Crawdaddy! Founder on His Experience at the Bed-in for Peace

A friend said he saw me on Friday Night Videos last week. Apparently they’ve made an after-the-fact video of John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance,” edited from the Canadian TV footage of John & Yoko’s “bed-in” in Montreal, and there I am singing out of tune and clapping my hands with the Hare Krishnas and Tim Leary and everybody. I’ve never seen the footage myself, but it’s nice to be part of history (like the guy who shouted “Whipping Post!” on the Allman Brothers’ Live at the Fillmore album). I can also be seen talking to somebody backstage for a few seconds in the Woodstock movie, and dancing crazily to Howlin’ Wolf in the film about the Newport Folk Festivals.

The story about “Give Peace a Chance” is, I was traveling with Timothy and Rosemary Leary at the time; Tim was supposedly running for Governor of California, and my role for the week was campaign adviser. The first thing we did, after speaking to a college audience in San Luis Obispo, was fly to Hollywood, Florida for a rock festival on an Indian reservation, organized by the acid-dealing children of the Miami Mafia. The musicians and speakers never got paid (the Grateful Dead put on a great show anyway), but we managed to get plane tickets to New York, where Tim gave a press conference and introduced me to prospective campaign contributors as the hippie son of (then-unmarried) Canadian premier Trudeau.

We found out about the bed-in and wanted to go; a few phone calls later, Playboy magazine agreed to pay our fare from New York City to Montreal on the condition that I record this historic first meeting between Leary and Lennon so it could be an interview or story in the magazine.

My recollection is that John and Yoko started their “bed-in” (they had already done the one in Amsterdam) in Toronto, ran into some kind of problem, and moved it to Montreal. At any rate, we met them in Montreal; they were in bed, in a large hotel suite. CBC (Canadian Broadcasting) was filming the event, and Derek Taylor, who had long worked for the Beatles and who I knew from his publicist days in LA, was serving as Master of Affairs for John and Yoko, handling details and crises and quietly making it all work. John was having a great time, in his element, the center of attention, talking on the phone to various radio stations around North America, plugging their new record (The Ballad of John and Yoko, with the controversial chorus, “Christ you know it ain’t easy… they’re gonna crucify me”) and answering questions.

Yoko seemed shy and mainly talked to John; John was friendly, approachable, he seemed very real (that strange moment when the image of “John Lennon, Beatle” gives way to an actual person like any other person, there in front of you, saying hello, thinking whatever he’s thinking, shaking your hand). The daytime was a circus of activity, with no opportunity for real personal communication or connection—there was always someone new coming in, some disc jockey calling or visiting, some new focus for John’s attention, and he was a past master of being totally there and at ease with a new person every minute or three, “Hello, yes, this is really John Lennon, are you playing the record?”

While we were there a variety of celebrities came and went. Tommy Smothers was around, and also sang on “Give Peace a Chance.” CBC flew Al Capp, creator of L’il Abner and an outspoken critic of hippie and New Left politics, in to meet Lennon, to make their documentary a little more lively. Leary knew Capp from previous co-appearances (“debates”) on the late ’60s media circuit, and they got along well. Capp was very friendly to Leary personally, while making typically abrasive, very negative comments on Leary’s “constituency.” Leary grinned, disagreed wittily, but never took it personally.

Lennon, on the other hand, was really flustered when Capp started in on him. The Capp/Lennon exchange was at bedside, on camera, and Capp was playing for the viewing audience at home. Lennon had lived his recent life in public and before the cameras—even his honeymoon—but as a pop star I suspect he’d been fairly well protected from people attacking or criticizing him face to face. The bed-ins marked his first direct move into the political arena… he was making a public statement about peace, and that made him a politician, and the rules of that game are very different from the rules of “pop star.”

So Capp came in to the bed-in circus, met John and Yoko, and after the introductions he made known his skepticism and contempt for the notion of bringing about peace by lying in bed before the cameras in an expensive hotel suite. He wanted to provoke John, and he succeeded when he asked if this would have been John and Yoko’s response to Hitler—lie in bed and ask for peace? John lost his temper as Capp belittled his answers and his philosophy—Yoko was also drawn into the argument, shrilly defending John and herself. John got personal, attacking Capp rather than his arguments, and Capp responded smugly. After he left the suite, John and Yoko referred to him as “Al Crap,” and the bad vibes from that confrontation stayed in the air for much of the afternoon.