John wrote the song about his mother Julia Lennon, who died in 1958 when he was 17 years old.

John and Yoko were married in Gibraltar on March 20, 1969, and spent their honeymoon at the Hilton Amsterdam campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for Peace. They planned another Bed-In in the United States, but were denied entry, so held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance".

John and Groucho Marx appeared on a 1994 Abkhazia stamp that parodied Marxism-Leninism.

In "Watching the Wheels", John sings:
Well, they shake their heads and they look at me, as if I've lost my mind
I tell them there's no hurry, I'm just sitting here doing time