August 6, 1966: The Beatles "Get Canceled" by America's Religious Right

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, 60 years ago: 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.

* 

November 5, 1943: The Bombing of the Vatican

November 5, 1943, 80 years ago: Vatican City, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church, and neutral in World War II despite having been completely surrounded by the City of Rome, the capital of (until a few months ago) Fascist Italy, is bombed by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe.

Four bombs are dropped on the microstate. There is some damage, but there are no deaths. The aircraft responsible is never identified. There would be another bombing on March 1, 1944, causing less damage, but taking a life. In neither case was Pope Pius XII within range of the bombs.

Vatican City, usually listed as just "The Vatican," is the world's smallest independent nation, with just 121 acres of land, about half of which is parkland; and, as of 2023, 764 permanent residents. It is dominated by St. Peter's Basilica, the center of the Catholic world. The original Basilica was finished around AD 360, and the current one dates to 1626. There are no chain restaurants -- indeed, no public restaurants at all -- but, one block east into Rome, there is a McDonald's.

November 5, 1943 was a Friday. Playwright and actor Sam Shepard was born. So was Friedman Paul Erhardt, the TV chef billed as Chef Tell.

Top 10 Religious Nicknames In Sports

Today, a Conclave of Cardinals meets at the Vatican to begin selecting a new Pope, to replace Benedict XVI, who resigned in order to avoid impeachment. I mean, to spend more time with his family. I mean, because he felt he was too old and infirm to do the job.

There's an old joke: "Who are the two former Cardinals honored in Monument Park in Yankee Stadium?" Of course, for centuries, every Pope had been a Cardinal first, so the answer is "Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II." Each delivered a Mass at the old Stadium: Paul VI in 1965, the first Papal Mass ever delivered in the Western Hemisphere; and John Paul II in 1979.

What the joke doesn't tell you is that 1920s manager Miller Huggins and 1960s right fielder Roger Maris played for the St. Louis Cardinals, so there was an actual answer to the joke.

The Mass delivered in 2008, in the final season of the old Stadium, by Benedict XVI ruined the actual answer to the stupid joke. Unless Joe Torre, who (like Huggins) both played for and managed the St. Louis ballclub, gets his Plaque before Pope Unknown the Questionmarkth comes to become the first Pontiff to preach at the new Yankee Stadium.

John Paul II delivered Masses at Yankee Stadium, then Shea Stadium. He went to Yankee Stadium first.  Gee, maybe he really was infalliable. He also delivered Mass at Madison Square Garden.

Disclaimer: I was raised Methodist, therefore Protestant. I am not trying to denigrate faith in general or the Roman Catholic Church in particular. However, every organized religion has things for which it must answer to the God it claims to represent.

As Bill Veeck, who owned 3 different Major League Baseball teams, put it, "Baseball is like religion: Great game, lousy owners." Or, to put it another way, all too often, the fans/believers are ahead of the owners/bishops.

I hope the Vatican gets it right with their next "Commissioner."

Top 10 Religious Nicknames In Sports

10. Sports Pope. Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News gave this nickname to WFAN host Mike Francesa, because Francesa apparently believes himself to be infallible. This is the dumbest one, so I'm doing it first.

9. Lord. James William "Jimmy" Jordan was a mediocre middle infielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the mid-1930s. He appears to be the only ballplayer whose nickname was "Lord." I can't find any reference to a reason. So I'm doing it next.

8. Jesus. It takes a lot of guts to call someone that, unless it's his name, as many Spanish-speaking players have been named that, with the pronunciation "Hay-ZOOS." But 2 basketball players have had the nickname: Earl "the Pearl" Monroe was Black Jesus, and Larry Bird was Basketball Jesus.

Come on: Both were great players, but the closest either got to performing miracles was the Pearl sublimating his ego so that he could play with Walt Frazier, and Bird's steal on the Detroit Pistons. Although, with all the sweating that goes on on a basketball court, both could be said to have "walked on water."

