The Beatles -- left to right: Ringo, Paul, John and George --
on their 1966 World Tour,
looking uneasy, maybe even shellshocked.
Which would have been understandable.
August 6, 1966: What would later be called "cancel culture" hits the biggest act in world entertainment at the time: The Beatles.
On March 4, 1966, The Evening Standard, a London-based newspaper but, like many, serving Great Britain nationally, published an article titled "How Does a Beatle Live?" written by Maureen Cleave. She had interviewed all 4 group members regularly, and accompanied them on their 1st visit to America in February 1964. She is widely believed to have had an affair with John, and to have been the subject of his song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)."
In her latest interview with John Lennon, she portrayed him as restless and searching for meaning in his life. The year before, he had written the song "Help!" While most American teenagers thought it was just a great rock and roll song, it was more than that: John was physically and mentally exhausted from 2 years of nonstop Beatlemania, and all the money he'd made hadn't reduced his stress. So he really was looking for help and meaning.
He and bandmate George Harrison had been reading about religion. Unlike George, who found a connection with Eastern, especially Indian, faiths, John found no comfort in it, or in any other religion. Cleave quoted him as saying:
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I'll be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first – rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
People in Britain barely noticed: The article provoked no controversy there. Church attendance there was in decline, and Christian churches were attempting to transform their image, to make themselves more "relevant to modern times."
At first, that was also the case in America. Later in March, Newsweek printed the quote. In May, Detroit magazine printed the interview. On July 3, The New York Times Magazine printed it. Still, there was no reaction worth mentioning.
On July 29, Datebook magazine published the interview, and also Cleave's most recent interview with Paul McCartney, in its September 1966 "Shout-Out" issue, which was dedicated to controversial youth-orientated themes, including recreational drugs, sex, long hair, and the Vietnam War.
Although only Paul was shown on the cover, Art Unger, the magazine's editor, put a quote from Lennon's interview on the cover: "I don't know which will go first – rock 'n' roll or Christianity!" In author Robert Rodriguez's description, the editor had chosen what he thought would be Lennon's "most damning comment" for maximum effect.
Except, while it probably should have been, that wasn't the quote that upset people: It was the line, "We're more popular than Jesus now."
And he was right. Granted, 2,000 years from now, if human civilization survives, there will likely be more Bibles sold than Beatle albums. But, at the time, kids were more interested in 4 young men from current Liverpool than in 1 young man from ancient Israel and his 12 disciples.
The people that freaked out over John's remarks shouldn't have asked, "How dare he say that?" They should have asked, "What can we do to make Jesus, once again, more popular than The Beatles?" (Disclaimer: I don't have an answer now, and I probably wouldn't have had an answer had I been around then.)
In Birmingham, Alabama, WAQY disc jockey Tommy Charles said, on the air, "That does it for me. I am not going to play The Beatles anymore." He destroyed their records on the air. Local UPI reporter Al Benn filed a news report in New York City, culminating in a major story in The New York Times on August 5. Radio stations all over the country, including in supposedly liberal cities like New York and Boston, announced that they would no longer play Beatle songs.
On August 6 came the kind of event that one would have expected in Nazi Germany: In Reno, Nevada, station KCBN announced a public bonfire for that night, where the band's albums would be burned.
Many stations in Southern cities followed. Paul compared it to what the Nazis did with books they didn't like, and called it "hysterical low-grade American thinking."
Brian Epstein, the group's manager, who was Jewish, shrugged it off at first. saying, "If they burn Beatles records, they've got to buy them first." But then the press office at the Vatican -- though not Pope Paul VI himself -- weighed in, issuing this statement: "Some subjects must not be dealt with profanely, not even in the world of beatniks." Now, it wasn't just a bunch of ignorant, bigoted, archconservative Southern Baptists that were angry at the Fab Four: It was, officially, the Roman Catholic Church.
What's more, there were death threats. Now, John was scared: He had put his bandmates, and even their loved ones -- by this point, all but Paul were married, John and Ringo Starr each had one son, and George had a sister and her children living in St. Louis -- at physical risk.
And so, for what turned out to be the only time in his public life, John Lennon ate crow, and apologized for something he'd said or done.
On August 11, the Beatles flew from London to Chicago, where the North American leg of their World Tour was to begin. That night, at the Astor Tower Hotel, at a press conference in front of TV cameras, John said, "I suppose if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I would have got away with it. I'm sorry I opened my mouth. I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion. I was not knocking it. I was not saying we are greater or better."
He stressed that he had been remarking on how other people viewed and popularized the band. He described his own view of God by quoting the Bishop of Woolwich, "not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us."
He was adamant that he was not comparing himself with Christ, but attempting to explain the decline of Christianity in the UK. He closed with what could be considered a halfhearted apology: "If you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then, okay, I'm sorry." (Shades of more recent "I'm sorry if I offended anyone" statements.)
Most American journalists accepted this. A New York Times editorial said that the matter was over. Even the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano (The Roman Observer), decided that the apology was sufficient.
But it wasn't over. On August 13, in South Carolina, the Ku Klux Klan "crucified" a Beatles record on a large wooden cross, which they burned. On the same night, radio station KLUE in Longview, Texas held a Beatles bonfire. The next day, a lightning bolt struck its transmission tower, briefly knocking it off the air. Maybe this was God confirming that He had accepted John's apology as well.
