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If you were a Beatles fan in 1968, and you saw the above picture, you might have a few questions. For instance:
Q: Who’s that woman in the foreground?
A: That’s John’s new special lady friend, a Japanese artist named Yoko Ono. You’ll be seeing a lot of her from now on.
Q: Where are they?
A: In the garden of Coventry Cathedral, about 100 miles northwest of London.
Q: What are they doing?
A: Burying acorns in the first of many Publicity Stunts for Peace that the couple would orchestrate in the years to come. “I wanted to plant an acorn,” Yoko said later. “And John wanted to join me. And we planted two acorns, you know?”
Q: Why acorns?
A: They symbolize, like, growth, man. In April 1969 John and Yoko would send acorns to numerous world leaders; this is why “The Ballad of John and Yoko” refers to “50 acorns tied in a sack.”
Q: And the white circular bench?
A: This was donated by John and Yoko but doesn’t seem to have been much appreciated. The canon (big cheese) of the cathedral didn’t care for conceptual art.
Q: Why is John wearing a white suit to dig in the dirt?
A: Style, friend, style.
Q: Are those acorns now mighty oak trees?
A: It does not appear so. According to Pete Chambers, who literally wrote the book on this subject, “Within a week the acorns were stolen, so Lennon sent his driver to pick up the bench. The dream was over.”
I thought this was John with the ceremonial groundbreaking of the Lennon/Ono international golf course.
Who would steal an acorn? A fucking chipmunk, that’s who.
Chipmunks love The Beatles too.