In 1969, a Teenage Photographer Used a Fake Press Pass to Shoot John and Yoko’s “Bed-In”

Knowing their March 20, 1969, marriage would be a huge press event, John Lennon and Yoko Ono decided to use the publicity to promote world peace. They spent their honeymoon in the presidential suite (Room 702) at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel for a week between March 25 and 31, inviting the world’s press into their hotel room every day between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Govert De Roos was only 15 at the time, but managed to make it inside the room despite his age.

Govert De Roos and the photographer holding up one of the famous photos he shot in the location he shot it from.

“In those days I just had one goal in life, I wanted to be a photographer,” De Roos recalled. “I read in the paper that they were giving a press conference, so I thought, ‘I have to get into that room.’”

De Roos managed to sneak in by making his own fake press pass. The teen brought a phony press card he made to the hotel and stood in line to get into the room as a photojournalist. Luckily for De Roos, his fake pass worked and he managed to shoot a series of career-defining photos of the bed-in.

“I think the security guys thought, ‘okay let him go,’” he said.

The fake press card Govert De Roos brought to the hotel.

Due to the couple’s very public image, the Amsterdam bed-in was greeted by fans, and received a great deal of press coverage. Following the event, when asked if he thought the bed-in had been successful, Lennon became rather frustrated. He insisted that the failure of the press to take the couple seriously was part of what he and Ono wanted: “It’s part of our policy not to be taken seriously. Our opposition, whoever they may be, in all manifest forms, don’t know how to handle humor. And we are humorous.”

After their nonconformist artistic expressions such as the nude cover of the Two Virgins album, the press were expecting them to be having sex, but instead the couple were just sitting in bed, wearing pyjamas—in Lennon’s words “like angels”—talking about peace with signs over their bed reading “Hair Peace” and “Bed Peace.”

After seven days, they flew to Vienna, Austria, where they held a bagism press conference.