NEW PHOTOS FROM THE "BED IN"

In 1969, Stephen Sammons was a 20-year-old aspiring photographer living in Montreal. A friend of his worked at an avant-garde film magazine and had scheduled an interview with the artist Yoko Ono, who was in town with her husband John Lennon to host a “bed-in” for peace. Sammons was invited to come along and take photos.

Lennon and Ono had already hosted one bed-in while on their honeymoon in Amsterdam earlier that year. Modeled after a sit-in, the famous couple sat in their bed for hours and talked about the need for world peace. Lennon would later recount the experience in the lyrics to the Beatles’ song “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”

“It was a very interesting, cool sort of scene,” Sammons recalls. Lennon and Ono occupied a suite of rooms at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel and dozens of friends, journalists and other hangers-on—including Timothy Leary and comedian Tommy Smothers— dropped by throughout the day to visit. Sammons stayed all day long and says he doesn’t remember seeing Lennon or Ono ever get out of bed. “And then sometime in the afternoon, Lennon started writing this song,” he says. “He scribbled down the song lyrics and then started playing the tune.”

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