It was originally called “Make Love Not War,” but that was such a cliché that you couldn’t say it anymore, so I wrote it obscurely, but it’s all the same story. How many times can you say the same thing over and over? When this came out, in the early Seventies, everybody was starting to say the Sixties was a joke, it didn’t mean anything, those love-and-peaceniks were idiots. [Sarcastically] “We all have to face the reality of being nasty human beings who are born evil and everything’s gonna be lousy and rotten so boo-hoo-hoo…” “We had fun in the Sixties,” they said, “but the others took it away from us and spoiled it all for us.” And I was trying to say: “No, just keep doin' it.”

—John Lennon