On this day (March 20) in 1969, John Lennon married Yoko Ono.
The nuptials were completed in a mere 10 minutes in the British territory of Gibraltar, located off Spain's southern coast. The couple had hoped to get married in France, but those plans didn't work out.
Less than a week after the wedding, the newlyweds staged their famous "bed-in for peace" at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam.
Lennon chronicled the events leading up to their wedding in the Beatles hit "The Ballad of John and Yoko," which was released as a non-album single in May 1969 and reached No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Interestingly, the single's American picture sleeve featured a photo of Ono and Lennon with the other three Beatles standing behind them. (The song subsequently appeared on the compilation albums Hey Jude, 1967-1970 (The Blue Album), Past Masters and 1.)
In the song's lyrics, Lennon sings, "Finally made the plane into Paris / Honeymooning down by the Seine / Peter Brown called to say / You can make it OK / You can get married in Gibraltar near Spain."
A video for the song released in 2015 features footage of Lennon and Ono as well as the Beatles in the studio. Peter Brown, mentioned in the lyrics and featured in the video, was the personal assistant to Beatles manager Brian Epstein and served as the best man at Lennon and Ono's wedding, as well as Paul McCartney's wedding with Linda Eastman.
The song's chorus - "Christ you know it ain't easy / You know how hard it can be / The way things are going / They're gonna crucify me" -- is a call back to Lennon's controversial remarks in 1966 that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus."
Lennon and Ono's marriage survived his famous "lost weekend" of late 1973-'74 when he took a break from Ono and hung out in Los Angeles with fellow music luminaries Harry Nilsson, Alice Cooper, Bernie Taupin and Mickey Dolenz, and had an affair with May Pang, who had served as Lennon and Ono's assistant.
Their relationship came to a tragic end on Dec. 8, 1980, when Lennon was assassinated by a deranged fan as he and Ono were returning home from a recording session.
Sadly, Lennon was on a new high in his musical career and personal life, as he rediscovered the joy of fatherhood with the birth of his second son Sean - his first with Ono - and the pair had completed the acclaimed comeback album Double Fantasy.
Less than two weeks after Lennon's death, Double Fantasy and its lead single "(Just Like) Starting Over" both went to No. 1.
In an interview conducted for The Billboard Book of Number One Albums, Ono reflected on the album and how the meaning of the songs changed following Lennon's murder.
"'I'm Losing You,' when I play it now, it really hits me," Ono said. "'Starting Over' is really a very happy song, but because of John's death, it's ironic. We felt like we were going to be together for another 50 years or something. We didn't know we weren't meant to be together."
Understandably, "all of the Double Fantasy songs are hard for me to listen to," Ono added. "When we made it, it was just such a happy time and our joy is reflected in the album, literally, but because of that, it is even sadder. It just shows that we didn't know our fate at all."
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