Film No. 4

May 1968

The night of “Two Virgins”

While Lennon’s wife is on holiday in Greece, he invites Ono over; they spend the night recording avant-garde tape loops and, by Lennon’s account, make love at dawn. The recordings become their first collaborative album, “Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins”, whose cover notoriously carries an unretouched photograph of the pair nude.

1969

A “bed-in” for peace in Amsterdam

After their wedding in Gibraltar, Lennon and Ono spend their honeymoon in Amsterdam, turning it into a week-long “bed-in” for peace and against the Vietnam War.

26 May – 2 June 1969

The Montreal “bed-in”: “Give Peace a Chance”

Denied entry to the United States, where they had planned another bed-in, Lennon and Ono hold one at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they record “Give Peace a Chance”.

July 1969

The birth of the Plastic Ono Band

Lennon and Ono decide to release their newer, more personal work under a band of their own, the Plastic Ono Band; the name goes back to their 1968 conceptual art project, which Ono had first conceived in 1967 as an art exhibition in Berlin. The first release credited to it is the single “Give Peace a Chance”, backed by Ono’s “Remember Love”.

1969

The Toronto concert: “Live Peace in Toronto”

At the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival the Plastic Ono Band plays with Eric Clapton and others; in the second half Ono takes the microphone for two original feedback-driven compositions, “Don’t Worry Kyoko” and “John John (Let’s Hope for Peace)”. The recording is released in December as the group’s first album.

1971

Custody battle: Cox takes Kyoko away

During a 1971 custody battle Cox disappears with their eight-year-old daughter and later wins custody, claiming that Ono is an unfit mother. He renames Kyoko “Ruth Holman” and raises her in an organisation known as the Church of the Living Word; Ono and Lennon search for her for years, to no avail.