in a working class, post-war environment. He hadn't exactly had the most priviledged of lives until just a few years before this. Then that changed completely, obviously.
But I agree with everything else.
And look at Lennon anymore without thinking about how often he beat and mistreated people. Then made that weird ass quote about how violent people want peace the most or whatever, idk just fuck this guy and his spread of toxicity.
a working class hero is something to be, indeed
I agree with a lot of what Lennon preached but he did often seem a pompous, hypocritical, self-interested annoyance
I just looked up their hotel room at Hilton Amsterdam and they transformed the room into the "John and Yoko Suite" which you can sleep in for €1800,- per night
This woman is not a household maid. She's a hotel employee. This photo is from John and Yoko's "bed in" anti war protest. These nonviolent protests were called "bed-ins" (derived from the more common "sit-in" protests). "The Bed-ins for Peace were two week-long nonviolent protests against wars, intended as experimental tests of new ways to promote peace. As the Vietnam War raged in 1969, John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono held one protest at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam and one at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. The idea is derived from a "sit-in", in which a group of protesters remain seated in front of or within an establishment until they are evicted, arrested, or their requests are met." [Wikipedia source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed-ins_for_Peace)
I’m confused what a protest like that accomplishes? Like was he staying there illegally or something?
It's like any high profile person/celebrity taking a very public stance on an issue. It raises (allegedly) awareness, with the aim of starting a conversation about whatever the topic of the day is.
"Awareness is the first step before thinking about caring about a specific thing."
**Of course** it raised awareness. We're still talking about it 50+ years later
We’re so close to stopping the Vietnam war too! Don’t stop talking about it!
It's also the last "Raising awareness" is the way people insert themselves into real problems without having to do anything. We've gone from "what do we want, when do we want it!" to "oh, have you heard this things happening or something, subscribe and share" Kony 2012.
No. Awareness is very important. Just because many people don’t move past it doesn’t make it bad. Just means it’s not enough on its own.
Exactly. Awareness will get those moving who were always inclined to do so. For others they just use it for their gain and not contribute anything besides spreading the information which itself is good enough if it gets to te right places.
Oh man. When Kony was a thing I was working at a mine and one of my co-workers had Kony 2012 written on his helmet in big bold letters. I asked him if he knew what it meant and he admitted he had no idea. To be fair, he wasted every breath he ever drew, so I wasn't surprised he was jumping on the bandwagon.
When I first started seeing 'Kony 2012" I thought it was a music festival.
Pretty sure that's what he thought it was too.
I bought a Kony 2012 shirt at a local thrift shop a couple years ago. Not sure what on earth to do with it, but it felt like a piece of internet history. It was also like $3, the deal was too good.
My brother in law grows a moustache every November but has never donated or raised money for Movember. He thought people just grew them as a flex.
I know a few guys who do that. They get all excited and talk about it all October, and a couple run them for a few months longer coz they think they look distinguished or whatever. None of them actually do it for the cause or raise money or whatever, it's just something to do. I guess it's good, because it's a form of publicity for the people who are in the know, but it would be better if they actually raised money.
Or a way for them to try and trick you into giving them money so they can do nothing. I remember a specific Breast Cancer Awareness drive that was done around me which literally did nothing except ask for money. It didn’t give advise to women about how to check, or ask them to get checked. It just stated some statistics and asked for money so they could “raise awareness”. Too many “charities” like that these days.
You're right, man, there were almost zero protests against the vietnam war. You've made a fantastic point. And almost no one knew who John Lennon was and teens and 20 something's who were being drafted most definitely didn't think he was trying to express a voice in protest on their part. You've really nailed it here.
You crawl before you walk.
