TORONTO (CP) — Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono arrived at Toronto International Airport from London Tuesday for a one-week visit to launch a Christmas crusade for peace.

Much to the dismay of some

1,000 placard-waving fans whe had gathered to greet the pop singer, Lennon left quietly through a back door and was whisked away to a secret hideout.

In a statement he said:

“It’s great to be back in Canada again and we expect to stay for a week.”

He said he would hold a news conference today.

Lennon and his wife travelled under the pseudonym of Mr. and Mrs. Chambers, but made little effort to hide their identity during the flight.

The Beatle told reporters he was sending the bill for his latest world peace gesture—the printing of thousands of Christmas posters reading “War Is Over, If You Want It”—to United States President Richard Nixon.

These posters now are put up in 11 cities around the world, he said.

“They cost less than the life of one man and I am sending the bill for printing to President Richard Nixon.”

Lennon, who twice visited Canada earlier this year, said in London last Sunday he decided to return to Canada because it was the best place to “talk to the press about peace.”

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LONDON (AP) — Beatle John Lennon said here he plans to put up signs and billboards around the world with Christmas greetings and pleas for peace.

The pop musician said billboards would be erected in 11 cities saying: “War is Over. If You Want It. Happy Christmas from John and Yoko.”

Yoko is Lennon’s Japanese wife, who sings in Lennon’s Plastic Ono band and has appeared in the Beatle’s peace campaigns in a bed—in Toronto Montreal and Holland and inside a sack in London.

Lennon said the Christmas anti-war message would be displayed in London, New York, Toronto, Montreal, Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and Tokyo.

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TORONTO (CP) — Beatle John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, are expected to arrive here this week to launch a Christmas crusade for peace.

John Brower, 23, one of a Toronto group that is organizing the visit, said Sunday he visited the Lennons last week at their home near London and the couple had decided Canada was the best place to “talk to the press about peace.”

He said Lennon was impressed during his two earlier visits to Canada this year by “the sensible political attitudes that prevail here.”

Brower said Prime Minister Trudeau “has given us a tremendous international image with thinking people, young and old.”

Brower and the young persons in his group have put up posters, signs and billboards across Toronto to publicize Lennon’s peace plea.

Lennon said in London Sunday he plans to put up signs and billboards in 11 cities around the world. The signs will read:

“War is over. If you want it. Happy Christmas from John and Yoko.”

The pop star was quoted as saying he had decided to return to Canada because “the maturity of the people is amazing when you consider Canada is so young.” “Canada’s attitudes with regard to Vietnam. China and NATO, are very sensible. Everything points to Canada as being one of the key countries in the new race for survival . . the peace race.”

Lennon said he expected to arrive in Toronto Wednesday

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Purveyor of peace John Lennon has a special attachment to Montreal, it seems. Last May he and wife Yoke Ono spent five days in a bed at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel dramatizing their quest for worldwide peace.

Now, in what appears to be total assault. Lennon is planning a universal campaign: on Monday, strange things will be happening in major cities around the world — and Montreal is included.

Exactly what will happen is still not clear. It is reported that it will involve a “visual” display for peace, but that’s all. With Lennon’s longstanding capacity to grab headlines, however, we’re all sure to know about it come Monday

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So, John Lennon of the Beatles has returned his OBE insignia to Her Majesty the Queen as a protest against the support Great Britain gives to the United States in its war in Vietnam.

It shows that the great majority of the population of Britain was right. It objected strenuously when the four youngsters were awarded this distinction for caterwauling better and louder than all the other similar groups, thereby contributing substantially to the exchequer of the country by paying taxes on the millions a gullible public poured into their laps.

The order was discredited soon after its creation through being broadcast on the recommendations of political pundits as a reward for their friends and associates.

It was given various interpretations, the OBE being translated as the “Order Bestowed on Everybody” and other more plebian and ribald descriptions.

Many people who were awarded this famous Order of the British Empire accepted it half-heartedly out of respect to the Queen who merely proved to be the instrument and the victim of the politicians in this caper.

They resented being lumped in with many people who were granted this order without really valid reasons.

Many have wondered if some officials with a sense of humor, or worse, deliberately imposed their choice of recipients: The Beatles.

It certainly looks like it.

