If you’re someone who speaks their mind in every day life, at some point or another you are going to meet someone who doesn’t agree with you views. But for most, that is as far as it goes. However, if your one of the most famous men in the world, and it’s suddenly put all over the news that you are comparing your own musical band to a religious figure such as Jesus Christ, it doesn’t go away quite so quickly! It was this comment that made him one of the most controversial figures in music and popular culture.
(Photo from google image search)
During an interview that was publish (with little interest taken in England) in 1966, John was asked about religion, his answer would go down in history. “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.” It was just a comment to a journalist friend, while in his own home, he could never have known what effect it would have on him! The comment was first published in March 1966 in the Evening Standard news paper.
(photo from google image search)
But it wasn’t until Datebook (a US teen magazine) quoted Lennon's comments later that July, that protests broke out across the US, and things became very intense especially throughout the Bible Belt.
Threats were being fired at the Beatles from every direction, even the Ku Klux Klan got involved against the Fab Four. There were public fires at parks, burning Beatles records and memorabilia. The Beatles upcoming tour was being cancels for their own safety was even discussed, but when Brian found out how much it would cost to do so, they decided to go ahead. Brian Epstein and John Lennon had to do something, the future of the Beatles was unsure, and the safety of them all in the upcoming tour was also extremely unsure. In one press conference lennon said “if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I might have got away with it.”
(photo from google image search)
Lennon was a man who never showed his true emotion, let alone cry, yet before he went into the press conferences he nearly did just that. He must have thought he had screwed everything up. Everything he had been working for for nearly 9 years! And it did come very very close to that. Half of America wanted and waiting for the Beatles to return on tour. The other half wanted to either boycott the shows or disrupt and stop them. Leaving many tickets unsold. Some radio stations even stopped playing their music on their shows. When John was asked to apologise, he did so, but in a rather backhanded way, what perhaps didn’t help matters much. “If you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then okay, I’m sorry.” John said at the press conference. “I used the word Beatles as remote thing, not as what I think, Beatles as though those other Beatles, like other people see us. I just say they are having more influence on kids and things then anything else, including Jesus.
(photo from google image search)
But I said it in that way, which was the wrong was, yap, yap.” He went on to say “I wasn’t knocking it, or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact.” “I’m not saying we are better or greater then Jesus Christ as a person, or god as a thing, or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong, or it was taken wrong and now it’s all this.” John obviously didn’t mean for all of this to happen, but it the idea that he was putting himself on the same level as a modern day Jesus Christ in his own head might have possibly been there. Possibly. He went on to sing about God in a number of songs.
(photo from google image search)
‘God’ is a Lennon song from the plastic Ono band album! The song lists all the things he doesn’t believe in, from Indian gods, pop stars, Jesus and even Beatles.
But the song starts with the line “god is a concept, in which we measure our pain”
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“Help me to help myself”
Is a John Lennon song from the late 70’s recorded as a demo. This song also mentioned God with the line “they say the lord, helps those, who help themselves.”
(photo from google images)
And one of the most controversial was probably ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’, a beatle song where John sung and played acoustic guitar and lead guitar, with his newly scribbled on Epiphone acoustic guitar, and his Epiphone Casino electric guitar. While Paul plays the bass and drums on the track. Several times during the song he tells the listen “CHRIST you know it ain't easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They're going to CRUCIFY me”
(photo from google image search)
Religion was always around John, as a small boy he was in a local church choir group, it was basically his first ever singing gig. But he was dismissed after he stoles fruit from the church at the harvest festival. Even right till the end religion still played a part, when in the 70’s he was tempted to give religion a stronger go after watching TV preachers from the set he had in his bedroom in New York. Even his sketches of him and Yoko sometimes had a religious tint to them, appearing that he seemed think of him and Yoko as a modern day avent-guard Adam and Eve.
('The Comment' a painting of John Lennon By Jay Kelly)
It is even rumoured that John had sometimes while under the influence of drugs such as LSD that he thought he was some sort of god himself. Apparently he even told a close friend “sometimes I think I’m a loser, sometimes I think I’m god almighty” In the late 60's while tripping, John even called a meeting with his fellow beatles to announce he was actually Jesus Christ.
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