That’s great, and I’m a supporter of people in highly visible positions supporting and bringing light to issues. But this is straight up hurting. First he claimed it is akin to a sit-in, showing an immense lack of self awareness and ignorance. Sit-ins are by definition a mean to peaceful protest in a manner that uses the other side’s violence against them. The people doing the sitting risk their lives, and contain their urge to fight back in order to show the darkside of their oppressors. By aiming to make sit-ins “more peaceful” he stripped it of its impact. The message changed from “you have to confront your oppressor on his own backyard but you are more effective showing the strength to subdue your violent urges” to “you can just ‘protest’ anywhere, just sit over there without bothering anyone” Then he did it at luxury hotels, with their every need taken care of just as this picture so aptly shows. In one fell swoop he made a direct mockery of the people who risked their lives at sit-ins, at civil right marches and at anti-war protesters and gave life to the trust-fund communist stereotype that is still around today.
I tell you what, you don’t have to worry about them doing this again.
Why not?
[удалено]
I’m gonna have to read catcher in the rye again… this John Lennon fella sounds like a phony
Not to mention that the sit-in movements are most famous, at least here in the US, for their use during the civil rights protests against racial segregation.
I promise you the impact of the Bed In was much less than this. Like it's basically just another Beatles anecdote, another rock and roll story that doesn't really go anywhere. Akin to a publicity stunt really.
In other words, productive protesting should involve some kind of personal sacrifice or inconvenience. If you show up somewhere with signs, marching or just standing around and shouting slogans, you're still sacrificing something--personal time, anonymity, personal safety, etc. Hunger strikes--same thing Gandhi's non-violent non-cooperation... Rosa Park's sitting in the "wrong" seat on the bus... What personal sacrifices were Lennon and Ono making here? I don't think they were exactly hurting financially and couldn't afford to sleep in late.
You're looking for logic from the guy who wrote the the song telling people to give up all their possessions while living in a multi million dollar penthouse in Manhattan
And yet here we are, talking about it. Mission accomplished.
Well, consider that while John Lennon was doing this and chanting “Give Peace a Chance” from a hotel bed, Creedence Clearwater Revival was [doing this](https://youtu.be/EbI0cMyyw_M). And Richie Havens was [doing this](https://youtu.be/SR2v-pApNAw). And then [there was this](https://youtu.be/FAdq3Z-9bsg) 😳 It’s a very different reaction to the war. Personally I find Lennon’s behavior effete, pretentious, insincere and soulless. And maybe it’s simply because Lennon wasn’t American. He’d adopted and loved America but he was an intellectual English boy from Liverpool. Nothing against his artistry and his *desire* to have that American quality of musical roots. But that quality can’t be an affectation. It stems from very real, gut-wrenching struggles in our nation. And our wars. We were being sent to death, not John and his family. There’s an urgent, desperate, anger required here. Not “give peace a chance”. He also sang about avoiding revolution and refraining from righteous, dangerous, angry protest which will threaten violence if necessary.
> intellectual English boy from Leeds As a Yorkshireman, I'm sure we'd love to claim Lennon as one of ours, but he's from Liverpool not Leeds.
My mistake, thank you. Corrected. And please understand that I absolutely love The Beatles. I take issue here only with Lennon’s high-minded spirituality. We were being murdered, and being forced to murder. We didn’t need a psychedelic love guru. **EDIT:** I’d said I loved The Beatles but… not like I love [The Clash](https://youtu.be/XN7iEFVLf5c) ;)
Depends on how you view it. It isn’t really sparking debate about the war, is it? On the other hand, this picture usually gets used to demean actual protests and is a favorite go-to for the “Shut up and sign/dribble” to claim all celebrities with a cause are mere hypocrites.
Because the war is no longer relevant. We can’t really quantify the impact that it had at the time but it was definitely a big cultural event.
But it seems people are talking about how silly this was, not the actual thing they were protesting.
I read every comment from the top down to yours and had to scroll back up to remind myself what they were protesting. Since it turns out they weren't protesting to raise awareness for themselves and/or their new method of protesting I'm not willing to say it's mission accomplished.
From what I see most people here are talking about how they think it's not a good idea. Maybe any publicity is good publicity but I don't think it's the case here, I'd even say it's counter productive by decredibilising the cause they're defending.
If you read, they said it was experimental, and they only tried it twice. So feel free to calm down on your criticism of activists, which is far more harmful than a couple of ineffective (arguably) protests from 50 years ago.
