The Beatles

by Bob Spitz

  Nevertheless, Brian succeeded in persuading John of the need to shape a public statement. “It went back and forth for two days,” Nat Weiss recalls. The two men wrangled over every word until both John and Brian were satisfied that all sides were well served. John would apologize, but he refused to eat shit. Brian would do that for him.

  The next day Brian booked a suite at New York’s Americana Hotel and summoned the world press to a hastily convened news conference. It was a typically staged Epstein affair: drinks and hors d’oeuvres were served, after which he read the following statement:

  The quote which John Lennon made to a London columnist nearly three months ago has been quoted and represented entirely out of context. Lennon is deeply interested in religion…. What he said and meant was that he was astonished that in the last fifty years the Church of England, and therefore Christ, had suffered a decline in interest. He did not mean to boast about the Beatles’ fame. He meant to point out that the Beatles’ effect appeared to be, to him, a more immediate one upon certain of the younger generation.

  To many beat reporters who listened, this sounded like a fairly liberal rewrite of John’s remarks. (Brian had called it “a clarification.”) Yet at the same time, it served to mollify them. Most of the papers that covered the event treated it like a news item, without comment. But it was clear to everyone, including Brian, that it wasn’t the last word on this subject—not by a long shot.

  The press conference coincided with the release of two new Beatles records, and the music, as always, managed to work its essential magic. On roughly five thousand radio stations on August 5—that is, the stations that were playing, as opposed to burning, Beatles records—the single “Yellow Submarine” and “Eleanor Rigby” received its first airplay. What an earful of music on two sides of a single disc—from the ridiculous to the sublime! When the reviews hit the trades, it was clear the record was every bit as audacious—and intricate—as its makers had intended. More and more often, the critics just threw up their hands. “One thing seems certain to me—you’ll soon be singing about a ‘Yellow Submarine,’ ” hedged Alan Evans in an issue of NME. “It should be a household favorite soon.” Otherwise, Evans couldn’t get a handle on “Eleanor Rigby,” writing it off as “a folksy ballad sung with very clear diction by Paul McCartney.”

  About Revolver, which was released the same day, they were less ecstatic, even somewhat baffled by the music’s ample complexities. “The new Beatles’ album, Revolver, certainly has new sounds and new ideas, and should cause plenty of argument among fans as to whether it is as good as or better than previous efforts,” wrote NME. Songs like “Tomorrow Never Knows” perplexed critics. They appreciated its message to turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream. “But how can you relax with the electronic outer-space noises, often sounding like seagulls?” they wondered. “Even John’s voice is weirdly fractured and given a faraway sound.” And no one predicted the album’s powerful resonance, that it would be considered an artistic breakthrough, or that thirty years later, when Mojo magazine compiled “The 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made,” its readers would rank Revolver number one, hands down. “From the day it came out, it changed the way everyone else made records,” Geoff Emerick reminisced in that celebrated issue. “No one had ever heard anything like that before.”

  And though they may have been ahead of the curve, the Beatles were not alone. Every week articles filled the pages of Billboard, NME, and Melody Maker with the incredible stuff that was pouring out of new groups. Two weeks before the Beatles’ American tour opened, the Lovin’ Spoonful soared to the top of the pop charts with the harder-edged “Summer in the City,” displacing “Wild Thing,” by the Troggs. The Beach Boys put out the legendary Pet Sounds about the same time Bob Dylan released Blonde on Blonde. “Mother’s Little Helper” and “Paint It Black” certified the Stones’ outlaw status. The daring “Eight Miles High” launched the Byrds into outer space. The Holland-Dozier-Holland assembly line continued cranking out sweet soul classics. Tim Hardin made his enviable debut, along with albums by Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, Laura Nyro, the Mothers of Invention, and the Velvet Underground, each one as original and eclectic as the next. Ultimately, however, it was the Beatles that provided the most uncompromising, even disruptive, listening experience. Q would eventually refer to Revolver as a “scaling of new musical peaks… a quantum leap forward” for a band of beloved pop heroes. But corresponding as it did with John’s controversial comments, it also represented entry into a dark, ruthless crosscurrent destined to reroute the Beatles as cultural reactionaries. Image, which had always defined the Beatles, now daunted those fans who were unprepared for a transition. ”We’re not trying to pass off as kids,” John insisted. “We have been Beatles as best we ever will be—those four jolly lads. But we’re not those people anymore.” There was no point in keeping up the pose as those wacky teenage idols, not when they’d evolved into the kind of men and musicians who produced a document as riveting as Revolver. As individuals, John, Paul, George, and Ringo were growing up; as the Beatles, they were beginning to grow apart.

