When John reads about Bloody Thursday, as it’s called, his devotion to the peace cause only intensifies. “When I first got the news it stooned me, absolutely stooned me,” he says.

He’s eager to return to America, to advise the demonstrators. But his repeated requests for a visa are all denied on the basis of his 1968 conviction for marijuana possession.

John’s British passport grants him access to the Bahamas, but when he and Yoko arrive there, on May 24, they feel that the American press is too distant, so they fly to Toronto, where immigration authorities at first detain them before granting a ten-day visa.

On May 26, they check in to suite 1742 of Montreal’s stately Queen Elizabeth Hotel to stage an eight-day bed-in—in close proximity to the New York press corps.

“What about talking to the people who make the decisions, the power brokers?” a reporter asks.

“Talk about what?” John answers. “It doesn’t happen like that. In the US, the government is too busy talking about how to keep me out. If I’m a joke, as they say, and not important, why don’t they just let me in?”

American and Canadian radio hosts welcome the Beatle to the airwaves. When he phones KSAN in San Francisco, members of the psychedelic band Quicksilver Messenger Service are listening. “The advice you gave was right on! Violence really does beget violence,” the band writes John. “But the way the People’s Park issue is being handled is not cool. I know your advice will save a lot of broken bones.”

When he talks to a reporter from Rolling Stone, John seems less than certain. “Yes, we’re really scared to go to the US because people have become so violent, even our sort of people.”

In the face of fear and uncertainty, his passion for songwriting never deserts him. “Why isn’t somebody writing one for the people now?” he asks Yoko. “That’s what my job is. Our job is to write for the people now.”

On May 31, a full moon rises, illuminating John and Yoko’s hotel room, where John scatters flower petals daily.

The next day, an impromptu recording session happens at the site of the bed-in. The equipment—four microphones and four-track Ampex recorder—is spartan in comparison to the setup at Abbey Road studios, but John is looking for a simple sound in the new song he’s written with Yoko to promote peace.

“Sing along,” he instructs his celebrity guests as he strums his acoustic guitar.

Some of them—including Yoko, comedian Tommy Smothers, LSD guru Timothy Leary, poet Allen Ginsberg, Beatles publicist Derek Taylor, and a dozen members of a local Hare Krishna temple—are namechecked in the lyrics of John’s first solo single, which he records in a single take.