Released later that summer, “Here, There, and Everywhere” backed with “You’ve Changed,” a composition that had been penned by Mike O’Hara, the band’s founding member, failed to register so much as a blip on the British charts. The group that had once been hailed as “the clown princes of Merseybeat” were clearly flailing under Epstein and Martin’s tutelage, which by this point was bordering on outright neglect. Bill Harry, the influential editor of the Mersey Beat newspaper, didn’t mince words. “It went wrong for the Fourmost,” he later observed. “The Fourmost could have been so much bigger.” As it was, the bandmates regularly grumbled to Tony Barrow about playing second fiddle to the Beatles in Epstein’s eyes. And as the summer of 1966 went from bad to worse for their manager, the band’s case for neglect was understandable. Later that year, after their next single, “Auntie Maggie’s Remedy” backed with “Turn the Lights Down,” fell flat, the Fourmost couldn’t wait any longer. When the band went on hiatus, O’Hara left Epstein’s stable for good, vowing to try his hand on the lucrative cabaret circuit instead.11
Meanwhile, as the summer wore on and George and Judy continued to bask in their postconnubial bliss, news began to trickle in about Epstein and the Beatles’ experiences on tour. And it soon became clear that trouble was brewing across the globe with the bandmates. After routine gigs in West Germany, the scene had shifted to Japan, where the group was scheduled to play five shows in Tokyo’s celebrated Budokan, the octagon-shaped arena that had been reserved for traditional Japanese martial arts. The idea of a Western pop group playing in that hallowed space led to a succession of death threats. As Martin later recalled, “We all took the threat seriously, not least because there was so much religious and conservative opposition in Japan to the forthcoming concerts.” Afraid that the world’s most famous musicians might be injured—or, worse yet, perish—on their soil, the Japanese government overreacted in spectacular fashion, dispatching some thirty-five thousand police officers to protect the Beatles during their brief visit. The bandmates were held as virtual prisoners in the Tokyo Hilton, and the concerts themselves were sterile affairs in which some three thousand police had been distributed among the venue’s ten thousand spectators in order to maintain control. With such an overwhelming police presence, the Japanese fans were reluctant to go berserk in the same fashion as their Western counterparts. Gone were the screams and tumult to which the band had become accustomed, and suddenly, without the comforting veil of teenage chaos and clamor, the Beatles could be heard, loudly and clearly, as an unhappy quartet of sloppy, out-of-tune musicians. As a surviving television broadcast of the first concert plainly demonstrates, their stage act by this juncture was simply awful.12
On July 3, the tour pressed on, with the Beatles bringing their show to the Philippines for the first time. After landing in Manila, the bandmates were inexplicably whisked away to a yacht that was owned by a local media mogul. After some two hours, Epstein demanded that the group be removed from the vessel and provided with hotel accommodations in the city. When they finally checked into the Manila Hotel, the Beatles were blissfully unaware of an invitation from President Ferdinand Marcos and First Lady Imelda Marcos requesting their appearance at Malacañang Palace at eleven o’clock the following morning. But “since the British embassy fiasco,” the group’s assistant Peter Brown recalled, “the policy was never to go to those things.” The next morning, the Beatles’ entourage ignored further demands from Filipino officials that they go to the palace, where the First Lady and some two hundred children were now anxiously awaiting their appearance. After playing an afternoon concert for some thirty-five thousand fans and an evening performance for another fifty thousand spectators at José Rizal Memorial Stadium, the band started to realize that they were in dire straits when news reports began detailing their snubbing of the royal family. Later that night, a genuinely contrite Brian Epstein attempted to ameliorate the situation by expressing his regrets to the First Family on the Channel 5 News, but a burst of suspicious static rendered his apology all but unintelligible. The next day, the Beatles were suddenly ordered to pay income tax on concert receipts that they still hadn’t received from Filipino promoter Ramon Ramos.
