The Beatles 5

Highly Appreciated

THE BEATLES – Spiritual Side
 
 
 
 

“We’re more popular than Jesus now.” 

 

This might be the most provocative statement ever made by a rock star – and that is saying something.  The above quotation is by John Lennon in March 1966, back when the Beatles were alive and well, when he was interviewed by journalist Maureen Cleave for the British newspaper, the London Evening Standard.  Unlike the usual routine, Cleave interviewed each of the four Beatles individually rather than collectively. 

 

The interview raised few eyebrows until it created a firestorm when the interviews were reprinted in the American teen magazine Datebook in July 1966, with the John Lennon quotation placed on the magazine cover.  On August 5, 1966, the story made the front page of the New York Times.  Some radio DJ’s publicly announced that they would play no more Beatles songs, and there were bonfires of Beatles records in some areas; even the Ku Klux Klan joined in the protests.  There were also protests in Mexico City, and Beatles songs were banned on national radio stations in South Africa and Spain.  

 

The Beatles embarked on what would become their final American tour in August 1966; the animosity toward the band on that tour contributed to the decision by the Beatles to quit touring and become strictly a studio rock band.  From Wikipedia:  “According to [John] Lennon’s wife, Cynthia [Lennon], he was nervous and upset that he had made people angry simply by expressing his opinion.”  Their manager Brian Epstein first attempted to smooth things over by holding a press conference in New York City at the start of the tour, to no avail.  

 

Again, from Wikipedia:  “The Beatles attended a press conference in Chicago, IllinoisLennon did not want to apologize but was advised by [Brian] Epstein and [Beatles press officer Tony] Barrow that he should.  [John] Lennon quipped that ‘if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I might have got away with it’ but stressed that he was simply remarking on how other people viewed and popularized the band.”  

 

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John Lennon made the Beatles an easy target by his remark, but the fact is that church attendance was declining in England and elsewhere in Europe, a pattern that continued in the US some years later.  Although Pope Paul VI denounced Lennon’s statement (and actually Pope Benedict XVI apologized for this church stance in 2010), there were few church leaders joining the denunciation of the Beatles, since the Church was going through an intense period of re-examination in this time period.  For example, the Jesuit newspaper America wrote about the controversy:  “[John] Lennon was simply stating what many a Christian educator would readily admit.” 

 

Earlier that year, on April 8, 1966, the cover of Time magazine famously asked:  “Is God Dead?”  Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962, an earthshaking event in the Roman Catholic Church that attempted to re-frame Catholic teachings in a modern context, leading (among many other major changes) to services being conducted in the language of the people attending rather than Latin.  The ramifications remain strongly controversial to this day. 

 

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John Lennon himself had been reading extensively about religion before making his ill-advised statement, and Maureen Cleave noticed a copy of The Passover Plot by Hugh J. Schonfield on his bookshelf during her interview.  This scholarly work, which was published in 1965 (and informed many of Lennon’s views toward Christianity), was the Da Vinci Code of its day and portrayed Jesus and His closest disciples as having planned the events leading to the Crucifixion so that He could be taken down from the Cross after a few hours by well-connected individuals (such as Joseph of Arimathea) before He was actually dead and then nursed back to health. 

 

As reported in Wikipedia “In 1963, the Anglican Bishop of WoolwichJohn A. T. Robinson, published a controversial but popular book, Honest to God, urging the nation to reject traditional church teachings on morality and the concept of God as an ‘old man in the sky’, and instead embrace a universal ethic of love.”  John Lennon quoted this book in his Chicago press conference.  

 

Also gaining currency in the 1960’s was the notion of loving Jesus Christ and what He stood for, but not wanting to become involved in the Christian Church.  John Lennon echoed these sentiments when he was asked to look back on the controversy in an interview in Canada in 1969 (from Wikipedia):   “He repeated his opinion that the Beatles were more influential on young people than Christ, adding that some ministers had agreed with him.  He called the protesters in the US ‘fascist Christians’, saying he was ‘very big on Christ.  I’ve always fancied him.  He was right.’”  Also in 1969:  “In a BBC interview . . . [John] Lennon  called himself ‘One of Christ’s biggest fans’, talked about the Church of England, his vision of heaven, and unhappiness over being unable to marry Yoko Ono in [the] church.”  

