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John Lennon
Lennon Wall, Prague
He campaigned for world peace from his honeymoon bed, fought discrimination by climbing into a bag and imagined a world without possessions while living in luxury. Since his assassination, at 40, John Lennon has attained secular sainthood – but was he a 20th century musical Messiah or a druggy dreamer with a Jesus Christ hairstyle? Belinda Beckett finds out.
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We’re trying to sell peace like a product, you know, sell it like people sell soap or soft drinks,” explained John Lennon to David Frost on his TV chat show in 1969. “It’s the only way to get people aware that peace is possible and it isn’t just inevitable to have violence.” “Is that too simple a truth?”, the bemused broadcaster asked the
soon-to-be-ex Beatle, resplendent in a pink velvet suit next to his new Japanese wife, Yoko Ono, dressed in funereal black. “What is too simple about me not killing you?” retorted Lennon, his famous dry wit triggering gales of studio laughter. John and Yoko were rarely out of the headlines that year, with their quickie wedding in Gibraltar,
their bed-ins for peace, their stark naked debut album cover (Two Virgins had to be sold in brown paper bags) and their theory of ‘bagism’ which they demonstrated by climbing into a sack together at a press conference in Vienna. “If people did interviews for jobs in a bag they wouldn’t get turned away because they were black or green or long haired, you know, it’s total
communication,” Lennon told Frost, as the interviewer’s eyebrows rose to his hairline. That December, at the height of anti-Vietnam fervour, the couple plastered advertising hoardings in 12 major cities with posters declaring ‘WAR IS OVER! If You Want It – Happy Christmas from John & Yoko’. The slogan inspired the hit single.
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