I think that Hot Stuff might just have something there. In Disarray, it became clear that, sometimes, you have to be careful about what you say, especially if you are an English Rock star trying to circumnavigate American religious sensibilities. And you should be careful about what you do! You just might find yourself on the wrong end of a little revenge...
Throw up on me, huh? How do you like it when I do...this:
Don't feel so tough now...do you, toots?
Relax, it's just tap water. Shouldn't she know that? The burning of Beatles stuff included records, posters, and…beach towels. I’ll burn the records, and the posters, but I will not burn my John Lennon beach towel! And although the subject of towels is interesting, it isn’t going too far to go from towels to sheets. And not everybody burned things associated with the Beatles, some actually sought to make a little money:
$1 dollar a chunk? That ran in the News Journal (Wilmington; 8/9/1966). I’m sure the KKK would be horrified at such a waste of sheets! Memorabilia aside, the Nazi-style mindless burning of cultural artifacts accompanied the nation-wide ban by radio stations playing the Beatles’ music.
It’s actually the case that the furor over Lennon’s comments included a debate that made many interesting points. One explanation about why John made the comments he did was offered by:
Actually, I don’t think that John was telling a joke. I must admit that the following confounded me:
Wait! I thought the Beatles’ line-up was:
1. John Lennon
2. Paul McCartney
3. George Harrsion
4. Ringo Starr
5. Gayle Duffey
My Goodness! When did she leave the band? I’m definitely burning my Beatles albums now!
This debate even came with sound effects…ker-plunk! This view that the Beatles were about to go the way of the dodo, was a common reaction:
And:
And:
And:
Actually, Linell, John had every right to say what he did. News flash, Linell! It’s a little thing called Free Speech, not to mention…Freedom of Religion. And I’ll tell you something else! John said it in…England! He didn’t even say it in the U.S. And I would suggest that everyone who is 14 years old stear clear of Alabama, even though they too despise the United States Constitution. And I found it fascinating that of all the claims that were made by people that the Beatles’ were about to go the way of Four Mop-Top Dodo Birds, which happens to be the name of my new band, that there was a strange 20 year period foretold by, not the prophetess Priscilla, or the prophetess Maximilia…no! The prophetess Mary Lou Caraway of Murphysboro, which I don’t think is located in Phrygia:
And it shall come to pass after 20 years that the Four Blasphemous Moppies, the Great Evil Doers and Corruptors of the Youth of America, who said in their hearts…we’re more important than Jesus! Those servants of an Evil Kingdom across the Great Sea who declared…we shall avenge King George III and retroactively defeat the Great and Good Revolutionaries lead by Wishy-Washy Deists later turned into Honorary Evangelicals; sinners so vile that their leader dared declare that Jesus’s disciples were thick-headed clods…they shall be cast down from the Heights of Heaven and will be consumed by the Wrath of the Lord.
But…leaving the prophetic community of Murphysboro and returning to Hawaii, it’s…time for confession!
Wow! Mae proves that John was right! But she should be careful…they might ban her too. All of this talk in Hawaii about the demise of the Beatles…I’ll bet John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Gayle weren’t too worried about that! But here is something that certainly would have caused John to worry:
Snap! The Rolling Stones are better! Wait…more bad news for John Lennon. Gregg Huber declared in the 8/11/1966 edition of the Waukesha Daily Freeman that…
The Rolling Stones and the Animals are better than the Beatles! Hey Gregg…I got a joke for you:
What did the Beatles say when they arrived in America and saw all the fuss about John Lennon’s comments?
We Gotta Get Out Of This Place!
I will also quote Jim Krzyeh..though I can’t pronounce his last name:
America’s overt racial hatred suggests that Christianity may be in trouble? America’s pursuit of mass slaughter in jungles on the other side of the world and the glorification of it may cast some doubts on the sincerity of American Christianity? Wait…I’ll go ask John Lennon.