  [II]

  By the time John was ready to leave for the States, he was fuming. He had glanced at the first reports of the backlash with mild amusement. Then his anger grew steadily as demands for an apology mounted until, by departure, he was incensed. He told Brian that not only did he refuse to apologize for his statement but he had no intention of saying anything to the press—about Christianity, or music, or anything. Brian wouldn’t hear of it. There was too much at stake, the tour being the least of his worries. His offer to let any promoter out of his contract was unanimously declined. But he admonished John about mucking up several pending deals that could have far-reaching economic consequences. The Beatles’ record deal, for instance; they were in the throes of renegotiating a contract with EMI and Capitol, one that would finally bring them deserved riches. And songwriters’ royalties from dozens of potential new covers. (NME reported there were already nine shipped as of the week of Revolver’s release.) It wasn’t just his own hide on the line, either. There were three other Beatles, Brian reminded John, and dozens of people whose personal well-being rested on their fortunes. “And so Brian… kept asking him to say something,” recalled Ringo, “and in the end, John realized that he’d have to go out and do it.”

  The plan was to face the press before the first performance in Chicago, on the evening of August 11. Everyone was staying in the Astor Towers, on the twenty-seventh floor, and the three major American television networks had already set up cameras in the corridor and were delivering pithy commentaries. Meanwhile, John was summoned for a last-minute briefing. “We were nervous that he was going to wiseguy it up,” says Tony Barrow. They were sitting in the dimly lit solitude of Brian’s spacious lounge, John and Brian on the settee, Barrow cross-legged across the glass-and-steel coffee table. After drinks were served, Brian said, “Look, you do realize the implications of this, don’t you? You can’t go out there with a few one-liners. It’s not a joke, and it’s not just you getting yourself off the hook. Either we have to get positive press out of this or the tour is going to be called off. We’re not talking, John, about you rescuing your own reputation; we’re talking about you saving the group’s tour.” Pausing for dramatic impact, Brian admitted that he “feared the Beatles might be assassinated during the tour.”

  After gently putting his glass down on the coffee table, John burst into tears. His head bowed, body racked with sobs, John pleaded for some guidance. “I’ll do anything,” he said. “Anything. Whatever you say I should do, I’ll have to say… I didn’t mean to cause all of this.”

  He sat there for a while, until he was composed. Then, with Brian and Tony at his side, the three other Beatles trailing, John marched across the hall into Barrow’s suite, where about thirty members of the media were waiting to hear his side of things.

  The press conference, long a frisky Beatles perfo
rmance, was an unusually somber affair. The rest of the band “stood solemnly” behind a table where John sat, clutching his hands to keep them from trembling. His torso twitched nervously, awkwardly, in his seat. Paul, at his side through many scrapes, had “never seen John so nervous.” It was as if it were the first time he’d faced the press.

  Leaning into a microphone, John looked a wreck. “If I’d have said, ‘Television is more popular than Jesus,’ I might have got away with it,” he said haltingly. “I’m sorry I opened my mouth. I just happened to be talking to a friend and I used the word ‘Beatles’ as a remote thing—‘Beatles,’ like other people see us. I said they are having more influence on kids and things than anything else, including Jesus. I said it in that way, which was the wrong way. I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ, or antireligion. I was not knocking it. I was not saying we are greater or better. I think it’s a bit silly. If they don’t like us, why don’t they just not buy the records?”