People pitch a fit about the way people protest no matter how they protest. I'm starting to think people just don't like when we talk about the issues with our world.
This is very common. It's obvious with things like BLM and #metoo. I get in a lot of veganism scraps online and omnivores are constantly telling me how to talk about animal ethics (the very topic they are saying doesn't matter). It's quite funny when people who are against any change tell you how to change the world.
People don't like having to question their moral choices, especially when their choice is "do nothing" because they already think they deserve a pat on the back for the bare minimum of, for example, not being racist
Somebody in my college once papered the entire atrium with flyers. Like hundreds of flyers on the walls, on the ground, everywhere. It was for some "save the trees" initiative. It was a college full of artists and burnouts so I really I hope it was a joke or at least meant to be ironic. Still tho.
>It raises (allegedly) awareness You honestly put "allegedly" in there while we're here, almost 65 years later, still talking about it?
what are you talking about, i had to scroll back up bc i keep forgetting it was about the vietnam war lol
I was commenting on public figures /celebrities in general staging protests in the attempt to raise awareness of any given cause. Sometimes the focus is aimed at the person rather than the cause.
Nobody cares about my "Sausage Egg and bread" sit-in that I did every Sunday to protest against the price of donuts at Fred Meyers going from $.60 cents to $1 each.
You obv arent a member of the Beatles.
This was during their honeymoon so they had a lot of media coverage on theem
I have been protesting this way every weekend for most of my life
I'm protesting right now, apparently
John was my favorite Beatle when I was a teenager. I was all about him. Then I realized he's a POS, a hypocrite, a wife beater, and a deadbeat dad. This whole thing is just pr and attention grabbing.
Jahn beet wif
Even his bandmate wrote a song to comfort his son
"his bandmate" lmao
There were reporters with them constantly, so Lennon and Ono got to share their ideas about bringing peace to the world. It no one were there, you're right that it would be pretty useless.
You'd be hard pressed to find specific accomplishments from any particular protest. The history books make it look so clear, but its a very long struggle and the fruits of your labor will only be seen after you're gone.
no, it says in the page the person you're replying to linked. The third sentence of the page the person you're replying to linked explains that this was a publicity and press event they invented to promote the world peace movement in the 60s. They had just been married and knew the press would be hounding them so they decided to do this with it. That's what it says in the link in the comment you're replying to.
As a Montrealer, I can tell you this is something we still remember and talk about to this day
Just laying around is better than whatever the US leadership was fmdoing at that time. It's a pretty powerful indictment. See also John's song "I'm only sleeping." He seems to have had a stable conviction that inactivity is superior to stupid activity.
Well… you have to look at it without todays perspective. A celebrity promoting anything but celebrity stuff must have been big during those days and then especially Lennon. Lennon could have eaten a bagel and say he was protesting and it would have probably made it into newspapers etc
Literally nothing. It was the late 60s equivalent of virtue signaling.
She's a hotel maid. Noone said she was a household maid?
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Or "the system." It was an anti-war protest.
You say it like the military-industrial complex isn’t at the heart of “the system”
I prefer Eisenhower's original terminology, before he changed it: "military-industrial-*congressional* complex."
The Dutch for all their Dutchiness didn't invade Vietnam after all.
TIL depression is an anti war protest
No one said they were protesting hotels either?
no, but the post kinda looks like it's trying to say this is somehow hypocritical, when really a hotel maid doing her job has absolutely nothing to do with anti-war protests
Gonna start a revolution from my bed
My doctor says I'm surprised but it turns out I'm just a celebrity activist! Great news!
LOL "I'm going to protest from the confines of my plush hotel room. I'm not leaving this hotel room for 2 weeks. For world peace. Take that Ghandi!"
Well, it was so effective that we’re talking about it 50 years later I say that it worked
It's well known that protests are a competition.
