Yoko Ono Celebrates John Lennon's Birthday With Attempt At World's Largest Human Peace Sign

By Frank Donovan

Today VH1 was on the scene as over two-thousand people gathered in the East Meadow of Central Park for an early celebration of what would have been John Lennon’s 75th birthday on October 9th. We assembled ourselves into what we hoped would be the largest-ever human peace sign. A representative from the Guinness Book of World Records stood by, but alas we did not break the record set by 5,814 people in Ithaca in 2008.

At 12:30pm helicopters swirled overhead to document the event as we sang “Give Peace a Chance.”

Dave Davies of The Kinks performed at the event co-hosted by Yoko Ono and The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. Now winding down its month-long New York residency, the non-profit offers songwriting and video production workshops for kids.

The crowd erupted in applause when Ono herself took the stage to express her gratitude to the thousands of participants and added that the event was a beautiful birthday present to her late husband John.

This past Sunday Ono headlined the Modern Sky Festival in Central Park with the rotating-lineup Plastic Ono Band, this time including her son Sean Lennon, Thurston Moore, and Georgia Hubley of Yo La Tengo, among others.