2024-09-23
7 分钟Paul Logothetis visits the site of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s famous bed-in protest, where one of the most well-known protest songs was recorded. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What is the world's most famous hotel room?
Is it the penthouse suite at the Regent Beverly Wilshire made famous in the 1990 film Pretty Woman?
Perhaps it's the presidential suite at the Kempinski Hotel Adlon in Berlin where Michael Jackson dangled his child from the window to appease the swarm and of press and onlookers.
Or might it be room 1742 at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Fairmont Hotel?
You're listening to Tall Stories, a monocle production brought to you by the team behind the Urbanist.
I'm Andrew Tuck.
In this episode, Paul Logothesis visits the site of John Lennon and Joko Ona's famous bed in protest, where one of the most famous protest songs was recorded.
In a time of global protest.
Room 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth Fairmount Hotel in Montreal offers up a long ago glimpse into a moment of non violent resistance led by the late great singer and songwriter John Lennon.
Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono gathered in one of Canada's most famed hotels for eight days in May 1969 to stage their infamous bed in protest of the Vietnam War.
The the bedding was originally supposed to be staged in New York City, but Lennon was denied entry to the United States because of a marijuana possession charge.
55 years later, the suite has been made over, revealing sprawling luxury with touches of that infamous time.
There are two king beds, separate kitchen and dining areas, two bathrooms, two handfuls of TVs and pictures, art, decor and design littered around the suite to provide music bus with a stroll down memory lane and an idea of what had occurred here.
The windows were scrawled with messages that Lennon echoed at the time, like hairpiece and bed piece which are visible 17 floors below on the street level.
Analog souvenirs are well represented in the room with an old TV set and a reel to reel tape recorder present.
They're going to crucify me.
And that was Fairmount bell captain Dwight Rail, a true music aficionado who's been working at the hotel since 1981, who was kind enough to play us a tune from the acoustic guitar sitting in the corner.
But most impressive is a mini museum stored in the second bedroom made up of floor to ceiling wall cabinets that provide history lessons through snippets of recorded audio, video, song and tales from those that experienced that famous week firsthand.
The interactive capsules include stories from different perspectives, including a 17 year old bellboy named Tony Lashta, who Lennon would go on to hire as an aide.
There's Gilles Goujon, a Radio Quebec journalist who Ended up scoring a solo interview with Lenin, Ninono and Andre Perry, who went on to produce the iconic song Spawn from that Beddin that turned out to be perhaps the most famous anti war protest song of our time, Give Peace a Chance.