Music Lyric Sheets: Room 902 Amsterdam Hilton March 1969
Thirty years ago, in the name of World Peace, John Lennon and Yoko Ono took to their beds in a luxury suite on the ninth floor of the Amsterdam Hilton. This media event-cum-art statement lasted for a week and made world headlines.
So did it change the world, that time?
Not London's world in office shoes
Which struggled joyless, back from work
To see it on the tea-time news
The traffic on the Blackfriars Bridge
Still thundered over just the same
The Sixties, not that London cared
Was over now in all but name
The Sixties over? What a shame
Or what a sham, as some insisted
They never put the posters up
Not round our way and so...
we missed it.
Hard to believe this bearded guy
Messiah-in-pyjamas
Who, with granny glasses
Lying beside
His newly wedded voodoo bride
Once sang, a scant two years before,
"It's Getting Better". All the time,
TV and newsreel journalists
Were clustered round the pair agog
They'd booked the presidential suite
A dead-expensive room and bog
Set nine floors up above the street.
Hair Peace. Bed Peace. I really tried
To understand. I swear I did
And still a kid, defended it
From all these early skinhead types
And I was wrong and they were right
But someone hit it on the head:
"A week in bed?" my mate's mum said
As if it were an offer
On the label of a tin of rice
"Yes. I could do with that right now
And Peace - that would be very nice."
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