 

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While the quotation itself faded quickly – particularly after the band released their monumental Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album the following year – its effects never really went away.  Here is the chorus in the Beatles final #1 single, “The Ballad of John & Yoko” (and clearly John Lennon is addressing Jesus, not voicing an oath):  “Christ, you know it ain’t easy / You know how hard it can be / The way things are going / They’re gonna crucify me.” 

 

Imagine”, perhaps John Lennon’s best known song – certainly among his solo recordings – opens with:  “Imagine there's no Heaven” – but I actually heard an evangelist once attempt to recast “Imagine as a Christian song.  In another of his songs, “God”, John Lennon recites a long list of disbeliefs, beginning with “I don’t believe in magic” and ending with “I don’t believe in Beatles”, with Jesus (along with other religious leaders) appearing about halfway through. 

 

In a 2005 reminiscence by Maureen Cleave, called “The John Lennon I Knew” (published in The Daily Telegraph), she recalls a 1978 interview (as reported in Wikipedia) where Lennon said:  “If I hadn’t said [that] and upset the very Christian Ku Klux Klan, well, Lord, I might still be up there with all the other performing fleas!  God bless America.  Thank you, Jesus.” 

 

Mark David Chapman, the man who assassinated John Lennon in 1980, became a born-again Christian in 1970 and had been incensed by the “more popular than Jesus” remark, as well as the sentiments in “God and Imagine.  

 

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Paul McCartney, like George Harrison was baptized as a Catholic; and his upbringing shows through in the lyrics of one of the Beatles’ last singles, “Let it Be:  

 

     When I find myself in times of trouble

     Mother Mary comes to me

     Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

     And in my hour of darkness

     She is standing right in front of me

     Speaking words of wisdom, let it be 

 

Paul McCartney has said that the origin of “Mother Mary” is not Mary the Mother of Jesus, but rather his own mother, Mary Mohin McCartney, who had died of cancer when he was 14.  McCartney had a dream about his mother during the tumultuous period when the double-LP The Beatles – a/k/a the White Album – was being recorded; he recalled (as quoted in Wikipedia):   “‘It was great to visit with her again.  I felt very blessed to have that dream.  So that got me writing “Let it Be”.’  He also said in a later interview about the dream that his mother had told him, ‘It will be all right, just let it be.’  When asked if the song referred to the Virgin Mary, however, McCartney has typically answered the question by assuring his fans that they can interpret the song however they would like.”  

 

In addition to “Mother Mary” – a term frequently used by believers to refer to Mary – Wikipedia notes that “let it be” is also a part of the response by Mary to the Annunciation by the Angel Gabriel:  “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).  

 

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George Harrison was the most spiritual of the Beatles.  Along with the other Beatlesthe Beach Boys, and many other celebrities, George Harrison spent time in 1968 with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; but his interest in Hinduism predated that experience by several years.  Wikipedia mentions several earlier encounters:  “During the filming of Help! in the Bahamas [in 1965], [the Beatles] met the founder of Sivananda Yoga, Swami Vishnu-Devananda, who gave each of them a signed copy of his book, The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga.” 

 

Following the Beatles’ last tour, and before recording on Sgt. Pepper began in 1967George Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd made a pilgrimage to Bombay, where he studied the sitar, met several gurus, and visited many holy places.

  

Also from Wikipedia:  “[George] Harrison became a vegetarian in the late 1960s, and a devotee of the Indian mystic Paramahansa Yogananda, a guru who proselytised Kriya yoga, after he was given Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi by Ravi Shankar.  (Yogananda and three other major figures from Kriya yogaSri Mahavatar BabajiSri Yukteswar Giri, and Sri Lahiri Mahasaya appear on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.)” 