It still wasn't over. On August 15, The Beatles played District of Columbia Stadium (later renamed Robert F. Kennedy Stadium), in Washington, which was still considered a semi-Southern city at that point, and the KKK picketed the concert. On August 19, The Beatles played their only scheduled concert in the South, at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. The Klan picketed this show, too. During the concert, a spectator threw a firecracker onstage, and all 4 members later said that they thought someone had fired a gun.
(Memphis was, of course, the hometown of Elvis Presley. If anyone asked Elvis for his thoughts on the matter, they've never been made public.)
To make matters worse, John couldn't keep his mouth shut. On August 17, before their concert at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, he gave his approval to Americans fleeing to Canada to avoid the military draft. At a press conference in New York before their concert at Shea Stadium on August 22, John said the Vietnam War was "wrong." The year before, they had filled all 55,000 available seats at the Flushing Meadow stadium. This time, "only" 40,000 showed up, with pickets both for and against them facing off against each other. (There was no fight between these factions.)
It was their most stressful tour ever, and George said he'd rather leave the band than ever go on another tour. They decided they wouldn't, and would be only a recording band from that point onward, although they did not publicly announce it yet. George agreed to stay -- for now.
The last concert on the tour was at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29. They were supported by The Ronettes, The Cyrkle, Bobby Hebb, and The Remains. (The Cyrkle were also managed by Epstein's company.) Attendance: 25,000, meaning about 17,000 empty seats. (In 1971, the NFL's San Francisco 49ers joined baseball's San Francisco Giants there, leading to an expansion to 69,000 seats.)
As usual, they roared through their set, playing 11 songs in 33 minutes, unable to hear themselves over all the screaming, partly due to the fact that, in spite of having a year pass since their first round of stadium concerts, no one had yet figured out how to stage a rock concert in a ballpark. (By the 1970s, that problem would be solved.) The last song they played was a cover of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally," sung by Paul.
While they'd decided not to tour again, even the four of them did not know that this would be their last paying concert together, ever. There would be the concert on the roof of the building where Apple Records was based, on January 30, 1969. And each of them would have notable solo gigs, with Paul and Ringo living and continuing to tour into the 2020s. But The Beatles would never have another official concert.
In 1970, for his solo album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, John recorded a song titled "God," in which he rattled off things and people he didn't believe in: Magic, the I-Ching, the Bible, tarot cards, Adolf Hitler, Jesus, John F. Kennedy, Buddha, mantras, Gita, yoga, kings, Elvis, Zimmerman (meaning Bob Dylan), and, finally, The Beatles. He said, "I just believe in me. Yoko and me. And that's reality." In 1971, for his album Imagine, he recorded a song of the same title, asking people to imagine there's no Heaven or Hell, "and no religion, too."
In contrast, in 1970, for his solo album All Things Must Pass, George recorded "My Sweet Lord," in which he seemed to want to get to know God better -- but the background singers, after chanting, "Hallelujah," began chanting, "Hare Krishna," and moved on to chanting the names of the Hindu gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.
Maureen Cleave, who wrote the original article, died in 2021, at the age of 87.
*
August 6, 1966 was a Saturday. Back in Britain, a preseason exhibition game, or "friendly," was played between two of the most popular soccer teams in the country. Arsenal Football Club of North London traveled to Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow, Scotland, home of Rangers Football Club.
Arsenal were in a transition, having just survived relegation the season before, and had hired a new manager, Bertie Mee. He would build them into England's greatest team once again. But that would take 5 seasons. In contrast, Rangers were, as usual, one of the better teams in Scotland, and had won the Scottish Cup the last season. Rangers won this match, 2-0.
And these baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-4 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Jim Bouton and Sam McDowell started, but, in relief, it was Whitey Ford who was the winning pitcher, and Luis Tiant the losing pitcher. Clete Boyer and Horace Clarke hit home runs. Neither Mickey Mantle nor Roger Maris played.
* The New York Mets lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-8 at Shea Stadium. The Cardinals led 5-0 after 3 innings, then the Mets led 8-4 after 4, but the Cards won. Lou Brock went 2-for-4 with a walk, a stolen base and an RBI. Ken Boyer hit a home run for the Mets over the team he had captained to a World Championship, and won a Most Valuable Player award for, just 2 years earlier.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Atlanta Braves, 6-5 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Hank Aaron went 1-for-3 with 2 walks. Joe Torre went 2-for-5.
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Washington Senators, 4-0 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Dave McNally pitched a 7-hit shutout. Frank Robinson went 3-for-4 with an RBI. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-3 with an RBI.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 9-3 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Roberto Clemente went 0-for-4, but had an RBI on a bases-loaded walk. Willie Stargell did not play. Pete Rose went 2-for-4 with 2 RBIs.
* The Boston Red Sox beat the Detroit Tigers, 8-2 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-2 with 2 walks. Tony Conigliaro went 1-for-5. Al Kaline went 1-for-4.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the San Francisco Giants, 5-2 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Ernie Banks went 2-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBIs. Robin Roberts started for the Cubs, but only pitched 3 innings, and made just 5 more major league appearances before retiring. Willie Mays went 2-for-4.
* The Minnesota Twins beat the Kansas City Athletics, 5-0 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Jim "Mudcat" Grant pitched a 4-hit shutout. Harmon Killebrew went 1-for-3 with a walk.
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Houston Astros, 4-3 at the Astrodome in Houston. Don Drysdale outpitched Mike Cuellar.
* And the Chicago White Sox beat the California Angels, 7-1 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim).