Mae Takara’s statement is very important, because it shows that among youth, Christianity was in fact floundering in its competition with the Icons of Popular Culture. Another statement:
That ran in the Kokomo Morning Times on 8/13/1966. Interestingly, many used the event to both acknowledge that John Lennon was right, as well as providing an excellent opportunity to indulge in a bit of moralizing. That’s an interesting permutation. Yet others declared that of course the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, since Jesus never sought to be popular. This young savant took a different opinion:
Dat is the worstest use of that there English talking I done ever heard.
And I believe that the Genius from Chicago may have done got it right…Jesus was actually quite popular among the general population living in the region of Galilea while he was alive. Here’s the kicker! He was unpopular, indeed hated, by members of the Establishment. In particular…the Religious Establishment. Fascinating…that would appear to have been the situation involving the Beatles in America. The Rev. Kenneth Ofslager said this in The Mercury (9/3/1966):
The answer is…no! Why? Church is supposed to be free. And I would be amazed if your church could hold 50,000 people. He was right about something else:
$5.75 to see the Beatles? Wow! The pastor also asked:
How many adults would pay $5 each to go to church?
Good question, sir!
Although John’s statements did not cause any disturbances in England, eventually the Brits got involved. And! The world never truly knew just how close it came to…
World War Fab Four…well, Three:
The Yanks are mad! After all, there were very good reasons for driving the Puritans out of England. And I like the very telling shot taken at how English Beatle fans dressed…hip-hugging pants and mini-skirts. The writer of the article, along with millions of self-righteous Crazy Yanks, objected to the way young women dressed. That’s simply another element of popular culture. And the nonsense involving John Lennon’s comments added to fear that the Greatly Religious were increasingly losing the battle against the ever-faster youth culture. Still, inappropriately dressed English Beatle fans were about to push the nuclear button. John, not Jesus? Actually, you can have both. So perhaps the English were as unenlightened as the Americans.
Not all Americans were as unenlightened as the dramatically unenlightened Evangelicals. This article appeared in the Los Angeles Times (8/5/1966):
Remember your history? Are you serious? Freedom of Religion? Not in the Land of the Free! No way! And it is a strange concept…viewing Rock musicians as entertainers and so you keep playing the records regardless of what John Lennon said. A truly grown-up reaction, to be sure. Way to go KRLA and KFWB! And way to go…Anthony Skapyak! Who? This guy:
Intolerant Christianity? Salem witch hunts? Dead on. Christianity has murdered untold millions of people throughout it’s history, showing itself to be a violent and intolerant, organized religion.
Hanged on June 10, 1692:
Bridget Bishop, Salem
Hanged on July 19, 1692:
Sarah Good, Salem Village
Rebecca Nurse, Salem Village
Susannah Martin, AmesburyElizabeth How, Ipswich
Sarah Wilds, Topsfield
Hanged on August 19, 1692:
George Burroughs, Wells, Maine
John Proctor, Salem Village
John Willard, Salem Village
George Jacobs, Sr., Salem Town
Martha Carrier, Andover
September 19, 1962:
Giles Corey, Salem Farms, pressed to death
Hanged on September 22, 1692:
Martha Corey, Salem Farms
Mary Eastey, Topsfield
Alice Parker, Salem Town
Ann Pudeater, Salem Town
Margaret Scott, Rowley
Wilmott Reed, Marblehead
Samuel Wardwell, Andover
Mary Parker, Andover
Other accused witches that were not hanged, but died in prison:
Sarah Osborne, Salem Village
Roger Toothaker, Billerica
Lyndia Dustin, Reading
Ann Foster, Andover
Yes! In the case of 81-year-old Giles Corey, they slowly placed more and more heavy stones on him until he was crushed to death. One can almost hear the squeals of delight coming from these Religious Terrorists as they inflicted death on completely innocent members of their own community. Good sport! Kill the innocent, then hurry off to church and read about the love of Jesus. And why was Giles Corey tortured to death? He refused to enter a plea.