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LONDON (AP) – Beatle John Lennon won’t be portraying Jesus in St. Paul’s Cathedral after all because Lennon’s personality might shove Christ into the background, a record company announced Thursday. The long-haired Beatle had been considered for the lead in a pop musical called Jesus Christ in the cathedral next spring. But the writers of the show and the recording company said they are convinced a relative unknown should be the star. Lennon was barely involved in the issue. But he was quoted as saying he would be interested in the part as long as his wife. Yoko Ono, could take the role of Mary Magdalene.

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It was back to the cow palace last night, when The Who presented its pop opera, Tommy, in the CNE Coliseum before about 4,000 fans. Most of the audience sat in sawdust and suffered a sound system that could not have been worse if the show had been presented in the washrooms at Nathan Phillips Square.

As The Who’s Pete Townshend said on stage: “We regret having to play in this garbage can, for your sake more than ours.” Nevertheless it was an exciting concert, made so by the sheer forcefulness of The Who.

I doubt if there is a group anywhere—the MC5 included —which could have topped the pungent, piercing rock which this English quartet offered. The Who possess most of the things which have been lacking in much of pop lately—hard-hitting drive, a sense of theatrics, a purpose in deliver. The pop opera, Tommy, the group’s tour de force and something of a landmark in pop was offered in its entirety; the performers acting out the roles as they played. It was quite a sight, even if there was a lot missing acoustically after the raw twangs and cymbal crashes had been filtered through a fumble 0f beams and poles.

Visually The Who’s concert came close to topping the last Led Zeppelin appearance, and was far superior to Blind Faith. Two things emerged from the concert. The first is that Tommy may well be the most important pop musical operatic attempt since George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. The other point concerns Toronto’s serious lack of good places for pop groups to play. Last night’s Coliseum farce made it clear just how much the local rock scene misses the Rock Pile.

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LONDON — Abbey Road is a short street in North London with only one distinctive feature; it houses the studios of EMI, a record company. In the next few weeks, however, it seems certain that Abbey Road will become as well known internationally as Portobello Road, Petticoat Lane and Carnaby Street.

The reason for this is that the new Beatles’ album—the group’s 19th—has been named after it because all of the Beatles’ hits were recorded in the Abbey Road studios. The toils of the Beatles in this very ordinary thoroughfare have accounted for the sale of 290 million records, a fact which makes even a normally grim-faced man such as Harold Wilson break into a grin.

Abbey Road will be released in North America next Monday. In London last week, at the group’s Apple headquarters in Savile Row, George Harrison—who is reputed to be the sanest and least weird Beatle—discussed the new album:

“Come Together, the first track on side one, was one of the last tracks to be recorded. John wrote it a month ago, just after his car accident. It’s one of the nicest things we’ve done musically. Rin- go’s drumming is great (Ringo, sitting across the room, grinned). It’s an upbeat, rock-a-beat-a-boogie, with very Lennon lyrics.

“Something is a song of mine. I wrote it just as we were finishing the last album, the white one. But it was never finished. I could never think of the right words for it. Joe Cocker has done a version too, and there’s talk of it beings the next Beatles’ single. When I recorded it, I imagined somebody like Ray Charles doing it, that was the feel I thought it should have. But because I’m not Ray Charles we just did what we could. It’s nice though, probably the nicest melody I’ve ever written.

“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer is just something of Paul’s. We spent a hell of a lot of time recording this one. It’s one of those instant, whistle-along tunes which some people will hate and others will love. It’s like ‘Honey Pie’, a fun sort of song, but probably sick as well because the guy keeps killing everybody. We used my Moog Synthesiser on this track, and I think it came out effectively.

“Oh! Darling is another of Paul’s songs which is typical 1950-1960 sort of period in its chord structure. It’s a typical 1955 song which thousands of groups used to make—the Moonglows, the Paragons, the Shells and so on. We do a few ooh-oohs in the background, very quietly, but mainly it’s Paul shouting.

“Octopus’s Garden is Ringo’s song, the second he’s written. It’s lovely.

“Ringo gets very bored playing the drums, so at home he plays the piano. But he only knows about three chords. And he knows about the same on guitar. He mainly likes country music.

“I Want You (She’s So Heavy) is very heavy. It has John playing lead guitar and singing the same as he plays. This is good because the riff he sings is basically a blues.

