From the S&S archives:
U.S. got his peace message, Beatle believes

FRANKFURT (S&S) — Beatle John Lennon, forced to leave Canada after 11 days, rendered a grinning salute to The Stars and Stripes Friday and said he managed to reach the United States with peace messages although he couldn't get in himself.

"I got into the United States by the press," said the unsheared musician who stepped off a plane here with his passive-faced Japanese wife, Yoko Ono, and her sleeping daughter, Kyoko, as well as three dapper young men who said they were making a documentary film on the peripatetic couple.

"In seven days we talked to 300 radio stations and thousands of people," said the Beatle, who was struggling to carry his 5-year-old stepdaughter from the plane into a private airport lounge for a two-hour wait before flying on to London. He said they received the press during a Montreal "bed-in."

They had not planned to come to Germany, but there had been a mix-up about tickets, he said.

When Lennon learned that he was talking to a reporter for The Stars and Stripes, he raised his hand in mock seriousness and saluted, then broke into a grin.

"Oh, yes, I am traveling with two of my wives, three brothers and a retarded nephew who wants to be a photographer," he joshed. "We'll have more bed-ins, of course ... bed-ins, ted-ins and fred-ins."

To get any sense out of Lennon, you have to be willing to listen to a lot of flippant lippancy but he seems to be in good humor always and there is a twinkle behind his thick little eyeglasses.

He said he is resolved to try again to go to North America and that is why he made "a deal" with the Canadians.

"I withdrew our request for an extension of our permit to stay and the Canadians withdrew their deportation order," he said. "I guess they didn't want us because of that drug thing back home.

(Lennon was convicted Nov. 28 of having enough marijuana in his apartment for 40 cigarettes.)

"The deal will make it easier to try to get into Canada again," he said. "There would have been a real hassle with a deportation order against me, and once I'm OK in Canada I hope the Americans will let me in, too."

Does he still smoke pot?

"I stay clean now," he said.

John and Yoke were dressed in similar suits with bell-bottom trousers. Hers was white and his was black and looked something like the uniform of a German carpenter. He kept shifting the weight of the little girl, who is the daughter of his wife and Athony Cox. Once he dropped her blanket on the floor as people in the terminal stopped to stare.

"We had to leave and now we are going home to our basement flat in London," Lennon said. "I had a good sleep on the plane and now I am ready to go again."

As soon as he reached the lounge, the Beatle deposited [Kyoko] on a couch and bummed a French cigarette from one of the men in the group.

"She is a heavy girl," he said. "She is 5 and has a 15-inch neck."

He said he has no plans except "to enjoy life."

"I will work as soon as I feel like it," he said. "I don't plan things.

"I enjoyed Canada because I saw the people."

Asked what was behind his campaign of giving away acorns, Lennon brushed aside the question.

Yoko, who had sat silently during the interview, suddenly decided to speak up.

"It is the idea of peace," she said.

Lennon said people send the acorns to them and they pass them on to others.

"But acorn giving is just a sideline," he said. "The bed-in is the main event."

Since their civil wedding March 20 in Gibraltar, the Lennons have bedded down publicly in the Bahamas, Geneva, Amsterdam and Montreal, and held a "bag-in," in which they occupied the same bag, in Vienna. The demonstrations are "to stimulate interest in world peace" and to protest "world violence," he explained.