Ernie McCrary wrote this in the Daily Tar Heel (8/18/1966):
You can tell it’s been a dull summer when you realize that the biggest controversy has been about the blasphemy of the Beatles.
John Lennon, one of four young men who are almost singlehandedly holding up the value of England’s sagging pound, has been scourged and vilified by disc jockeys and other assorted hypocrites, including a few Ku Klux Klansmen in Washington, because he made a statement that was more truth than fancy.
What did he say? A few little sentences, largely unnoticed until they were reprinted in a teen magazine and people like disc jockeys began to take notice. A good many of those fellows who get paid a good bit of money for spending a good bit of time playing a good many Beatle songs put down the torch of free speech and took up the cross of religion and demanded that every thinking Christian place all of his Beatle paraphernalia- such as records, pictures, beach towels, comic books and whatever else you can buy with the Beatles on it- in a pile and burn it. Sort of like a sacrifice on the altar.
The ingratitude of it all is appalling. It’s simply unthinkable that all those guys out there in radioland should turn against their old buddies, John, Paul, George and Ringo. Even the English haven’t behaved very commendably. You would think they would jump to an aggressive defense of one of their greatest natural resources, but hardly a peep, yea or nay, has been heart from across the sea. Except from the Vatican where an official paper gave the Beatles unrequested forgiveness, saying that the remark was made in an offhand manner and should be disregarded. Somebody asked Lennon if that made him feel better, and he said, “If it makes other people feel better.” Score one for John.
Assorted hypocrites? KKK? Like a sacrifice on the altar? If people simply smashed their Beatles records, and went out and found a bunch of pot, liquor bottles, and Penthouse magazines, they would simply throw them around the inside of Larry Pyle’s church. And Burning comic books…surely Americans would never do that! Pretty good stuff…and dead accurate. I would like to take something that Ernie said and run with it. He noted how quickly a large number or radio stations suddenly turned against the Beatles. Not some…a very large number. And so quickly? Was it all Religious Extremists? I suspect that Evangelical Hypocrites being hypocritical about religion wasn’t the only cause.
American popular music had been dominated by…Americans. The Beatles were changing that. The reaction to the Beatles perhaps exceeded, in intensity, that seen by Elvis Presley. The Mop Tops would not be the only musicians to form the…
And there were many invaders:
And one of them would pioneer the development of the destructive, anarchy-form of rock music that Nirvana would later champion:
The Who. It will probably seem strange, but they appeared on the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour in September 1967. I’ll bet that there were plenty of the Greatly Religious who suddenly found themselves longing for one year ago! Longing for the Beatles!
Keith Moon had actually packed his drum-kit with explosives, and almost blew up the stage. And it got better! Following the orgy of destruction, Tommy Smothers walked onto the stage with an acoustic guitar. He probably felt safe, seeing how the mayhem was over.
He was wrong. Pete Townshend, who suffered severe damage to his hearing due to standing too close to Keith Moon’s exploding drum-kit, decided that there was one more gesture to make:
Give it to me! And finally taking the guitar away from Tommy Smothers…
Just put it on the bill!
So it was that American youth culture would no longer be dominated by American rock musicians. Foreigners would take center stage, destroying it in the process. Just ask Tommy Smothers! And there was no more obvious sign of this than the Beatles…with or without Gayle. Here is an interesting picture that illustrates the fact that not only were foreigners in the ascendancy, American youth were also specifically rejecting American rock music:
It wasn’t enough to say…Long Live the Beatles. No…Elvis is dead. But that’s a little better than this declaration in the Detroit Free Press:
Ring-a-ding, wham-bong, shake, rattle and roll! Wait, that sounds a little familiar…
I remember now!
Bing, bing, bong, bong, bing, bing, bing!
A cool new dance! Perhaps, a bit more urban…
Yo! Rollin’ thru the hood we heard bing, bing, bong, bong, bing, bing!
Bong-bong?