 

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George Harrison released a series of wonderful instrumentals in 1968 called Wonderwall Music; the music is the soundtrack for a film called Wonderwall (which I have never seen) and later inspired the title of the gorgeous 1995 hit song by Oasis, “Wonderwall”.  This album is the first solo album by a member of the Beatles and also the first release on the band’s label Apple Records.  George Harrison undertook the album to introduce Indian classical music to rock and pop audiences, and he primarily collaborated on the project with a classical pianist and orchestral arranger named John Barham.  
 
The liner notes for the album were a mess, and 
George Harrison was not originally credited with performing any of the music, leading many to think that he merely oversaw the album; actually, in addition to arranging the music, Harrison played electric and acoustic guitar, piano, and Mellotron.  Other musicians on the album include Eric Clapton on electric guitar – credited as “Eddie Clayton” – Harrison’s bandmate Ringo Starr on drums, and Peter Tork of the Monkees who plays banjo (!).  In 1969George Harrison collaborated with Eric Clapton in writing perhaps my very favorite song by Cream, “Badge
 
One disadvantage of my early exposure to 
Wonderwall Music was that the bar was set very high for me as far as incorporating Indian musical forms into rock music, and I was disappointed by most sitar work on rock albums since then.
    
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Ravi Shankar is the Indian musician best known to American audiences; this master of the sitar performed often at rock festivals like Monterey Pop and Woodstock.  Following Woodstock though, he distanced himself from the hippie subculture, as Wikipedia put it (what I heard was that, basically, he thought everyone was too stoned to truly appreciate his music).  Shankar has a musician daughter, Norah Jones
 
Following
 the Beatles’ lead, many rock musicians began incorporating sitar into their recordings, including the Byrds and Stone Poneys; the Beatles song “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”, included on their 1965 album Rubber Soul, was the first rock song to include sitar music, which was played by George Harrison on the song.  One of my favorite songs on the Sgt. Pepper album, “Within You Without You”, was composed by Harrison, who plays sitar and another Indian instrument, the tambura; several Indian musicians were also on hand.  
 
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Following the break-up of 
the BeatlesGeorge Harrison released a mammoth two-record album in 1970 called All Things Must Pass that also included a third disk called Apple Jam.  Clearly Harrison was creating a lot of music that wasn’t winding up on the Beatles albums; for instance, Anthology 3 includes an early demo of the title song for this album, “All Things Must Pass”.  By the time “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” showed up on Abbey Road, nearly all rock critics were acknowledging that George Harrison was a songwriter equal to John Lennon and Paul McCartney; but I had noticed that at least as far back as Revolver, where his songs were “Taxman”, “Love You To” and “I Want to Tell You”. 
 
Richie Unterberger writing for Allmusic notes:  “Without a doubt, [George] Harrison’s first [post-Beatles] solo recording, originally issued as a triple album, is his best.  Drawing on his backlog of unused compositions from the late Beatles era, George crafted material that managed the rare feat of conveying spiritual mysticism without sacrificing his gifts for melody and grand, sweeping arrangements.” 
 
From 
Wikipedia:  “Among the large cast of backing musicians were Eric Clapton and Delaney & Bonnie’s Friends band – three of whom formed Derek and the Dominos with Clapton during the recording – as well as Ringo StarrGary Wright[Billy] PrestonKlaus VoormannJohn BarhamBadfinger, and Pete Drake.”   
 
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The hit song from the 
George Harrison triple album All Things Must Pass is “My Sweet Lord; it was the first #1 hit by an ex-Beatle and was also the biggest selling single in the UK in 1971.  The song was addressed to the Hindu God Krishna, though American audiences at least could be forgiven for feeling that Harrison was singing to Jesus.  The thrust of the song was calling for an end to sectarianism through the mixing of background chants of “Hare Krishna” with “Hallelujah”.  While George Harrison said that the melody was adapted from a Christian hymn “Oh Happy Day” (whose copyright had expired), a court case brought by the writer of a song by the Chiffons called He’s So Fine found otherwise.  I have written in more detail of this court case previously. 
 