In 1978, Ron Guidry had the best season any New York-based pitcher has ever had. In 1984, Dwight Gooden became even more celebrated, even though he wasn't as good.  Both times, people would remark about them, "He ain't God, man."

But before the 1978 Yanks-Red Sox playoff game, Guidry heard it from one of the Sox, and sent him a note saying, "No, I'm not God, but I'm the closest thing to it you'll ever face" -- a rare moment of ego from "Louisiana Lightning." And Keith Hernandez defended Gooden by saying, "No, but he might be God's Son."

There was a basketball player from New York whose father named him God Shammgod -- which might have been the inspiration for Ray Allen's character of Jesus Shuttlesworth in Spike Lee's film He Got Game. Not wanting to sound like he thought he was God, Shammgod began using the name Shammgod Wells, and that's how he was known in high school at New York's La Salle Academy. But when he got to Providence College, he was told he had to use his birth name or legally change it. He didn't have the $600 fee to go to court and have his name legally changed, so he became known as God Shammgod from then on. He played 2 years (1997-99) with the Washington Wizards, and then bounced around minor and international leagues for the next 10 years.

7. The Rabbi of Swat. When Babe Ruth arrived with the Yankees in 1920, and started bringing in fans with his home runs, and was nicknamed "The Sultan of Swat," New York Giants manager John McGraw was eager to find someone who could do the same for his club. He thought a Jewish player would be a big draw in New York. So he looked for someone who could be called "The Rabbi of Swat."

The good news: He found one, an outfielder named Mose Solomon, who was not just Jewish, but a New York native, growing up in the most stereotypically Jewish place in America, Manhattan's Lower East Side. And Mose seemed to be a decent player in the minor leagues: His batting average was .313, and in 1923 he hit 49 home runs in just 108 games -- at Class C, which was roughly equivalent to today's "Short-season A-ball."

The bad news: Solomon was less a Babe Ruth, more a Dave Kingman. He was a horrible fielder, and after 8 games in September 1923, McGraw determined that this guy was not going to play in the upcoming World Series against Ruth and the Yankees -- which the Yankees won. Solomon never played another major league game.

6. Superjew. Mike Epstein was a slugging 1st baseman for several teams. He came up to the Baltimore Orioles in 1966, too late to be on their World Series roster, but in 1972, he won a ring with the Oakland Athletics.

In the postseason, he wore a black armband in memory of the 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team who had been killed by terrorists at the Olympics. Teammates Ken Holtzman, who was also Jewish, and Reggie Jackson, who had grown up a black kid in a Jewish neighborhood in a Philadelphia suburb, also wore them. Neither team owner Charlie Finley nor Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, both freaks for conformity, took action against them -- maybe the only time Finley and Kuhn agreed with each other on something and did the right thing. (Reggie was injured in the final ALCS game and did not play in the Series, but he did wear the armband until then.)

5. The Caliph of Conversion. No, he wasn't a proselytizing Muslim, but you should still know the name of musical legend Tommy Walker. No, not the protagonist of The Who's rock opera Tommy. This Tommy Walker played for the University of Southern California in the late 1940s -- both on the football field, as a placekicker, and in the marching band, as a trumpeter.

He is the man who wrote "The Charge Call." He was trying to come up with a sound that would spur his team on, and thought of combining the "charge call" of Western-movie cavalries and the "Call to the Post" from horse racing, and came up with, "Dah dah dah DAT dah dahhhh!"

4. Deacon. This has been used for many baseball players, to suggest that they had high morals, including: James White, 1880s 3rd baseman; James McGuire, early 20th Century catcher; Bill McKechnie, 1910s 3rd baseman and 1920s-40s manager; and Vernon Law, 1960s pitcher.

I had read somewhere that Bill McKechnie actually was a deacon at his church, but this appears to be an exaggeration: He was not an official at the church, but he was a member of its choir. Vern Law, on the other hand, is a Mormon who was named a deacon in that faith at the age of 12, and a priest in it at 17. In 1960, at a time when the Cy Young Award was given to the most valuable pitcher in both leagues, he won it, as he was a major factor in the Pittsburgh Pirates winning the World Series.