  Wait a minute! Despite the fact that John spoke willingly and unaffectedly, there seemed to be some skirting of the central issue. It sounded to most of the journalists like an explanation, as opposed to an apology. “Some teenagers have repeated your statements—‘I like the Beatles more than Jesus Christ,’ ” a reporter interrupted. “What do you think about this?”

  John paused thoughtfully before answering. “Well, originally I pointed out that fact in reference to England. That we meant more to kids than Jesus did, or religion at that time. I wasn’t knocking it or putting it down…. I just said what I said and it was wrong.” That sounds more like it. “Or it was taken wrong.” Uh-oh. “And now it’s all this.” Hmmm…

  “But are you prepared to apologize?” a broadcaster asked.

  John tried to explain himself again. And again. The dance went around and around without end, each partner circling, stumbling, stepping on toes. Exasperated, exhausted—the Beatles had just come off a twelve-hour flight—he finally let it boil over. “I wasn’t saying what they’re saying I was saying,” he said, glowering. “I’m sorry I said it—really. I never meant it to be a lousy antireligious thing. 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.”

  There was a long, indulgent pause, broken when a mincing voice from the back broke through the silence: “Okay, can you just actually say to the camera how sorry you are?” At which point the Beatles glanced at one another and cut wry little smiles. It was just as they figured: the press hadn’t been listening for the past twenty minutes. Everything was for show. The press was “quite prepared to let the Lennon affair die a natural death” to preserve the spirit of Beatlemania.

  Over the Beatles’ objections, the tour had been set back in April, with the rundown of opening acts changing again and again in the intervening months. Only the Ronettes had always been part of the package; even though they hadn’t had a hit in two years, the Beatles loved the girls’ sassy stage personae and wanted them aboard for window dressing as much as anything else. They also added Bobby Hebb, a songwriter from Nashville, whose smash hit, “Sunny,” was a fixture at the top of the summer charts; the Remains, a group of students on leave from Boston University, to provide backup; and the Cyrkle. Nat Weiss had discovered the latter playing covers in a bar while walking along the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. On June 6 he and Brian had formed a company called Nemperor Artists, designed specifically to look after the Beatles’ affairs but also as a subsidiary to manage American acts, and the Cyrkle, at Nat’s urging, became their first signing.

  Inside the International Amphitheater, whose location next door to the Chicago stockyards provided a malodorous bouquet, the crowd of mostly screaming teenage girls staged a replay of all the mayhem that had marked the Beatles’ previous tours. It was the same everywhere: Detroit, Cleveland, Washington, Philadelphia—the fans played the familiar roles required of them. But in almost every case, the threat of violence was felt. In Cleveland, especially, where an outbreak on the 1964 tour had interrupted the show, there was a repeat performance when three thousand fans rained out of the stands at Municipal Stadium and made a beeline for the stage. The police and Mal Evans valiantly defended the stage, swatting away marauding fans while the Beatles soldiered on, bashing through “Day Tripper.” But at a certain point, as Barrow’s assistant Bess Coleman observed in Teen Life, they were “given the order: Run for your lives! And, did they run!” The boys dropped their instruments mid-song and took off for a trailer stationed behind the home-plate stands, dragging along the frazzled Coleman.

  “By the time we got to Memphis, there was a very serious feeling,” recalls Tony Barrow. “It was the first Deep South date we played,” and there was a strong rumor that something truly violent could happen. According to Nat Weiss, “Brian was very nervous” about Memphis. “He was convinced some nut was going to take a shot at John.” Indeed, there had been discussions with his GAC agents about pulling out of the date rather than invite disaster, but ultimately—and without much discussion—the Beatles insisted on appearing. “If we cancel one, you might as well cancel all of them,” Paul told him.

