To celebrate the unifying spirit and 40th anniversary of the Plastic Ono Band’s universal anthem, “Give Peace a Chance,” Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon and Julian Lennon have partnered with EMI Music and Sony/ATV Music Publishing to donate net proceeds from the sale of a commemorative 40th Anniversary digital single to the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund (PBF).
Beginning today, iTunes will exclusively offer the single’s special anniversary edition for download purchase, with net proceeds benefiting the PBF through December 31.
Says Yoko Ono, “I am thrilled that so many in the music business are readily supporting ‘Give Peace a Chance’ on its 40th anniversary. It is indeed a time when we are all getting more aware of the necessity of doing something to achieve world peace, no matter how small. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I feel deeply that we are all one, regardless of where we stand.”
“I am delighted to see that a song so closely identified with the pursuit of peace, will shine a light on the United Nations’ peacebuilding efforts and financially support PBF projects,” the Chairperson of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz of Chile said.
Written during John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 honeymoon bed-in protest against the Vietnam War, “Give Peace a Chance” was inspired by Lennon’s off-the-cuff explanation to a visiting reporter of the couple’s purpose for protesting the war by remaining in their honeymoon bed. From March 25 to March 31, the newlyweds invited the world’s media to visit and interview them daily between the hours of 9am and 9pm in their bed at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel.
The song was recorded live on June 1, 1969 in a room at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel, with several well-known friends joining Lennon and Ono to sing the chorus. Since the single’s original release on July 4, 1969, it has been the world’s foremost anthem for peace, beginning most notably with the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam’s massive protest in Washington, DC on November 15, 1969, where more than 500,000 people gathered and sang “Give Peace a Chance.”
