Musicians Do More In Bed Than Just... Sleep

​Today is the anniversary of one of the most unusual events in a most unusual decade. On May 26, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their "Bed-In for Peace" at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel. It was the second of such boudoir-bound protests (or, if you prefer, media stunts); the couple folded the first into their Amsterdam honeymoon that March.

John and Yoko's bed-ins failed to measurably increase the amount of world peace, but they did produce two wonderful songs in "The Ballad of John & Yoko" (the first) and "Give Peace a Chance," which the couple recorded in their Montreal suite with a choir including the Smothers Brothers and LSD guru Timothy Leary. (Hey, it was the '60s.)

To mark the occasion, Rocks Off compiled a few other memorable musical moments that came to pass between the sheets. Sorry, no sex - that would be too easy.

1. Keith Richards dreams of a hit: In the wee hours of May 7, 1965, the Rolling Stones guitarist woke up in a Clearwater, Fla., motel room, played about 30 seconds of a riff that had been floating around his slumbering brain into a bedside tape recorder and fell back asleep with the tape still running. In the morning, Richards played it for Mick Jagger, who thought it sounded "country"; almost exactly two months later, "Satisfaction" hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

2. Mike Myers and Madonna make out. Look at the unit on that guy! Wayne playing "Truth or Dare" with the Queen of Babe-lonia has always been one of Rocks Off's favorite Saturday Night Live sketches - it's from the December 1, 1990 episode hosted by John Goodman that also featured Faith No More's Mike Patton climbing into a giant fan on the music stage-set during "Epic" - and we still crack up whenever Wayne says "Hey, was that Prince?"

​3. Neil Young coughs up three classics. Rocks Off correspondent Classic Rock Bob reports that the new book Neil Young: An Illustrated History (which he'll review next week) repeats a story he's heard several times before: "Young was sick in bed with the flu and wrote 'Cinammon Girl,' 'Down By the River,' and 'Cowgirl in the Sand' all in one day." Those three songs form the core of Young's second album (and one of his absolute best), Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere; "Cinnamon" and "River" are in the mix of songs on the solo tour that brings him to Jones Hall next Friday.

Don't forget Rocks Off has a pair of tickets to the show we'll be giving away next week.