John Lennon famously urged the world to Give Peace A Chance.
And his old pal and fellow music legend Elton John has revealed he believes the murdered Beatle would have gone on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Rocket Man singer made his prediction in a moving interview with John’s youngest son Sean for a BBC radio tribute to Lennon, who would have turned 80 this year.
Elton,73, said the star “wanted to bring people together” and would “go to any lengths” to do it.
He also told 44-year-old Sean – whose mum is Yoko Ono –that his birth had helped to “mellow” his dad in the years before he was gunned down by Mark Chapman in New York in December 1980.
Elton said: “I think that if your dad had still been alive he would have maybe won the Nobel Peace Prize.
“He was he was a uniter and was prepared to go to any lengths to make people see what his point was.
“And a lot of people… like the FBI, they gave him a hard time, but it didn’t deter him. He was peace-loving, brilliant, funny, opinionated, a treasure – we need people like him today.”
Lennon married artist Yoko in 1969. They used their honeymoon as a Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton.
During a second Bed- In three months later at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Lennon wrote and recorded the anthemic Give Peace a Chance.
It was sung by a quarter of a million demonstrators against the Vietnam War in Washington DC later that year.
And the couple paid for billboards in 10 cities worldwide declaring: “War Is Over! If You Want It”.
His protests led to him being monitored by the FBI and US President Richard Nixon even tried to have him deported.
Elton met Lennon in 1973 and talks about the “wonderful two or three year whirlwind bromance” they shared. In 1974, he played on Lennon’s hit Whatever Gets You Thru The Night.
He also persuaded the Beatles star to share the stage with him at Madison Square Gardens – in Lennon’s last ever live appearance – and reunited him with Yoko after they had a brief split.
Elton revealed to Sean: “Playing on your dad’s record… I could have died and gone to heaven.”
But Elton didn’t see much of Lennon after their gig and Sean’s birth in October 1975.
He said: “I think when he had you, he mellowed a lot.
“I just think he relished spending the time with you that he probably hadn’t had with his first boy Julian.
“And I think it mellowed him a lot being back with your mum and having a family life.”
Lennon’s fellow Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, 78, also features on the programme, which is aired over this weekend.
He said their relationship in the band was a marriage of “opposites”.
“I look back on it now like a fan. How lucky was I to meet this strange Teddy boy off the bus who turned out to
play music like I did,” said McCartney. “And we get together and, boy, we complemented each other. It was a bit Yin Yang.”
“I had some stuff he didn’t have and he had stuff I didn’t have so when you put them together it made something extra.”
- John Lennon at 80 – Part 2 Sunday night on BBC Radio 2. Both parts available on BBC Sounds