When I said bing bing bong bong, I was referring to driving trucks!
Gnib gnib gnob gnob gnib gnib
Still…Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley are from the Stone Age? the Beatles were “spawned.” Not very nice, I’d say. Hey!
Why did they like Elvis during the Stone Age?
He played rock music.
Move over Saucy Sylvia…Tektonikus is back! The Detroit Free Press (2/14/1964):
Poor persecuted America! Can’t complete anymore? Of course, the Beatles are simply England’s revenge for the American Revolution. Wasn’t that in 1776? I’ll bet that the English had forgotten about that. Apparently, the Americans had not, even though they won. And on top it, the Americans appear to have been projecting their poor sportsmanship onto the British:
Now, it is true that during the American Revolution, the British were supported by a lot of colonial Americans. And in 1966, there were Americans so devoted to saving the Beatles, that they actually called upon Britain to come to the rescue. One such person was Susan Dobbs of Hopewell, Virginia. She and her friend made a direct appeal to the People Across the Pond:
And she did more to save the Beatles than get buggy with a sandwich board:
I think I hear the guitar plunking of a Synthetic Fibers Kind of Gal! Still, it’s never good to start your appeal to people with…I may look like a fool…but I’m not one! Hey Susan! I have a joke for you:
If Susan Dobbs climbed a rocky prominence in Hopewell, Virginia…what would she be?
The Fool on the Hill!
I think I hear Saucy Sylvia calling to concede. And I must agree with Susan…she’s no fool. Watch her little economic stratagem:
She called collect…twice! And it worked…twice! And Susan is a prolific songwriter…78 songs? Maybe she was the Rock star that Bob Larson sold all of his Rock songs too! No, Susan wrote her own songs. No wonder her grades were so bad that she couldn’t graduate! Actually, I would have left that part out…seeing how it just gave Self-Righteous America grounds to say….see! The Beatles are destroying our young people! Hey Susan!
If Susan Dobbs had a ticket to see the Beatles in Washington on August 15, 1966…and planned to take a Greyhound Bus to get there…what would she need?
A Ticket to Ride!
Oh, Saucy Sylvia…you’re in a lot of trouble! Hey, Saucy Sylvia, answer this:
If Susan Dobbs got a record contract and her 78 songs became big hits…who would she fear most?
The Taxman!
I got a million of ‘em. How about this:
Yes, the Detroit Free Press (5/30/1964). Way to go, Carole and Alison! Two very clever girls. But such hatred of the English! Bubonic Plague of the Spirit? That’s the new song I wrote! And shame on you American girls who are bewitched and mesmerized by everything English!
There he is! I knew the Detroit Free Press was right! Pied Piper John Lennon leading all those bewitched and mesmerized American girls to England.
This comment ran in the Detroit-Free Press in 1964:
And I strongly suspect that this guy would have been far less hostile to the Beatles if they had come from Bridgeport, Connecticut. After all…then they would be Americans. And I would suggest that part of the hostility to the Beatles, which had built up before John Lennon’s comments on Christianity, stemmed from a large dose of resentment to the fact that American youth were now leaving behind American music in favor of foreign music. And indeed…with an unparalleled enthusiasm:
And:
More:
I love you John even though you said something about religion, which I don’t care about any way, since I don’t go to church because I’m tired of an Up There God from the ancient past! If it makes you feel any better, Mom and Dad, I did put a coma where a coma’s supposed to go!
No! We wouldn’t react this way to a famous preacher, and we wouldn’t pay $5.00 to go to church either!
And I do suspect that there is a little jealousy in the following statement:
Gee, grandpa, it’s seven o’clock…shouldn’t you be in bed by now? Screechers?
I had nothing to do with this.
That’s Lilith…you thought I was gonna show someone else. But since you brought her up…I have a question for you. How many Pazuzus does it take to defeat Aunt Lamashtu?
Apparently, more than five! It looks like Lamashtu’s winning this round.