Even worse, the Beatles’ governmental security detail had been suspended given their allegedly rude treatment of the First Lady, and the group and their entourage were left to their own devices as they rushed to the Manila International Airport in order to make their KLM flight to New Delhi before making their way back to London. But their ordeal wasn’t over yet. They were jostled by an angry mob as they made their way to immigration, and things became even more dicey on the tarmac, when Mal Evans and press officer Tony Barrow were removed from the plane shortly before takeoff. The Beatles had been declared “illegal immigrants” by the Filipino government, and Mal and Tony spent some forty minutes negotiating the band’s way out of the country. Stultified by what they considered to be their near-death experience in the South Pacific, the group roundly blamed Epstein for the disastrous turn of events. As Martin later recalled, “The whole country was up in arms. Although the concerts had been immensely successful, it seemed every Filipino was out for their [the band’s] blood.” George had observed the bandmates’ growing disdain for Epstein, as well as the ways in which they all too easily found him culpable for any mishap that came their way, both large and small: “I don’t think the Beatles really appreciated him as they should have done,” he later observed. “Once they had success, they tended to blame Brian for not getting what was due to them, rather than applaud him for the success. They developed a very negative attitude. When it came to light that he had mishandled certain things, they were very vocal in their criticism that he was a rotten manager. Forgetting that without him they would not have existed in the first place.”13
When the Beatles finally arrived back in London on July 8, they were relieved to be back on home soil. And they knew one thing for sure: their touring had taken a significant toll in more ways than one—and perhaps most troubling, in terms of the quality of their musicianship. As Ringo later recalled, “We were absolutely fed up with touring, and why were we fed up with touring? Because we were turning into such bad musicians. The volume of the audience was always greater than the volume of the band. For me personally, there was no chance I could do a fill because it would just disappear. So I ended up just sort of hanging on to the other guys’ bums and trying to lip-read to see where we were.” What a terrible predicament for any drummer—the group’s master timekeeper—having to follow his bandmates’ bouncing rear ends in order to maintain the beat. And then there was the Beatles’ manager. For his part, Epstein had returned to the United Kingdom as a shell of his former self—and he was terribly ill to boot. It was precisely in this state that he retired for several days’ recuperation before gearing up for the American leg of the tour, which was set to begin in Chicago on August 12. Diagnosed with mononucleosis, Epstein convalesced at his home in Belgravia before relocating on July 30 to the seaside village of Portmeirion in North Wales to continue his recuperation. He was joined in his rented Italianate villa by George and Judy, who were happy to continue their honeymoon in the company of the Beatles’ manager, with whom they had socialized since Beatlemania’s salad days. Brian was one of the couple’s closest friends, and they were always “a happy trio when we had been able to spend time with him. He was pretty much part of the family.”14
When George and Judy arrived at Brian’s villa, it was clear that their host was not only out of sorts—felled by mononucleosis and the aftershocks of the Far East tour—but verging on what appeared to be a deep depression. As for himself, George was still smarting from his illness during the latter stages of the Revolver sessions. Not surprisingly, the idea of a seaside vacation held great appeal for him. As George later wrote, “When I was well enough, my wife Judy and I joined him [Brian] for a much-needed weekend of rest, relaxation, and strategic discussion.” The Welsh coast seemed to fit the bill perfectly. In George’s memo
ries, Portmeirion was a “curious seaside hideaway built like some giant film set by the architect Clough Williams Ellis.” As the couple’s “strategic discussion” with Brian began to unfold, they came to understand that the band’s manager had found himself at a crossroads. “As he took stock,” George later recalled, “Brian came to realize that he had taken a great deal for granted in running the lives of his four famous charges. So far, they hadn’t complained about the grueling round of concerts and appearances he put them through.” As they observed their host, George and Judy could sense that Brian felt that he was on the precipice of becoming secondary to the Beatles’ concerns. Brian seemed to perceive his own value in terms of the band’s ceaseless place in the public’s imagination, an end that he inevitably secured as they traipsed among the world’s concert halls and arenas.15
Yet at the same time, George couldn’t help noting Brian’s inability to remain focused on his artists, especially his acts beyond the Beatles. “There is no doubt,” George later wrote, “that Brian was losing control of his empire by this stage. He had slight delusions of grandeur. He pictured himself as a latter-day Diaghilev, believing that he was the man who had masterminded the greatest group on earth, and therefore he had the magic touch. So it had proven in 1963, but after a while he was bringing me artists that weren’t any good, and I was even having to turn them down sometimes. Brian’s empire was crumbling at the edges because he was tending not to devote as much time as he should to people, who therefore felt neglected.” To George’s mind, Brian’s life was rendered even more complex by his homosexuality, which forced him to live on society’s fringes. By this time, George later recalled, Brian’s “private life was also getting more and more complicated. The strains of being a closeted homosexual were telling on him, at a time when morality laws in England were very stringent and it was still a criminal offense to be a practicing gay. I think Brian had a tough time within himself. He would love to have had a happy relationship with someone, and I think he secretly envied Judy and me. At times, he seemed to be floating away.” But before George and Judy could devote additional time and energy to ministering to their host’s attendant difficulties, more pressing matters came to the fore. Indeed, it was there, by the seaside in Portmeirion, that they learned the awful news about a storm that was gathering in the United States—one that would make Tokyo and Manila seem like child’s play.16
As it turned out, the fuse had been lit way back in March, when Tony Barrow had intentionally shared Maureen Cleave’s in-depth Beatles interviews with Art Unger, the influential editor of Datebook, an American teen magazine, in order to build up buzz for the Beatles’ upcoming tour. Barrow and the Beatles had wisely befriended Unger during their previous visit to the United States both because they liked the affable American and for his access to a massive teen readership that still lived at the heart of the band’s primary demographic. Following Barrow’s lead, Unger reprinted the Cleave interviews in a special “shout-out” issue of Datebook. Knowing the Beatles would soon be alighting on American shores, Unger was looking for an opportunity to stir up the magazine’s substantial audience base. When he republished Cleave’s interviews on July 29, as George and Judy were busy back in London preparing to join Brian in scenic Portmeirion, Art adorned the cover of Datebook with eye-popping quotations that he had culled—out of context, no less—from the Maureen Cleave interviews:
McCartney: “It’s a lousy country where anyone black is a dirty nigger.”
