Yoko Ono Said John Lennon Would Have Laughed at 1 Version of ‘Give Peace a Chance’
John Lennon‘s “Give Peace a Chance” isn’t the sort of song that’s ripe for a dance remix. That didn’t stop DJ Dan from releasing a dance version of the track. Yoko Ono said DJ Dan’s “Give Peace a Chance” would have made John burst out laughing.
John Lennon’s ‘Give Peace a Chance’ inspired a remix that barely used the lyrics
During a 2016 interview with Medium, Yoko was asked how the “Imagine” singer would have reacted to DJ Dan’s remix of “Give Peace a Chance.” “Oh, he would have had a good, good laugh,” she replied. “John had an incredible sense of humor, and we did these things not with incredible seriousness. Tongue in cheek, you know.” DJ Dan’s “Give Peace a Chance” is a bunch of bleeps and bloops interspersed with a few lyrics from the original song.
In the same interview, Yoko was asked if she still thought there was new musical ground to break. “Of course!” she replied. “You know, we’re breaking new ground every day. That’s how the world is. And you know, anything that comes out is better coming out, because the other side of this is the war industry — and you don’t want that to be active. We have to be active ourselves. The peace industry.”
How John Lennon understood ‘Give Peace a Chance’
The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, John discussed the origin of “Give Peace a Chance.” He said that he was being interviewed a lot at the time and the phrase “give peace a chance” fell out of his mouth. Immediately after, he said he wasn’t sure if he had coined the phrase or if Yoko had.
Whether Yoko helped write the song or not, she received no credit for her work. Instead, John credited the turn to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership. The “Power to the People” singer said he did so out of habit. After all, he had been giving Paul McCartney co-writing credits on all of his songs — even songs he wrote on his own — since he was a teenager.
In retrospect, John had some odd things to say about the meaning of “Give Peace a Chance.” He said that the lyrics of the track weren’t necessarily pacifist. In his opinion, the tune was telling people to give peace a chance, not that peace was necessary.
What Yoko Ono thought of remixes in the 1st place
In Medium, Yoko revealed she had evolving feelings about her work being remixed. “I was always interested in that kind of thing, you know,” she said. “Like the first album, Two Virgins, and Unfinished Music Vol.1, Life With the Lions. I was always interested in the theory.
“But the thing is, when they started to want to remix my stuff — around the time of John’s passing, around 1981 — I just said, ‘Forget it! We did a good job! Just leave it alone!'” she added. “I totally forgot about the ideas I’d had earlier.” Since then, Yoko has embraced remixes, releasing a remix album called Open Your Box in 2007.
“Give Peace a Chance” is a classic song even if John wouldn’t taken one of its remixes seriously.
