This is the second installment of a multi-part series about anti-rock ‘n’ roll crusaders from years gone by and the damage they do in the name of “protecting the children.” These pieces feature a parade of villainous villains of the rock censorship world, some that you’ll recognize, some that you’ve hardly even heard of. If you missed Part 1, you’ll find that HERE.
Back when the Fab Moptop Beatles came to our American shores in 1964, it truly was an exciting time. Through the years, some have claimed the four lads from Liverpool essentially resurrected the long-dead monster that was rock ‘n’ roll (Although smart people, such as myself and loyal Flaming Spud readers, know that’s not really what happened!)
Back then most of us kids (I was in 5th grade at the time) were crazy about the band, while most oldsters probably looked on with winking bemusement. I’ve already written about my grandfather being delighted by his grandsons’ Beatlemania, always asking friends who came over, “What do you think about those long-haired boys from England?” Sure, there were a few old grumps who were shocked at all the long hair and yeah yeah yeahs. And I’d like to think that Allan Sherman didn’t really hate The Beatles like he said in the word of his song, he just figured it was a kooky teenage fad that was fair game for parody.
Judge for yourself:
So basically The Beatles had few if any organized opponents in the early era of Beatlemania.
But that all changed in the summer of 1966.
In February of that year, John Lennon was interviewed in his home by Maureen Cleave, a British music writer who had toured with the band. This was for a series in The Evening Standard called “How Does a Beatle Live?” featuring profiles of all four Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein.
It was in this interview with Cleave where Lennon made his notorious remarks:
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.
Cleave’s Evening Standard piece was published on March 4, 1966. According to a 2016 story by Jordan Runtagh in Rolling Stone, Lennon’s words didn’t cause much of a ruckus at the time:
If the Jesus comment was regarded at all in the 2000-word profile, it was mostly met with bemusement. “In England, nobody took any notice,” Lennon reflected in 1974. “They know this guy’s blabbing off – who is he?” For many, it was just a flippant remark made by a 25-year-old pop star.
Besides, Lennon was not making a particularly revolutionary point. Though few would have the gall to cite their personal popularity as a barometer, no one could deny that church attendance was in steep decline. Religious advocates had recently made similar arguments with op-eds run in the Daily Mail and the Church Times. …
Editorial staff for the Evening Standard didn’t deem the “Jesus” quote worthy of a headline, or even a highlight in the copy layout. The rest of the British press, always ready to pounce on anything noteworthy from the Fab Four, ignored it as well. The quote didn’t garner a single news bulletin or comment from any columnist or editorialist. When the article was syndicated for other global publications – including The New York Times – it also passed without comment.
That was in March. Things heated up just a few months later in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
An American teen magazine called Dateline (a rag I never read. In guess I preferred 16 magazine and Tiger Beat) published Cleave’s Beatles profiles in its September issue. The cover featured a photo of Paul McCartney along with several short quotes from the articles inside.
Again from Rolling Stone:
Unger used two of Cleave’s quotes on the cover spread to attack the twin pillars of racism and religion. The first remark, “It’s a lousy country where anyone black is a dirty n—-r” came from Paul McCartney. But it was the line from Lennon that lit the fuse: “I don’t know which will go first—rock & roll or Christianity.”
And thus, all Hell broke loose.
It started in Birmningham, Alabama, the old stomping grounds of Asa “Ace” Carter, the Ku Klux Klan leader and George Wallace speechwriter who was one of the OG anti-rock voices in America, (who I looked at in the first installment of “Krazy Kristian Krusaders”).
A disc jockey at Birmingham’s WAQY came across the Dateline interview. In a 2016 story in AL.com (an online news site for Alabama newspapers), writer J. Willoughby explained:
Tommy Charles came in to the station one morning looking for fodder to talk about on his show, like he did every day. It was usually the local mayor, or a street that needed fixing or something he could rant on to get a few calls and move on to the next top 40 record.
He found it. John Lennon said he was “bigger than Jesus.” So, that was his show that day.
He declared that WAQY would not only no longer play Beatle records (which infuriated program director Frank Lewis since The Beatles had about eight songs in their top 20 playlist) but they would hold a bonfire to burn Beatle records and everybody was invited.
I found a 44-second video of Tommy Charles blathering about those blasphemous Beatles on a site called eFootage. I can’t post it here — they want $99 for it. But here’s the link if you want to listen.
In the video, Charles says:
If you as an American teenager are offended at statements by a group of foreign singers that strike at the very basis of our existence as God-fearing patriotic citizens, then we urge you to take your Beatles records, pictures and souvenirs and take them to pickup points about to be named, and the night of The Beatles’ appearance in Memphis August 19, they will be destroyed in a huge public bonfire at a place to be named soon.
“Just another day in a radio personality’s life trying to stir up some phone calls and press,” Willoughby wrote. “And press he got.”
This story from United Press International went all over the country, outraging preachers, politicians and right-wing radio hosts who organized anti-Beatles boycotts, demonstrations and record burnings.
