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."