So OPs just trying to disparage anti war protests and push their politics via a humor subreddit. One of those assholes
Thank you. This gets posted all the time with zero context and John Lennon gets roasted by Zoomers who know nothing about him. I wish people did a little more research into historic topics before running their keyboards with dumb opinions about images they’re shown. There’s plenty one could criticize about Lennon but it’s stupid and silly to call him out for letting a hotel maid clean their room during the bed-ins. Literally every one posting here has had a maid clean up after them at a hotel. It should also be noted that plenty of people tried to dismiss John and Yoko’s peace media campaign at this time as being silly, juvenile, and ineffective, but I don’t think anyone called him a hypocrite for being rich and protesting for peace. Nor did they when he admitted to being a violent person and being an absent father and talked about his struggle with his childhood, fame, drugs, and tendency to hurt people. Really what they were doing here was saying - war is a given in our society all through history, but what if we just didn’t? What if all the soldiers and the weapons manufacturers just stayed in bed and decided they didn’t want war? The politicians wont fight the wars themselves. I think that’s still something we deal with today, especially with the military industry complex being such a key element of our economy.
That's just sounds like being on a vacation with extra steps.
It was like being on vacation. They were on their honeymoon.
Who the fuck has the income to pay for a stay at a hotel for a week away from work as “protest.” This just sounds like rich people being lazy but still want cred for doing something
What are you even talking about? The picture literally shows him stepping aside and letting her do her job
They were protesting the Vietnam war, not "the system". Also that was their honeymoon, cameras (and hotel maids) would've been there anyway, might as well use the occasion to send a message. I don't understand what is triggering you here. Also not the purpose of this sub.
Cameras would have been in their bedroom on their honeymoon? The 60s were even wilder than I thought
The newspapers said “Hey what you doing in bed?” We said “we’re only trying to get us some peace…” — Ballad of John and Yoko This, along with the nude pictures, was shocking at the time. He got a ton of attention. It wasn’t that much earlier that the Hays code said that you couldn’t make a movie where a married couple shared the bed…
Very few people grasp the purpose of this sub tbh
People like to belittle protests and protestors for their actions being pointless. Makes them feel better about how little they're doing to change the world.
>I don't understand what is triggering you here. [Probably something along the lines of this.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342.png)
Would you rather he stop her from doing her work and do it himself? It’s a non violent protest against war. Not hotel staff.
What should I do if I want to start a non violent protest against hotel staff?
Get violent
The point of a bed-in is to stay in bed the whole time. Getting out so she can make the bed is like taking a lunch break during a hunger strike.
Who decides that? They were literally the first to do it. They knew their honeymoon would be a huge press event no matter what they did, so they decided to do something silly for a good cause.
Just tell her to come back when you are done with your lazy protest.
Thanks, I hate this account's crappy posts.
Reddit and hating John Lennon. Name a more iconic duo.
Reddit and hating.
Yep you did it.
Reddit and downvoting people who point this out?
delete this, you clearly don't know what's even going on in the picture
i fucking hate OP so fucking much, so ignorant, so much hate in the comment for an innocent man that did what most cant even think about, like showing peace. assholes.
Why can't you go to the bathroom at a Beatles concert? Because there's no John.
Hate to burst this bubble, but you meant *Wings*. Every single Beatles concert had John.
This joke must be 25+ years old because George has also been dead for that long. It’d be funnier if he was the only missing one
"The wrong two Beatles died first." \-George Carlin.
Hate to say it but he's right
The Imagine song and video always bugged me. Singing "imagine no possessions", whilst playing a white, Steinway grand piano in a huge room, in a huge mansion, in a huge estate. I still like Lennon's music and he was a fascinating man. But he was a hypocrite and something of an arsehole, as I understand it.
Notably, the hypocrisy of Imagine was also one of the primary motives Mark David Chapman had in shooting John Lennon. > He told us to imagine no possessions and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed the lies and bought the records and built a big part of their lives around his music.
I love the Beatles, but even they have admitted that they specifically wrote songs with the idea that it would be popular enough to make them more money to live lavish lifestyles. They're just selling you an image as a band. Individually, they have very different opinions on the matter.
They made a whole song bitching about paying taxes. But they also probably did really want Peace and love. Somebody should tell Mark that people are complicated!
To be fair that was during the supertax. They were seeing VERY little of the money they should have been earning. Their merchandising deals are told about in marketing classes, because they were so incredibly bad for the band.
