Being John Lennon by Ray Connolly

Author:Ray Connolly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

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‘We were on stage . . . our lives had been threatened, then someone let off a firecracker . . . We each thought it was the other that had been shot’

Almost before the newspaper headlines about the snub to Mrs Marcos had begun to fade, the Beatles were back on the world’s front pages. At least John was, and this time his photograph was appearing alongside those of bonfires of burning Beatles albums.

What he hadn’t considered when he’d talked to Maureen Cleave the previous February was that her interview might be syndicated – which would make it possible for a little-known American teenage magazine called DATEbook to put his thoughts about Christianity on its cover. When the article had been published in the UK, and then in many other countries, there had been no cries of outrage. But when it appeared in the Bible Belt of the United States, in a totally different kind of publication from the sophisticated London Evening Standard, and, as a publicity stunt, a disc jockey in Birmingham, Alabama, read out that John thought the Beatles were ‘more popular than Jesus’, the effect was, literally, incendiary.

As across the South preachers rose up in their pulpits and fulminated against the Beatles, in South Carolina the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan nailed Beatles albums to burning crosses and radio stations began to ban the playing of Beatles records.

Back in England, waiting to fly to America, John was at first mystified by the rumpus. Then he became annoyed. And then worried. Coming to his aid, Maureen Cleave wrote in the Evening Standard that he ‘was not comparing the Beatles with Christ. He was simply observing that so weak was the state of Christianity, the Beatles were, to many people, better known. He was deploring rather than approving this.’

It didn’t help much. In Pennsylvania, Republican Senator Robert Fleming announced that he would try to have the Beatles banned from the state, while in Cleveland the pastor of a Baptist church threatened to excommunicate any parishioner who attended a Beatles concert.

Brian’s first thought was to cancel the tour. But that, he was told, would cost at least a million dollars. The Beatles, and especially John, had no choice but to go to America and explain away the misunderstanding.

The mob hysteria that had created Beatlemania had now turned septic and gone into reverse. Love had turned to anger and local demagogues were using the Beatles as an excuse to attack a younger generation of whose questioning attitudes they disapproved. The vast majority of Americans were bemused by the actions of some of their Christian fundamentalist compatriots – John was only a pop singer, after all. But with his short-sighted stare-in-your face defiance, he made an easy target.

The new tour was due to open in Chicago, and after a media mob descended on John at O’Hare airport when the Beatles landed on 11 August, a more organised press conference took place in Tony Barrow’s squashed rooms that night. Those who

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