JOHN LENNON & YOKO ONO

John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE, born John Winston Lennon, was a British musician, composer and peace activist as well as an Oscar and multiple Grammy award winner. Yoko Ono a Japanese-American artist, filmmaker, experimental composer and singer. She is considered one of the most important representatives of the Fluxus movement. Even before her marriage to the “Beatle” John Lennon, Ono had already made a name for herself in artistic circles in the early 1960s and increasingly appeared as a peace and human rights activist.

On March 20, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were married in Gibraltar. On March 31, 1969, the couple completed their week-long “bed-in” at the Apollobuurt in Amsterdam. Lennon and Ono gave daily interviews from their bed in the Hilton Hotel from March 26th to send a visible signal for peace. Lennon later commented: “When we got married we knew our honeymoon would be public anyway, so we decided to take advantage of it. Our life is our art. That was the bed-in. We sat in bed and talked to the reporters. It was hilarious. In the end, we made a commercial for peace […].” Another week followed in Montreal, while the third “bed-in” failed due to a lack of entry permit for the Bahamas. As part of their peace campaign, Lennon and Ono gave an interview in a sack in Vienna and called the campaign “Bagism”. The song The Ballad of John and Yoko is about the events of the honeymoon. The third and final part of the Unfinished Music series, which documents the life together of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, was released under the name Wedding Album in October 1969.