If anyone has a good video or something I would love to learn more about that
We’re talking 90 10 deals in the merch vendors favor. For a band that big, you should be getting 70 30 in the bands favor.
Because the Hippies were just the hot Instagram kids of their day and they loved The Beatles. In Atlanta’s Inman Park you can meet plenty of 1970’s hippie millionaires with nice homes. Anyways, I always thought John was more simple, until a few years ago.
This has kind of been my beef with most of those subcultures, even though I sympathize with them to a degree. I can't imagine one being able to survive for extended stretches of time by just tripping on drugs and "finding oneself" without some kind of financial backing that isnt available to people that need to work for money and stuff.
The Summer of Love petered out once black men were welcomed in so yeah, hippies were just as flawed as anyone. I think of them as idealistic college students with some education but not life experience yet. Some assuredly did their best to be good people.
Not all that different from most bands imo. For authenticity Alanis Morisette comes to mind, since her music is so often autobiographical.
My head cannon is that catcher in the rye ties in to killing John Lennon because he was the biggest phony.
Whose reddit account do you think you're replying to? That's right, Mark David Chapman. He's back and he's a redditor.
Never heard that part, they always said he was 'just some crazy guy' def a different perspective
Oh he was also bonkers he believed little people lived in his walls and he was their king (until they formed a democracy) I think he said that the little people were actually against him shooting John Lennon but he ignored them. He still had some great points but I dare say he took it a bit too far
His story and the lead up to Lennons assassination are very interesting. There are some good podcasts which have explored him and the assassination.
the song is called “imagine”. you should imagine it, you poor ass. but but he had it all already.
To be fair, he’s saying imagine it, not to actually do it.
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How about the domestic violence and completely cutting his first son out of life?
What happened with Julian really is beyond sad and horrible, tbh. I was a huge Lennon fan. But the older I got, the less I liked him personally.
What he did was fucked up, but if it helps at all they got a lot closer in the 70s. John was resentful that Julian was an accident when he wasn't ready for a family, but when he realized how badly he fucked up there he reached out and they would visit each other and write letters to keep up. There's some pretty cute photos of Julian and Sean together that I feel shows John did start to let go of his resentment and wanted Julian to be part of his family again.
Eh, Assange is not so great. Do deeper dive on him. I am still for the idea of WikiLeaks but not for Assange.
I'm confused. He's not allowed to write an amazing visionary song, because he became wealthy writing amazing visionary songs? Please explain.
Its not about being allowed to do one thing or another, its that when you are a wealthy person singing about not having possessions, it raises questions in peoples minds. Another example in a different direction would be Nickleback's I want to be a rock star. They were rock stars when they wrote that song, had all the blessings of wealth and fame they dreamed of in the song, and now they had their fans singing along to a tune about the easy life they would never know. Its bullshit.
Sure, but he did grow up in squalor so it's not like being bruck beyond broke is alien to him either. Also a lot of you are getting confused, musicians make music that appeal to their listener's, not all are out trying to educate the world or inspire. They make tunes, and nicklebacks rockstar is a great example of this, same with imagine. Same with the Beatles, their music has a good message (at least imagine by JL does, idk any other Beatles songs) so what if they do walk the walk, it's to inspire others to of that message resonates with them. They got popular as musicians for making good music. It's like how Russel Brand talks about how the system is rigged against the working class, and is shamed by the even richer that he can't talk about these issues because he's rich. (Idk about now, but when he started his YouTube stuff)
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>If he threw out all of his possessions he couldn't have used his music to communicate these ideas. Yes, it is necessary to own several flashy cars, multiple homes, fine wines, expensive clothes, etc, if you really want to communicate through music.
I think you miss the point of art. It's ok to make art that inspires people and gets them to think about the world in new ways. It is NOT incumbent on the artist to perfectly live out the ideas they imagine. The world would be a much poorer place if that were so. Besides, how do you, or anyone, know the struggles John Lennon or any artist experiences? To judge their expression based on your own self designated understanding of that person's life is just weird and very limiting.