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The title song of 
All Things Must Pass,All Things Must Pass” is considered to be one of George Harrison’s finest compositions.  As told in Wikipedia “Music critic Ian MacDonald described ‘All Things Must Pass’ as ‘the wisest song never recorded by the Beatles’, while author [and Harrison biographer] Simon Leng considers it ‘perhaps the greatest solo Beatle composition’.  The subject matter deals with the transient nature of human existence, and in Harrison’s ‘All Things Must Pass reading, lyrics and music combine to reflect impressions of optimism against fatalism.  On release, together with Barry Feinstein’s album cover image, commentators viewed the song as a statement on the Beatlesbreak-up.”  
 
The 
George Harrison song was originally recorded by Billy Preston – under the name “All Things (Must) Pass” – on his 1970 Apple Records release Encouraging Words.  The lyrics were inspired by a 1968 poem by a different sort of guru, Timothy Leary called “All Things Pass”, a psychedelic adaptation of a classical Chinese text called the Tao Te Ching.  
 
While this song was never released as a single, 
George Harrison had another hit from this album called “What Is Life”. 
 
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Ringo Starr is without a doubt the most under-appreciated member of the Beatles, so it is not surprising that, when us four Winfree kids divvied up the Fab Four among ourselves, I wound up with Ringo as my favorite Beatle.  
Ringo Starr (real name:  Richard Starkey, Jr.) was the final addition to the classic line-up when he was brought in as the band’s drummer, replacing Pete Best.  He is the oldest of the Beatles (all of 23 when they hit the big time), having been born three months before John Lennon
 
As a young teenager, he contracted tuberculosis in 1953 and was in a sanatorium for two years.  To encourage physical activity, a makeshift drum set was set up next to his bed, and he later joined the band at the hospital.  
Ringo Starr recalls:  “I was in the hospital band. . . .  That’s where I really started playing.  I never wanted anything else from there on. . . .  My grandparents gave me a mandolin and a banjo, but I didn’t want them.  My grandfather gave me a harmonica. . . . we had a piano – nothing.  Only the drums.”  
 
While working as a machinist in a local factory, 
Richard Starkey befriended Roy Trafford, who introduced him to skiffle music.  The two began practicing together and were joined by another co-worker Eddie Miles, forming the Eddie Miles Band that was later renamed Eddie Clayton and the Clayton Squares.  (Interestingly, Eric Clapton took the pseudonym “Eddie Clayton in his credits for Wonderwall Music, perhaps from this connection). 
 
As skiffle became displaced by American rock and roll, and billed as 
Ritchie Starkeyhe joined a band called Texans in November 1959 that was led by Al Caldwell.  They were a well known skiffle band that was trying to reinvent themselves as a rock band.  The band went through several names – the Raging Texans, then Jet Storm and the Raging Texans – before settling on Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.  Starkey developed the Ringo Starr persona at that time, due to his propensity for wearing numerous rings.  They became one of the top bands in Liverpool in 1960 and eventually made their way to Hamburg, where they crossed paths with the Beatles; initially, however, they were billed above the Fab Four and were also paid more.  
 
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Ringo Starr arguably has had the most successful post-Beatles career.  His first solo album, Sentimental Journey is a collection of pre-rock standards; made mainly to please his parents, he is one of the first rock musicians to attempt to cover these earlier styles of music.  After a country collection called Beaucoups of BluesRingo Starr settled back into rock music and made a series of excellent albums that spawned nearly as many major hit songs as his three better-known bandmates combined:  two #1 singles, “Photograph” and “You’re Sixteen” plus “It Don’t Come Easy”, “Back Off Boogaloo”, “Oh My My”, “Only You”, and “No No Song”. 
 
For the past 25 years, 
Ringo Starr has spent most of his time with Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band, which has featured a rotating line-up of some of the finest rock musicians on earth, Levon HelmJoe Walsh, Nils LofgrenBilly Squier, and Edgar Winter among them.  They are dropping by the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the middle of next month. 
 
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In an interview published in 2010 in 
The Daily Telegraph that was mostly about the “more popular than Jesus” business, Ringo Starr says that he has found religion:  “For me, God is in my life.  I don’t hide from that.  I think the search has been on since the 1960’s.” 
(September 2014)
 
Last edited: April 8, 2021