Click For Larger Version, Peace Choir Artists and Song Lyrics War Protest Record, 60's Era Yoko Ono-Plastic Ono Band "Now Or Never"

A Trip Back to 1991: Two IK! Paper Issues Deal With the Gulf War Editorials, Sean Lennon and Lenny Kravitz' updated "Give Peace a Chance." (All of the following text is directly from Instant Karma! Issue #49, January 1991) "From The Garden Island newspaper, Lihu'e, Hawaii, December 30, 1990: War is Never the Answer Award - Posthumous to John Lennon. Sadly the voice of a man dead spoke louder than any other. It could be tragic for us all if hundreds of oil fires burned for years possibly causing a nuclear winter on a planetary scale. It takes Red Adair and his famous team of oil fire fighters often many, many weeks just to plan and extinguish ONE oil fire in a well or platform; let alone what is wired to blow in Kuwait's oil fields!" "Give Peace a Chance" - The Song, 1991 When "Instant Karma!" was released as a single, John and Yoko said that they'd like to put songs out very quickly, to reflect what was going on in their lives and in the news. Maybe even on a weekly basis. It seemed like a good idea in concept, but of course was not very practical. That "instant" spirit was revived just after Christmas when Lenny Kravitz, Yoko and Sean re-wrote, recorded and released both a radio version and video version of an updated "Give Peace a Chance" - all in a matter of three weeks. Kravitz, who had performed in the Liverpool and Japanese tribute concerts for John and who had become friends with Yoko and Sean, asked Yoko if they could re-release "Give Peace a Chance"...with new lyrics. Kravitz told MTV that he felt it was very heavy to be asking Yoko to change the lyrics of a John Lennon song, but that she agreed. At that point, Kravitz, Sean and Yoko sat down to update the 1969 lyrics which included references to "bagism" "Hare Krishna" and '60's happenings that young people in the '90's know nothing about. The new lyrics, written for the most part by Sean include lines like "Everybody's talkin' 'bout planet Earth, rebirth, United Nations, good relations, space stations, starvation.." There are references to Armageddon, HIV, the environment and Vietnam. Kravitz was quoted in Time (1/21/91): "Sean's a genius. His father left him a gift." (Read the lyrics here.) The song was aired via satellite to radio stations around the country on January 15 - the day of the United Nation's deadline for Iraq to leave Kuwait. WSOO-AM and its sister station, 101-FM (where I work) picked it up at 6AM that morning and aired the song throughout the day on both stations. MTV received the video version of the song and played it on the hour for several hours, with a 15-minute non-stop back-to-back marathon running at midnight on the 15th/16th. USA Today reported that pop and rock stations around the country were pulling out all of their anti-war songs, including the new "Give Peace a Chance." Dom Testa of Denver's KRXY said that station was receiving lots of requests for the new "Peace" and for Truth Be Known's "War." Testa: "Our feeling is nobody wants war. Everyone wants to see this resolved peacefully." KIIS in Los Angeles suspended their goofy contests in favor of peace tunes like "Imagine." Marketing director, Karen Tobin told USA Today, "We decided it's not fun and games anymore. We broke format to play songs that reflect the mood of our listeners." The video version of the new "Give Peace a Chance" features Sean and Lenny Kravitz in the opening scene, Yoko, Michael McDonald and others. The final scene is Sean giving the peace sign as the blue sky and clouds fade in. The video ends with a flashback to the original "Give Peace a Chance." The stars have recorded under the banner of the Peace Choir for Virgin Records. All proceeds will be donated to The John Lennon Foundation. In a short interview for MTV, Sean said, "We're not thinking maybe we can give peace a chance. It's a command. We've got to do it. I'm totally optimistic. I believe in peace...we can work it out." In that same MTV news features, George Harrison was quoted, "They're all lunatics. So is Saddam Hussein. They're all crackers. I think it's interesting that Britain probably started the trouble in the first place by making Kuwait. It's all greed. It's the usual story, isn't it?" As we all know now, President Bush didn't wait very long after the United Nations deadline before ordering the first bombing raids on Iraq. And unfortunately for the free world, nervous programmers didn't wait long to abruptly pull any songs about peace from their playlists. A panicky BBC in Great Britain went so far as to ban 80 songs with so-called "violent titles" - which doesn't really explain why "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine" were included on that list. Cher's "Bang Bang" and Elton John's "Saturday Night is All Right for Fighting" were also banned by the BBC. IK tried to get the entire list of banned songs from a Toronto-based wire service but was told that the list is not being given out to the general public. Strange days indeed. EDITORIAL COMMENT: IK has had reports from some correspondents that radio stations in their areas have also pulled "Give Peace a Chance" from their playlists, saying that in light of the fact that Americans are fighting overseas, the song is now "inappropriate." The beautiful concept of "peace" - as in Prince of Peace and Peace on Earth which so many Americans were singing and exchanging greeting cards about just a few short weeks ago at Christmastime - has suddenly been branded sacrilegious or unpatriotic. Peace songs have been replaced by patriotic, let's march off to war anthems. Call your local radio station and request "Give Peace a Chance" today, if for no other reason than to make the programmers who've banned it, uncomfortable. J&Y's Rallying Peace Cry Voiced On MTV, Martha Quinn reported that during the discussions at the United Nations about the Middle East crisis, the U.N. delegate from Yemen said, "All we are saying is Give Peace a Chance!" During a speech at a peace rally in Washington D.C. on January 26, the Rev. Jesse Jackson also used the phrase in calling for another way to deal with the situation in the Gulf. Near the end of his speech, Jackson quoted several people who've made historic statements about peace. Jackson: "John