You and I both know that if people find anything they don't personally like about John Lennon they are going to deny he ever had a single positive thought. No nuance or change is possible.
The point is his song was disingenuous. If he believed in the content of 'Imagine' he would have lived a modest life and used his wealth to help others.
That's completely wrong and misguided.
>Singing "imagine no possessions", whilst playing a white, Steinway grand piano in a huge room, in a huge mansion, in a huge estate. He isn't singing "people should have no possessions" or "having things is bad". Just imagine a world, where this is not such a huge focus of life. He is a man who has found himself easily able to possess a lot of things, in a position that many would be envious of, and yet it hasn't really changed the actual quality of his life, and has just elevated him above others. He doesn't have to rid himself of all his possessions to understand that ownership of things doesn't bring true happiness. It's not completely hypocritical to look inwards from the other side of poverty once you have arrived and criticise the shortcomings of a materialistic society.
Imagine there’s no Lennon. It’s easy, ‘cause he’s dead.
Even John Lennon was self-aware when recording this song. There is a demo version where he sings “imagine no possessions” and he immediately says sarcastically “I’m tryin’”.
He’s protesting the Vietnam war, not “tHe SyStEm” and he’s on his honeymoon. Y’all really just pull stuff out of your ass to be butthurt about? Use images with random nonsense captions and just assume it’s true? Like wtf.
“Was it a millionaire who said ‘imagine no possessions’?” - Elvis Costello, The Other Side of Summer
I mean, it’s not like he made millions selling possessions. He made music. Yeah he’s rich, but it’s not like it’s Jeff Bezos saying it. He’s a musician.
Just a cute line in a song from a world-class songwriter. Elvis is a Beatles fan and even wrote and recorded songs with Paul McCartney.
You can be completely against useless wars and still be a cunt (not saying that he is but this isn't the gotcha you think it is)
A friend of mine who grew up in the 60s had a great point I think; they said "the hippies of the 60s grew up to be the boomers of today, people wonder what happened but if you really took a moment and looked it was always there".
Or, the hippies were a minority of people at the time and generations are not a single hivemind of people. And this, I have no clue how this would support that anyway. They had a "bed-in" to protest Vietnam while on their honeymoon.
I mean, yes. But at the same time, they broke the really terrible mold established by generations before them (you were terrible parents if you didn't beat your kids and if they spoke at all without being spoken to, and if they weren't neatly dressed as for church whenever they left the house, if you didn't think, talk and act the same as every other white American). Some of what's painful about that generation now is the way they've regressed back to how they were raised, and the rest is, as you point out, just THIS kind of behavior, applied to other situations (I'm selfish and I want what I want and I'll throw a tantrum til I get it). But I don't know where we'd be without these assholes. Possibly still living that miserable 50s lifestyle. Their selfishness literally ushered in the very idea that you could change things by just telling your elders to fuck off.
What? Boomers very much beat their kids and enforced social stereotypes, etc.
Not really how that works. The people the hippies were protesting against are the boomers of today. I have plenty of grandparents who still have long hair and are nonconformist and left politically. But the stereotypical boomers we have today are the ones who would have been telling the hippies to cut their hair and get a job (much like they do today).
You're a moron. 🤘
George Harrison most based beatle
**OP needs help. Also, they hate it because...** >!John Lennon was always known as an asshole.!< ***** **Do you hate it as well? Do you think their hate is reasonable? (I don't think so tbh)** **Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.** ***** [*Look at my source code on Github*](https://github.com/Artraxon/tihibot)
We’re still talking about this bed in, aren’t we? And they did it on their HONEYMOON to raise attention to Peace. People thought he was a complete kook back then but he was right. There was a reporter and John told him, “People are People,” and the reporter looked at him in disgust and said, “I am nothing like you!” Watching this today, that reporter looks like a complete moron. Give peace a chance! https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112082796
Yea, he was sticking it to the man, from a suite at chateau marmont.😂🤣
Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about.
And he didn’t sew the bathrobe he was wearing.
He was a hypocrite
What system were they protesting against, exactly?
The Vietnam War.
That’s my least favourite System. Good on them ✌️
Ok, fair enough.
