25 years ago this week, John Lennon was killed on a sidewalk in New York, an event in my life that was only second to 9/11 in terms of how it shocked me.
This week, BBC Radio is doing a series of radio shows on the life of Lennon. While most are about his music and his time with the Beatles, there is one program that should be listened to, as its about how the south and religious right tried to take down the group because of Lennon's religious remarks.
The program,
"Bigger Than Jesus" describes an incident in 1966 when people here in the US freaked out when they thought that Lennon had claimed in an interview that the Beatles were bigger than Christ. Of course, as they do now, the Christian Right took his comments way out of contex.
The incident started in the spring of 1966, when Maureen Cleeve, a british journalist and friend of the group, went to Lennon's house to do an extensive intervew that would touch on subjects that pop stars would normally not talk about. One of the subjects touched upon was religion, where Lennon made clear his unhappiness with organized Christianity.
Experience has sown few seeds of doubt in him: not that his mind is closed, but it's closed round whatever he believes at the time. 'Christianity will go,' he said. 'It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will 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.' He is reading extensively about religion.
The story was published in March, with nobody in the UK really taking notice, partially because people were used to Lennon expressing his opinions. That wouldn't happen in the US.
Several months later, a teen magazine, "Datebook" published parts of the interview, with the magazine putting the Jesus remark on the front page of the cover. That set off a firestorm all throughout the South, which still looked at Rock as the devils music. Quickly, DJs (most of them in the South but also in other parts of the US) started to orgaize movements to ban the Beatles music on the radio, burn their records and try and prevent them from touring the US that August.
The freaking out wasn't just happening here. The Vatican and the South African government also condemned the comment (South Africa banned Beatle records on the airwaves for many years afterward).
When the Beatles came to American in August, it was a very unhappy experience. The night before their first concert of the tour in Chicago, Lennon faced the press to explain his remarks, but the US press, as dumb then as they were now, kept pressing him for an appology for the remark. He wouldn't at first, but he finally broke down and appologized for it. The rest of the tour was tourture for the group, as they had to deal with protesters, death threats and continued questions about the comment. By the time the tour had ended in San Fransisco, the group had decided they would never tour again.
The incident changed Lennon, as he decided he didn't have to hold back his opinions anymore. He started making provocative comments (well, for 1966) in press conferences during the tour, especially on the Vietnam war.
Overall, this was a pretty disgusting incident and a telling one for all that the Religious Right would do going forward in trying to defeat those things they thought were not christian. In my opinion, this whole incidents made this entire country look like idiots to the rest of the world.