Did the Beatles Really Say They Were More Popular than Jesus?

In March 1966 Maureen Cleave, a reporter and friend of Beatles member John Lennon, published a profile in the London Evening Standard: “How does a Beatle live? John Lennon lives like this.” In the profile the 25-year-old Lennon discussed his strained relationship with his father, the toys he bought with his still relatively new wealth, including a gorilla suit and five television sets, and the fact that sex was the only physical exercise that interested him anymore. (It was rumored, though never confirmed, that Lennon and Cleave were having an affair.) Lennon’s comments about Christianity, which were to become so sensational in a few months, did not seem especially notable in such a mix.

“Christianity will go,” Lennon said, according to Cleave’s article. “It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will 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.” As Cleave noted in the profile, Lennon had been using his time off from Beatles commitments to read about religion.

The remarks proved uncontroversial upon their publication in England, where the term “Christianity” was highly associated with the Church of England, a denomination many felt had become antiquated and outdated. When the profile was republished by other global newspapers, including The New York Times, the quote was again largely ignored.

It was not until Lennon’s comments were reprinted in a July issue of Datebook, a U.S. teen magazine with a political edge, that it began to gain attention. Birmingham, Alabama, radio hosts Tommy Charles and Doug Layton derided the comment on-air as “blasphemous” and proposed a “Ban the Beatles” campaign, refusing to play the band’s music in response. Likely attempting to portray himself as a moral arbiter rather than a shock jock, Charles said, “Because of their tremendous popularity throughout the world, especially with the younger set, [the Beatles] have been able to say what they wanted to without any regard for judgment, maturity, or the meaning of it, and no one has challenged them to any degree.”

From there, the manager of the Birmingham office of United Press International, Al Benn, published a story about the Beatles Boycott, shocking Evangelical Southern audiences. Dozens of radio hosts joined Charles and Layton in refusing to play the Beatles’ music, some even going so far as to smash the band’s records on-air—a stunt that escalated when other Southern radio stations began to conduct mass burnings of the albums. The South Carolina Ku Klux Klan even became involved, nailing the Beatles’ records to a cross before setting it on fire.

Lennon initially refused to comment on the controversy, though others, such as Cleave and Beatles manager Brian Epstein, did so for him. “John was certainly not comparing the Beatles to Christ,” Cleave clarified in a statement to the press. “He was simply observing that, so weak was the state of Christianity, the Beatles was, to many people, better known.” Epstein considered canceling the band’s upcoming United States tour if it might put them in danger from angry audiences, even offering to cover the $1 million loss himself.

Though Epstein extended the opportunity for American venues to cancel upcoming appearances by the Beatles, none did. When the band arrived in Chicago in August 1966, Lennon held a press conference to publicly apologize. “I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing,” Lennon said. “I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don’t know quite what I’ve done. I’ve tried to tell you what I did do, but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then—okay, I’m sorry.”

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Though Lennon’s apology put much of the blame on those who had misinterpreted his remarks rather than himself, they still resulted in the desired outcome: most of the anti-Beatles fervor across the country died down. Small crowds of religious protestors and members of the Ku Klux Klan still greeted the band at Southern shows, however, and the tour proved to be the Beatles’ last. The realization that even a beloved band could be met with controversy and violence, combined with the band’s fatigue after three years of Beatlemania, signaled a turning point. With the exception of a few live performances, the Beatles were a studio unit only from then on.