  But the constant buildup of tension eventually dented their bravado. One of the backup musicians remembered that “the flight from Boston to Memphis was quieter than usual.” The Beatles sat together on the crowded charter, staring out the windows, not talking much. John wore a troubled look as the plane made its slow descent into Memphis. “So this is where all the Christians come from,” he said to Paul, slouched grim-faced in the aisle seat next to him. Paul had nothing left to counterbalance John’s ominous mood. “You’re a very controversial person,” he muttered, devoid of the usual cheery note. Only George managed to crack the despair as they taxied to a stop. “Send John out first,” he quipped. “He’s the one they want.”

  The situation took a sinister turn the minute they hit the ground. Security was heavier than usual, a condition meant to be reassuring, but everyone was filled with unavoidable foreboding nevertheless. Instead of the usual transfer by limo, the Beatles were loaded into the back of a specially armored minivan while everyone else wordlessly boarded a bus for the trip to the arena. “Driving into Memphis from the airport, we had to lie down, because they thought snipers might shoot us,” remembers the Remains’ drummer, N. D. Smart. The brave few who dared peep out the windows saw protesters along the route, waving signs—and fists. “I will never forget… we pulled in there in the coach,” Paul later said, “and there was this little blond-haired kid, he could have been no older than eleven or twelve, who barely came up to the window, screaming at me through the plate glass, banging the window with such vehemence.” Intuitively, Paul knew the kid was harmless, although he had his doubts about the hooded Ku Klux Klansmen that roamed the grounds of the Mid-South Coliseum.

  But the first show went off like any other. Despite pockets of empty seats, there was the typical pandemonium, plenty of crying and screaming; girls littered the stage with stuffed animals and gifts, among cruder types of debris. “The Beatles smiled through it all,” said a review in the Commercial Appeal. “It appeared to be just the type of unrestrained welcome they are used to.”

  Understandably, their mood improved between shows. “Everyone started to relax,” recalled an observer. Backstage, the band ate a roast beef dinner and talked amiably with reporters crammed into the cluttered room. They took some good-natured ribbing over an ad for the show that Mal found in a local newspaper. “Go to church on Sunday,” it said, “but see THE BEATLES Friday!”

  By the second show, at eight, the Beatles had good reason to be elated. The arena was packed this time, with more than twelve thousand delirious “crew-cut kids” determined to rip the stuffing out of the Old South. It was a right rebel rave-up until midway through the third song, “If I Needed Someone,” when a shot rang out. Epstein and Barrow, standing at the side of the stage, jumped, banging into each ot
her—then crouched. “I was convinced… it was a shot,” Barrow recalls. Paul and George jerked sideways toward John, who was straddling the mike. Later, Paul explained to Teen-Set’s editor how “when he heard [the blast] his heart stopped, but he realized he was still standing and didn’t feel anything. He looked at John and saw that he was still standing, so they all kept right on playing.”

  Kids. Two teenagers had lobbed a cherry bomb from the upper balcony.

  The Beatles fought back with abandon. Their playing was unusually sharp, full of snap and bite, and for a moment they gave it all they had. But the fix was in. When a string of firecrackers popped and spit a few minutes later, it brought them crashing back to earth. It wasn’t the music fans wanted, they realized, but the show—and not just what was going on onstage, but the whole crazy atmosphere. That’s what they had come for: the mayhem, the hair shaking, the yeah, yeah, yeah.

  Of all the Beatles, only Paul was inclined to play along. Paul loved the showbiz aspect of Beatlemania, to say nothing of the acclaim. The times he spent on the road—engaging the fans, jawing with reporters, mugging for photographers, and winding up the crowds—were among the highlights of his life. Lionel Bart, who saw him often during this time, called him a born crowd-pleaser and presumed that he’d eventually find his place on mainstream stages like those at the Palladium. “It was clear from the start that show business ran deep in Paul’s veins and he was committed to a lifetime on the stage.” But the other three were disgusted. George especially had had his fill. Ren Grevatt, Melody Maker’s American stringer, had been watching throughout the tour how the whole grind weighed on the Beatles’ personalities. “I’ve noticed that George Harrison is getting deeper and deeper every day and will probably end up being a bald recluse monk,” he observed in an unusually frank column. “He’s trying to figure out life, but don’t let this sound mocking—he is very serious.”