Lennon said, Give Peace a Chance!" A crowd of 300,000 had gathered in Washington, with more expected. (All of the following text is directly from Instant Karma! paper issue #50) War Means Death A Letter to the Editor of a Detroit newspaper, from a woman in Ann Arbor, Michigan: "I am surprised by the war supporters who have written to your paper to complain about articles discussing body bags and about pictures showing the war dead. These people seem to feel that this kind of coverage is in poor taste, and they would prefer not to see it. The fact is, when you support war, you support death. There is no getting around it. Not printing articles that show the truth about the war may help assuage someone's guilt in supporting the war, but it won't change the fact that 100,000 people are dead. Please continue to print stories and pictures that show the war for what it was. Those of us so far removed from the conflict need to be reminded of the horrific suffering we so enthusiastically supported." War Is Over..By M.Ewing (An excerpt of my Issue #50 editorial about the Gulf War) Jurist William Jennings Bryan said, "The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error." For those Americans who viewed the Gulf War more as a tragedy than as a gung ho macho event, the weeks during the actual "prosecution" of the war were very lonely. Dissenting voices were not welcomed. Anyone who did not agree completely with the strategy and philosophy behind the war were expected to shut up..or else. And this time, it wasn't just "them" shouting "love it or leave it." It was us. The 60's generation. We've come a long way from promoting Flower Power to praising Fire Power. The generation that believed with all its heart that love was all one needed to cure hatred in the world, has grown older, colder and more realistic. But has our middle-aged idea of reality become someone else's nightmare? Have we abandoned our dreams of yesterday for a more righteous reality today, or is it just an illusion? Or perhaps a delusion. In order to bring about a quick and relatively easy victory for the Allies against an obviously overrated Army, our Air Forces dropped thousands of carpet bombs on Iraqi foot soldiers hunkered down in the desert. It was, as one American colonel described it, "a turkey shoot." The 100,000 men we cremated in the desert turned out to be unwilling warriors wearing broken-down loafers and carrying broken-down guns. Can we, as a great nation, try to be a little less joyful about the end result? Here in (our hometown), an 18-year-old soldier returned home to a neighboring village in April after six months in the desert. Our local paper did a front page feature story on his homecoming. Jack Storey wrote, "Like many combat soldiers in the Gulf War, Bob Konings carried home none of the vengeance seen periodically on the home front for an enemy that was outclassed from the start. 'I felt sorry for them. They had no boots, no shoes, food or water. They didn't want to fight. As soon as they saw Americans, they gave up.' Konings said." This soldier's uncensored comments are a far cry from the hype we heard on TV. The war turned into just the opposite of the "Us Vs. Hitler" contest that Bush had sold us and sadly, the joke is on those who twisted "Give Peace a Chance" around to say "all we are saying is kick Saddam's ass"..because Saddam's ass is unbruised. Instead, Iraq's people have borne the brunt of the battle. Old men, women, children, draftees in the army, and the infrastructure of the country were bombed to oblivion. Disease, starvation and chaos are predicted. The dead mean nothing to Saddam who is only out to deify himself, but we are supposedly a kinder, more gentle people and their deaths should matter to us. But they don't. This is where I part ways with the mood of our country. We put ourselves above others morally in one instance - saving Kuwait - but inexplicably lose our moral character in the aftermath. Instant News Section---The Making Of Give Peace A Chance" Video "The Making of Give Peace a Chance" was released on home video on Yoko's birthday - February 18, 1991. The tape includes a complete showing of the song-video and a behind-the-scenes look at how the whole work came together with Lenny Kravitz, Sean, Yoko and Lenny's Dad. In one scene, Yoko and Lenny waltz around the studio as the song is played in the background. Sean is also shown playing a lovely tune on the piano. "Give Peace a Chance" was one of the first pro-peace songs of the Persian Gulf war and almost nearly the last that dared mention any alternative other than bombing and blasting our way to victory. With polls showing most Americans (and Britains) in favor of the war, most rock stars kept quiet. A spokesman for Bruce Springsteen said that Springsteen was busy working on his next album and besides, "Anytime anybody's said anything against the war, they've been trounced." Richie Havens, a musical protester of the Vietnam war, said lack of protest this time around was due to the one-sided coverage of the war by the media. Havens said the anti-war side was not heard. Meg Griffin, a d.j. at WXRK in New York said performers these days are more concerned about popularity and their paychecks than their true feelings. Laura Flanders from the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting organization, told MTV that songs like "Give Peace a Chance" were played for a couple of days, "but then when there was any risk that anything that was challenging the U.S. adminstration's leading of the allied assault, that might be seen as unpatriotic, that was pulled." Surprisingly, with radio airplay practically nil, the updated version of "Give Peace a Chance" finally did make it onto the charts, entering Billboard's Hot 100 at #54 the week ending March 9, 1991. At the same time both "The Star Spangled Banner" as sung by Whitney Houston, and the anti-war song, "High Wire" by the Rolling Stones were charting. "Give Peace a Chance" began a decline the following week, while both "The Star Spangled Banner" and "High Wire" battled their way up the charts. "High Wire" beat out "Banner" for the top spot. Paul Grein, writing for Billboard reminded us that the original version of "Give Peace a Chance" made it to #14 on the Hot 100 in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam war.