![]() The band took a three-month break and concentrated on their own personal interests. The tour mercifully ended Augwith only 25,000 fans showing up at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Even the Ku Klux Klan got involved with the “Beatle Bonfires.” All along the summer tour, the Beatles had to repeatedly answer questions about the quote and deal with protests outside their concert venues. Christian groups across the south held public burnings of Beatles records. The reaction to Lennon’s remark was at a fever pitch. Protests in the Bible Belt, half empty stadiums and the stunning realization that songs from their latest LP Revolver (1966) were impossible to play live in concert were more the enough to convince The Fab Four that touring was a thing of the past. During a brief stop in London, George Harrison remarked, "We'll take a couple of weeks to recuperate before we go and get beaten up by the Americans." That proved to be an understatement. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.”īy June of 1966, while on a tour stop in Japan, opposition to the group had begun to build. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. We're more popular than Jesus now I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. I needn't argue about that I'm right and I will be proved right. The entire quote goes as follows, “Christianity will go. Lennon was a voracious reader and at the time he had been reading a lot about religion. The article in question was Maureen Cleave’s interview with John Lennon, which was titled “How does a Beatle live? John Lennon lives like this.” It was a fascinating read which was exhibit A of “Lennon being Lennon.” It was this article from where the infamous “We’re more popular than Jesus now” was born. Little did they know that a seemingly harmless article published in the Maedition of the London Evening Standard would speed up their desire to stop touring and get them to spend more time in the studio. They could barely hear themselves onstage and thought the crowds were too wrapped up in the hysteria of the experience and could not care less about the music. By early 1966, they found their concerts to be less than rewarding. ![]() ![]() Or so we thought.įrom 1963 to August 1966, the Beatles released seven studio albums, starred in two movies and toured relentlessly, with very little time off. They wrote beautiful songs and they were relatively safe. Yes, they did covers, but as a whole, they had a sound all their own. They didn’t look like any other band, didn’t sound like any other band plus they wrote their own songs. Motown can be included in that change, but that’s another column for another day. The arrival of the Beatles changed all of that. Now, I’m all for diversity on the pop charts, but the list was indicative of a world with one foot in Eisenhower’s ‘50s, fearful of anything resembling change and the other foot on a road trip with no map. Elvis Presley began his slow death spiral into self-parody, Motown was just getting its feet wet, and the top 20 singles of 1963 consisted of songs from Bobby Vinton, Andy Williams, Kyu Sakamoto and Little Stevie Wonder. a big distraction from the horror of the Kennedy assassination. Three years earlier, the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show gave the U.S. The hair got longer and bigger and the clothes, if you chose to wear them, got bolder and brighter. The album came about at a time when the generation gap widened even further and the music of the time played us into a new era. Its detractors are loud and very vocal about its place amongst the many diverse and influential releases that came in its wake. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band turns 55 this week and it may arguably be the most discussed, dissected and analyzed album in rock history. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, originally released in the UK and in the US June 2, 1967. Happy 55th Anniversary to The Beatles’ Sgt.
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