| "Give Peace a Chance" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band | ||||
| B-side | Remember Love (Yoko Ono) | |||
| Released | 4 July 1969 | |||
| Format | 7" vinyl | |||
| Recorded | 1 June 1969 in Montreal, Quebec | |||
| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length | 4:54 | |||
| Label | Apple | |||
| Writer(s) | John Lennon[1] | |||
| Producer | John Lennon and Yoko Ono | |||
| John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band singles chronology | ||||
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"Give Peace a Chance" is a 1969 single by Plastic Ono Band that became an anthem of the American anti-war movement at that time.
Written by John Lennon while The Beatles were officially still together. The song is one of three Lennon solo songs, along with "Instant Karma!" and "Imagine", in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. Being one of John Lennon's most famous songs, it has since been released on almost every greatest hits compilation.
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The song was written during Lennon's ‘Bed-In’ honeymoon: when asked by a reporter what he was trying to achieve by staying in bed, Lennon answered spontaneously "All we are saying is give peace a chance"; Lennon liked the phrase and set it to music for the song.[citation needed]. He sang the song several times during the Bed-In, and finally, on 1 June 1969, in Room 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, recorded it using a simple setup of four microphones and a four-track tape recorder rented from a local recording studio.[2] The recording session was attended by dozens of journalists and various celebrities, including Timothy Leary, Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, Joseph Schwartz, Allan Rock, Rosemary Woodruff Leary, Petula Clark, Dick Gregory, Allen Ginsberg, Murray the K, Al Capp and Derek Taylor, many of whom are mentioned in the lyrics. Lennon played acoustic guitar and was joined by Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers, also on acoustic guitar.
When released in 1969, the song was credited to Lennon/McCartney. On some later releases, only Lennon is credited; viz. the 1990s reissue of the 1972 album Live in New York City, the 2006 documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon (in which the song appears), and the 1997 compilation album Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon (and its DVD version six years later). Lennon later stated his regrets about being “guilty enough to give McCartney credit as co-writer on my first independent single instead of giving it to Yoko, who had actually written it with me.” [3] However, it has also been suggested that the credit was a way of thanks to McCartney for helping him record "The Ballad of John and Yoko" at short notice.[4]
The "Give Peace a Chance" single (with Yoko Ono's "Remember Love" as the B-side) was released on 45 RPM vinyl in the UK (on APPLE 13) on July 4, 1969 and July 7, 1969 in the US (on Apple 1809). The track's first full-length album appearance was on the Lennon hits compilation The John Lennon Collection issued November 1, 1982 in the UK (EMI/Parlophone Records) and November 8, 1982 (originally on Geffen Records, since re-released on Capitol Records). A significantly truncated version of the Montreal session and a snippet of the One to One Benefit concert performance of the song appear on Lennon's Shaved Fish hits compilation from 1975. "Give Peace a Chance" was the first "solo" single released by a member of the Beatles while the band was still intact, though, technically, the artist was credited as Plastic Ono Band, not John Lennon.
The song reached number 14 on the pop charts in the United States and was kept out of the top slot in the UK by The Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women".
The song quickly became the anthem of the anti-war movement, and was sung by half a million demonstrators in Washington, D.C. at the Vietnam Moratorium Day, on 15 October 1969.[5] They were led by the renowned folk singer Pete Seeger, who interspersed phrases like, "Are you listening, Nixon?" and "Are you listening, Agnew?", between the choruses of protesters singing, "All we are saying ... is give peace a chance".[6]
The British group "Yes" also paid tribute to Lennon's words on their 1971 release "The Yes Album." The first track on side two is the song, "I've Seen All Good People" which is divided into two parts, namely "Your Move" and "All Good People." The words, "all we are saying is give peace a chance" are sung as background vocals near the end of "Your Move."
The original last verse of the song refers to: "John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary, Tommy Smothers, Bobby Dylan, Tommy Cooper, Derek Taylor, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Hare Krishna".
In the performance of "Give Peace a Chance" included on the Live Peace in Toronto 1969 album, Lennon openly stated that he couldn't remember all of the words and improvised with the names of the band members sharing the stage with him and anything that came to mind: "John and Yoko, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann, Penny Lane, Roosevelt, Nixon, Tommy Jones and Tommy Cooper, and somebody."
The third verse contains a reference to masturbation, but Lennon changed this to "mastication" on the official lyric sheet. He later admitted this was a "cop out" but wanted to avoid unnecessary controversy.[7]
| Chart (1969) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Germany | 4 |
| Netherlands | 1 |
| UK Singles Chart | 2 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 14 |
| "Give Peace a Chance" | ||||||||||||||
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 June Release |
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| Single by Yoko Ono | ||||||||||||||
| Released | 1 June 2008 (TW50066) 1 July 2008 (TW50069) 18 February 2009 (Int'l Remixes) |
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| Format | Digital download | |||||||||||||
| Genre | Electronica, Remix | |||||||||||||
| Label | Mindtrain/Twisted | |||||||||||||
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On 1 June 2008, the 39th anniversary of the song's recording, the first of three digital-only (and thus environmentally friendly) singles was released through Twisted Records exclusively on Beatport with remixes featuring a newly recorded vocal by Yoko Ono.[8] It reached #1 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart on 16 August 2008. It should be noted that these are not the first remixes Ono has done of this song: in 2005, she did a new version recalling the events of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on Peace, Love & Truth; and one of the first remixes with the lyrics used in this mix was released on the Open Your Box remix album. The last installment was released 18 February 2009, Yoko's birthday.
| Preceded by "Give It 2 Me" by Madonna |
U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Club Play number-one single August 16, 2008 |
Succeeded by "I Decided" by Solange |
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   | Photo By Roy Kerwood - John lennon photos Montreal 1969 |
| | this PBS documentary - American Experience | Vietnam Online | Transcript | PBS |
| | 1969: Millions march in US Vietnam Moratorium - BBC ON THIS DAY | 15 | 1969: Millions march in US Vietnam Moratorium |
| | Press Release - TWISTED Records Online Store |
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