Ironically, the Birmingham Beatles burn that Charles was promoting never came to pass. He said it’s because Lennon apologized for his blasphemous attack on our existence as God-fearing patriotic citizens. Others said it was because the city of Birmingham had a ban against public bonfires.
Damned liberal fire marshal!
But Beatles fires burned in other places. Here’s one from Chester, S.C.
The whole uproar came just as The Beatles were releasing their album Revolver (long my personal favorite) and starting their summer tour.
That Memphis show Tommy Charles mentioned in his video — actually two shows, one in the afternoon, the other at night — turned out to be intense. It was the tour’s only performances in the Deep South. There had been threats of violence. The mayor of Memphis at the time Mayor William Ingram lobbied his city’s Board of Commissioners to ban the show at the Mid-South Coliseum. They did pass a unanimous resolution “expressing their official disapproval” of the concerts and “advised the Beatles that they are not welcome in the City of Memphis.”
“The Beatles will be dead and forgotten, literally and figuratively, in a relatively short time. I’m sure more Bibles than Beatles records are sold” Mayor Ingram told UPI.
But the band had a contract, so the show went on. About 80 local cops escorted the bus carrying the band from Memphis International Airport. Protesters greeted the lads along the route leading into the city. “One of them would haunt McCartney for the rest of his life,” Runtagh wrote in Rolling Stone. Paul was quoted saying:
We pulled in there in the coach and there was this little blond-haired kid, he could have been no older than 11 or 12, who barely came up to the window, screaming at me through the plate glass, banging the window with such vehemence. I thought, “Gosh, I wonder how much he knows about God? He’s only a young boy. It can only be what he’s been fed, but he’s been fed that we are the anti-Christ or something. This was the face of a zealot!”
Apparently protesters at Mid-South Coliseum itself were not that overwhelming. Memphis blogger Jeff Droke wrote:
There were a handful of protestors outside of the Coliseum with signs stating “Memphis Does Not Welcome the Beatles” and “Memphis Does Not Welcome Communists.” Local fundamentalist firebrand Baptist minister Reverend Jimmy Stroud, staged a rally outside the Coliseum along with six fully-robed members of the Ku Klux Klan.
I guess this God-fearing patriot was one of them:
Droke writes of the one scary moment during the concert itself:
About a minute into the song “If I Needed Someone,” an audience member threw a Cherry Bomb … at the stage. Memphis Police Officers apprehended the subject and Lennon dedicated the song “Nowhere Man” to the agitator. The other member of the Beatles and many in the crowd thought that the noise was gunfire aimed at Lennon.
By the way, Droke’s blog post has the set lists for both Memphis shows — surprisingly without a single song from Revolver — as well as a ticket to the show. The cost was $5.50.
My favorite story about the Beatle-banners comes from Texas, via a longtime Longview News-Journal columnist Van Craddock, who, on the Stephen F. Austin University website wrote about what happened to a local radio station promoting a Beatles burning in Longview in 1966:
That night several thousand teens, including yours truly, descended on KLUE for the history making “Beatles Bonfire.” Thousands of dollars of Beatles’ records went up in smoke as the rowdy crowd cheered and sang Elvis Presley songs. (By the way, none of the records that went to blazes that night belonged to me. I left my Beatles collection safely at home.)
Then something truly bizarre happened, and it has become a part of radio lore. On Saturday, Aug. 13, only a day after the bonfire, a bolt of lightning struck KLUE’s transmission tower. The Longview paper said:
“Phil Ransom, news director, was knocked unconscious when the lightning coursed into the (KLUE) building and was rushed to Good Shepherd Hospital … Ransom regained consciousness shortly afterward and was believed in good condition, although he was being held for observation Saturday evening.” A KLUE spokesman said the lightning “caused extensive damage to radio equipment.”
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
I mentioned above that Lennon did apologize for his statement that pushed the Bible bangers, Klansmen, etc. over the edge. Even as a child, I always loved the words he used.
I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion. I was not knocking it. I was not saying we’re better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is …
He called GOD a THING?!?!?
So after Memphis, The Beatles had several more concerts left on the tour. They did their last show in San Francisco on August 29, 1966. And when I say last show, I mean last show. They stopped touring and never played in public again until their famous short impromptu rooftop concert in London on January 30, 1969.
It’s tempting to think back on the “Bigger than Jesus” controversy as a laughable convergence of publicity-crazy DJs, religious kooks and frumpy old squares. And it was. But the legacy of this craziness didn’t stop in August, 1966.
Years later, a lone nut and former Beatlemaniac named Mark David Chapman, learned about those statements and turned against Lennon and the band. Eventually, in 1980. he murdered John.
And a would-be killer named Michael Abram — the knife-wielding maniac who broke into George Harrison’s house and seriously injured the ex-Beatle in 1999, also was angered, all those years later, by the 1966 Lennon interview, psychiatrists who interviewed him said.
Dr. Nigel Eastman told jurors that Abram thought all four of the Beatles practised black magic. “That upset him,” Eastman said of Abram. “He thought the Beatles had gone too far.”
In conclusion, here are some thoughts about theology by John Lennon.
Coming soon: Part 3 of Krazy Kristian Krusaders Against Rock ‘ n’ Roll!
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