John is in his element leading this hopeful plea to the citizens of the world, but he makes it clear that the peace movement is bigger than any one person. “Like Pete Seeger said, we don’t have a leader but we have a song—‘Give Peace a Chance.’”

*  *  *

Although the Let It Be sessions and rooftop concert have yet to be prepared for release, on July 1, 1969, the Beatles begin recording a new album.

Without John.

On July 4, Apple releases “Give Peace a Chance” (it carries the Beatles’ standard Lennon and McCartney credit as well as a new one—the Plastic Ono Band) in the UK.

John misses its rise up the charts. He’s in a Scottish hospital after swerving his Austin Maxi (carrying Yoko and their children, Kyoko and Julian) away from an oncoming car and into a roadside ditch. John jokes with the press—“If you’re going to have a car crash, try to arrange for it to happen in the Highlands”—even through the pain of seventeen facial stitches.

On July 9, engineer Geoff Emerick sees movement at the studio doorway, where John and Yoko have appeared “like two apparitions dressed in black.”

“Yes, I’m okay,” John tells Emerick, George Martin, and the worried Beatles.

Then he places an order with Harrods and has a double bed installed at Abbey Road so that John can be close to Yoko while she recuperates from having fourteen stitches and a back injury. “Can you put a microphone up over here so we can hear her on the headphones?” he asks the astonished recording staff.

When a policeman patrolling the studio grounds makes his way into the control room during a late-night session, John is plunged into a terror reminiscent of his 1968 drug bust. “It’s your job to keep people out of here!” he orders roadie Mal Evans.

Some people, such as Yoko’s friend the American actor Dan Richter, are allowed in. “I couldn’t help thinking that those guys were making rock ’n’ roll history,” Richter recalls, “while I was sitting on this bed in the middle of the Abbey Road studio, handing Yoko a small white packet.”

Not long after their car accident, John starts writing a song he’s calling “Come Together.” Or, rather, rewriting it: the song had originally been intended for Timothy Leary’s derailed campaign that year for the California governorship.

When recording begins, on July 21, John says to the band, “I’ve got no arrangement for you, but you know how I want it. Give me something funky.”

He’s taking all the vocals. When Paul asks him, “What do you want me to do on this track, John?” he replies, “Don’t worry; I’ll do the overdubs on this.”