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Young celebrities have to work so hard to stay in the public eye these days, what with public drunkenness, weight gain, rehab and the occasional jail term. Back in the ‘60s, John Lennon and Yoko Ono created a public scandal by sitting up in bed.

The Montreal Bed-In was a sequel to the Amsterdam Bed-In of a few months before, which Lennon detailed in the hit song, "The Ballad of John and Yoko."

Staying in a posh hotel bedroom for a whole week didn't come easy for the Beatle and his new wife, though. The couple came up with the idea in March of 1969, while honeymooning in the presidential suite of the Amsterdam Hilton, as a way of using the celebrity press to spread a message of peace. Equal parts performance art, marathon press conference and nonviolent Vietnam War protest, the weeklong stunt confused the media (The Daily Mirror proposed that Lennon "seems to have gone completely off his rocker") but enthralled Beatles fans.

Eager to try it in the U.S., John and Yoko scheduled a second bed-in in New York. Those plans were dashed, however, when the U.S. Embassy in London refused the couple a visa due to a marijuana bust the previous fall. The Bahamas provided an alternative, but after one night Lennon couldn't take the tropical heat. Hence, the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec.

"I was thinking it was going to be just another assignment," said Tedd Church, who was in his late twenties when assigned by the Montreal Gazette to snap photos of the bed-in. "But there were a hell of a lot of people at the hotel by the time I got there. The hotel sent two security people up to their room, and they were turning all sorts of characters away. I ended up staying most of the day and came back the next."

Despite the bedlam in the hotel's hallways, Church remembers John and Yoko as being very accommodating to guests.

"They were great," he said. "They'd invite people to come in, sit down on the edge of the bed and chat. It was very friendly, especially since they were constantly having their picture taken or a microphone shoved in front of them. Then they would ask everyone to leave for a few minutes so they could take a shower or change clothes."

Amazing what you can do from a bed: John and Yoko's second and final bed-in concluded with the recording of "Give Peace a Chance," the chorus of which was sung by counterculture spokesman Dr. Timothy Leary, singer Petula Clark, comedian Tommy Smothers and members of the Canadian Radha Krishna Temple, among others. Credited to the Plastic Ono Band, the song peaked at #14 on the Billboard pop chart.

"They looked good, they really did," said Church, whose photographs of the famous couple adorn the walls of Room 1742 (now known as the Lennon Suite, priced between $900 and $1800 per night). "You had to admire them for what they doing."

This is number seven in our "Our Defining Moments" series, an ongoing ReZoom.com feature looking back on the moments that, through the power of photography, have been emblazoned into our collective consciousness. To see another "Our Defining Moments," click here.