Today, March 12, 2013, is Vernon Law's 83rd birthday. He is very much still active, both in his church and in baseball: His son Vance Law, also a former major leaguer, is the head baseball coach at Brigham Young University, and at adjoining Provo High School, Vern is the pitching coach.

But the best-known Deacon in sports is David Jones, the legendary defensive end who anchored the "Fearsome Foursome" of the 1960s Los Angeles Rams. He also had a political nickname: The Secretary of Defense. George Allen, who coached him in L.A., called him the greatest defensive end of modern football. Jones also created the term "sack" to describe tackling the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage. In 1999, The Sporting News ranked their 100 Greatest Football Players, and Deacon Jones came in at Number 13, the highest-ranking defensive end, ahead of even Reggie White.

Speaking of whom, White was an ordained minister. So was Mike Singletary before him. Both were nicknamed the Minister of Defense.

3. Preacher. Elwin Charles Roe was a crafty lefty who pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers, one of their famed "Boys of Summer." Some "boy": He was already 31 when he threw his 1st pitch for them, and was already a veteran of 4 seasons, plus 6 more in the minors, and he lived to be 92.

He got his nickname at age 3, when, back home in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, an uncle asked his name, and he said, "Preacher." When asked why he said that was his name, he said he liked the minister who would take him on horse-and-buggy rides.

Preacher Roe was a 5-time All-Star. In 1951, he went 22-3, and if there had been a National League Cy Young Award that year, it would have been down to him and the New York Giants' Sal Maglie. "Ole Preach" had a great curveball, and a spitball that was, with a wink and a nod, called a sinker.

But he missed out on the Dodgers' 2 most important seasons: He and 3rd baseman Billy Cox were traded there from the Pirates after the 1947 season that launched both Jackie Robinson and the Boys of Summer generation of Dodgers, and both were sent back to the Pirates after 1954, and it was the next year that the Dodgers finally won the World Series. Roe was about to turn 40, and retired rather than report to the Pirates.

My Grandma, a former Dodger fan from Queens, told me this story, and I can now confirm it: A great pitcher but a horrible hitter, Roe batted .110 lifetime, but in 1953 he hit a home run -- at, of all places, the toughest hitters' park in the league, Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. He got a standing ovation from the Pirate fans, who not only remembered him as one of their own, but knew just how strange this achievement was for him.

And Red Barber, the Dodgers' broadcaster, said, "Well, old Number 28 has hit a home run, and we'll never hear the end of it, folks!" Red was assuming that Ole Preach would talk about it forever. As I said, he lived to be 92, in 2008, and I'm sure he was still talking about it. I'm still talking about it now.

2. Mahatma. This title is from the Sanskrit language of the Indian subcontinent, meaning "Great Soul." It is similar in usage to the Christian title "Saint." It is most commonly associated with Mohandas Gandhi.

In sports, it is associated with Branch Rickey, the man who built the St. Louis Cardinal Pennant-winning teams of 1926 to 1946, the Brooklyn Dodger Pennant-winning teams of 1947 to 1956, and the Pittsburgh Pirate World Champions of 1960.

In spite of a decidedly non-Christian nickname, Rickey was a deeply devout Methodist, who wouldn't even show up for work at the ballpark on Sunday, being the Christian Sabbath. However, he had no problem accepting the profits gained on the day. How he rationalized that, I don't know.

1. The Pope. Paul Owens, longtime general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, was nicknamed Pope not just because his name was Paul and he was greatly admired, but because he actually did bear a bit of resemblance to Pope Paul VI, the Pontiff from 1963 to 1978. Owens also managed the Phillies to their 1983 Pennant.

In case you're wondering about former Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs running back Priest Holmes, that's his real name: Priest Anthony Holmes.