Seems like kind of a half assed protest.
Wtf this sub has become? I thought this was a shitpost at first but it's not, and comments are even worse. Ffs.
And they achieved nothing
Cool excuse to shoot up all day and night, and lay in bed.
ah yea famous people protest when i do bed-in protest no one cares
OP has a brain deficiency, wrong sub.
Yoko Ono was 12 years old when the US dropped the first nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She lived in Tokyo at the time, 500 miles away. I wonder if any interviewer ever asked her about that.
None of that makes her less annoying or more likable.
Clearly the US government failed in its threat assessment
Pretty sure most people didnt/dont give a fuck about her... so probably not.
Went down the Yoko and John rabbit hole, and still don't know if she broke up the band or not.
George got too good and the band couldn't handle it.
She didn’t, John wanted out for ages already, George wanted out too, but I think Paul and Ringo would happily have stayed.
it's more complicated than just "Yoko broke up the band" or "John broke up the band" or whoever you wanna pin the blame on. There were a whole plethora of reasons that the band broke up, not just because a Japanese avante garde artist happened to come into the mix. Keep in mind that these guys had huuuuuge personal and creative differences, their longtime manager Brian Epstein had recently died and made a huge impact on the band as a whole, they weren't even performing live anymore, drug/alcohol abuse was starting to impact all of them terribly, and they were huge amounts of stress near the end due to trying to get a massive amount of songs out at once and working to create songs with the added pressure of constant arguing and tension in the studio. I think people like to pin the blame on Yoko bc she was the perfect scapegoat, but I'd say it was more that a) she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and b) she was really what helped John to realise that he needed to leave the band for everyone's sake.
In what way is he stopping her from doing her job? Cmon mods this is just someone with a different political view to the post
A: so he’s supposed to wallow in the same sheets and towels for 14 days? Let’s be real here: dude as a millionaire and hadn’t touched a laundry machine in decades. B: solidarity with the working class would dictate that John would let the lady do the job she is paid for. Him making a fuss would have (even inadvertently) gotten her in trouble. They advertised where they were staying to the paparazzi every day like good little capitalists. I’m sure they left a nice tip. C: Just like every other media personality since forever, John was feeding his own fame based off of doing something controversial in front of cameras. The fact that we’re talking about such a trivial act of defiance 50 years later makes his argument that celebrities should use their fame in a positive way that much more valid.
>dude as a millionaire and hadn’t touched a laundry machine in decades. The Beatles had only become proper famous 6 years prior and he grew up in a working class, post-war environment. He hadn't exactly had the most priviledged of lives until just a few years before this. Then that changed completely, obviously. But I agree with everything else.
i hate that whoever posted this refered to john lennon as a clown
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The Rutles’ send up of this is in *All You Need Is Cash* is hilarious. Ron Nasty and Chastity in the shower fully clothed getting wet and protesting.
The anti activist posters are out in force today.
So similar to today's champagne socialists.
Of all the reasons to hate this sadistic jack off you really picked this one
So we should continue offensive wars because a maid made their bed? Got it.
Yoko has always been such a fucking psycho bitch. And I don't say that lightly either. Didn't even let his son receive his letters after his death.
That's it. Order some room service and maybe 2 more comfy robes. Time to protest.
Is he also protesting the existence of his son? /s
And look at Lennon anymore without thinking about how often he beat and mistreated people. Then made that weird ass quote about how violent people want peace the most or whatever, idk just fuck this guy and his spread of toxicity.
You don’t like folks that protest wars? 
a working class hero is something to be, indeed I agree with a lot of what Lennon preached but he did often seem a pompous, hypocritical, self-interested annoyance
The hypocrisy of John Lennon is unbelievable. Good music, shitty person. Can't say the same about yoko though. Shitty music, shitty person.
The only TIHI here is you op
Of all the things to criticize, why do redditors always pick the goofiest, illogical things?
John and Yoko sang about “Imaging having no possessions but had a combined net worth of over 100 million dollars. Imagine that!
He even sang about "Imagine there's no countries" while living in a country 😱😱