It’s a very original Lennon-like song . . . The middle bit is great . . . John has an amazing thing with his timing.

“Here Comes the Sun, the first cut on side two, is the other song I wrote for the album. It was written on a very nice sunny day in Eric Clapton’s garden. We’d been through real hell with business, and it was all very heavy. Being in Eric’s garden felt like playing hooky from school. I found some sort of release and the song just came. It’s a bit like If I Needed Someone with that basic riff running through it. But it is very simple, really.

“Because is one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever done. It has three-part harmony— John, Paul and George. John wrote the song, and the backing is a bit like Beethoven. It does resemble Paul’s writing style, but only because of the sweetness it has. Paul usually writes the sweet things and John does the rave-ups and freakier things. But every now and then, John just wants to write a simple 12-bar thing.

“I think this is the tune that will impress most people. Hip people will dig it and the straight people and serious music critics will too. It’s really good.

“Then begins the medley of Paul and John songs all shoved together. It’s hard to describe them unless you hear them at the same time. You Never Give Me Your Money is like two songs, the bridge of it is like a completely different song. You whip out of that and into Sun King, which John wrote. He originally called it Los Paranois.

“Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam are two short songs which John wrote in India 18 months ago.

“She Came In Through the Bathroom Window is a very good song of Paul’s with great lyrics. Golden Slumbers is another very melodic song by Paul which links up.

“Carry That Weight keeps coming in and out of the medley all the way through.

“The End is just that, a little sequence which ends it all.”

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John and Yoko Lennon, the self-styled peace propagandists of the pop-rock set, have been in Toronto to launch their campaign of ‘peace persuasions’.

After their well publicized ‘bed in for peace’ in Montreal, earlier this year, they now plan to market their slogan ‘War is Over! If you want it.’

In the best Madison Avenue advertising tradition, John and Yoko will proclaim the advantages of their product via billboards, handbills, posters and all the mass news media. As John told his admirers last June, ‘plug peace — it‘s merchandise. You’ve got to outsell the businessmen . . . Make people aware there is an alternative to war.’ It all sounds very charming. John and Yoko will undoubtedly offer multi renditions of their ’give peace a chance’ song, wear and send an extravagant array of flowers and be interviewed over and over again.

Unfortunately peace or love or even hate, for that matter are not ‘products’ which can be adequately dealt with by the same techniques which work so well in selling soap.

Propaganda and mass advertising destroy social institutions and replace them with economic institutions which are incapable of giving expression to the ideal of public or personal peace.

The Lennon campaign has nothing to do with peace; it has only to do with the pursuit of fads and inception. Their campaign contributes nothing to the peace which we ostensibly celebrate each December 25.

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OTTAWA — Pierre Elliott Trudeau is one of the beautiful people.

The word comes from Beatle John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, who spent almost an hour with the prime minister Tuesday in his Centre Block office on Parliament Hill.

They came to talk peace, but according to Lennon, they talked generalities.

“He was more beautiful than we expected. We got great incentives from just meeting him,“ said Lennon’s Japanese wife.

“If all politicians were like Trudeau, there would be world peace. You don’t know how lucky you are in Canada,” interjected the bearded Beatle.

Lennon and his wife hurried to Ottawa overnight Monday from Toronto when the prime minister conceded he had some time for them in his Tuesday schedule. Apparently they had time to spare also from organization of a peace festival they plan to hold at Mosport in July.

Prime Minister Trudeau didn’t get a personal invitation to the festival, Lennon confided.

The couple entered the prime minister’s office still dressed in long black cloaks. Lennon’s hair streamed behind him as he and his wife strode rapidly through the halls of the Parliament buildings.

They were met by a prime minister also dressed in black, but his suit was made of corduroy—very mod.

The couple also met Health and Welfare Minister John Munro before leaving  the capital.

“Why the health minister?” they were asked.

“To keep the festival healthy, man,” replied Lennon.

Only one reporter was allowed to enter the prime minister’s chamber with the visitors. They posed for pictures, one with the prime minister’s arm around Yoko’s shoulder one with Lennon and Yoko with their arms around each other.

It was a symphony in black, said the server.

Is black a color of peace?

“No,” said Mrs. Lennon. “It’s practical like black or white, but black is warm winter.”

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