Lennon: “I don’t know which will go first—rock ’n’ roll or Christianity.”
As he worked the print and broadcast media to create interest in Datebook’s latest issue, Unger shared the Beatles feature with a number of DJs, including Tommy Charles and Doug Layton, who hosted a morning show on WAQY in Birmingham, Alabama.17
On the morning of July 29—before the Datebook issue had even hit the newsstands—Charles and Layton began talking up the story. Like others in the media, they had harbored a growing concern that perhaps the Beatles’ pop-cultural dominion had run its course, that in spite of all of the unchecked adulation they received, they were not “godlike creatures.” While Charles and Layton admitted that the Beatles “are as good as or better than any group today,” they suggested that “it’s time somebody stood up to them and told them to shut up.” With the Datebook issue in their hands, they now had the ammunition to do just that. While McCartney’s hot-button remark about American racism received scant attention, Lennon’s observation about the decline of Christianity quickly caught fire among WAQY’s Bible Belt listeners, who took particular issue with what they perceived to be Lennon’s arrogance in elevating the Beatles over an entire religion. After gauging the red-hot level of their audience’s vitriol, Charles and Layton contrived the idea of banning the Fab Four from their airwaves while also suggesting that listeners round up their Beatles records for a WAQY-sponsored bonfire during the group’s upcoming tour. In fact, the Beatles would be within a few hundred miles of Birmingham on August 19, when they were scheduled to play a pair of shows in Memphis at the Mid-South Coliseum. But things really gathered momentum when Al Benn, Birmingham’s bureau manager for United Press International (UPI), caught Charles and Layton’s morning show. Smelling a scoop, he published a story about the Datebook feature and, quite suddenly, the localized Beatles furor in Birmingham went global, given UPI’s incredible international reach at the time. After Benn’s story ran on July 31, Unger realized that Barrow’s gambit, and his own complicity in it, had gone terribly awry. He telephoned Epstein, who was still vacationing with the Martins in Wales, telling him that “this is getting a little out of hand here. They’re planning to burn Beatles’ records.” At first, the Beatles’ manager seemed surprisingly unfazed under the circumstances. “If they burn Beatles records, they’ve got to buy them first,” he replied.18
Epstein and his houseguests began to take things much more seriously after the Beatles’ manager received a phone call from none other than Sid Bernstein, along with Nat Weiss, Epstein’s New York business partner. Bernstein had been instrumental in the rise of American Beatlemania through the band’s February 1964 Carnegie Hall performances and their historical August 1965 Shea Stadium appearance, which they were gearing up to repeat on August 15 as part of their upcoming tour. Bernstein and Weiss’s point was resoundingly clear: his illness and recuperation be damned, Epstein should travel to America at once, rouse his PR machine into operation, and do some emergency damage control. The prevailing view was that, fearing a backlash, promoters might begin canceling Beatles concerts. Huddled up with George and Judy, Brian hatched a plan: He would follow his advisers’ instructions and fly to New York City in advance of the Beatles’ American tour to launch a coordinated media response. Meanwhile, he would dispatch Martin back to London, where the producer would tape a prerecorded apology from Lennon that could be broadcast on American radio outlets in order to begin quelling the storm. Brian suggested that they deploy Derek Taylor, the ghostwriter behind the manager’s autobiography, A Cellarful of Noise, to script the apology.19
For his part, Martin was ready to leap into action. In contrast with his anger and disappointment in the Beatles over the Yesterday . . . and Today furor, which had blown through the bandmates’ world just seven weeks earlier, Martin was flabbergasted by what he perceived to be a puritanical and unwarranted response to Lennon’s remarks. Years later, George would lament the ways in which John had been misunderstood vis-à-vis the Datebook controversy. “Knowing the religious fanaticism one can find in the States, that didn’t help matters,” George wrote. “Of course, like so much that was said and reported at that time, the whole thing was blown up out of all proportion. I can’t remember John’s exact words, but I know his intention. He was slightly bemused by the effect the Beatles were having on the world, and his statement was factual. It was to the effect that ‘When you look at it, we are actually more popular than Jesus.’ That was true. Far fewer people went to church than listened to Beatles recor
ds and went to Beatles concerts. But he didn’t mean that the Beatles were more important than Christ, which was how most people interpreted the remark. On the contrary, he was deploring the situation, regretting that it was the case.”20
But by the time that Brian alighted in New York City on August 4, this plan of attack had been scrapped, if only temporarily. With Martin and the taped apology gambit on hold, Epstein woke up the next morning to a headline about Lennon’s remark plastered across the front page of the New York Times. The UPI story included remarks from Maureen Cleave, who, like Martin, argued for readers to take the context of the Beatle’s words into fuller consideration. Lennon “was simply observing that so weak was the state of Christianity that the Beatles were, to many people, better known than Jesus,” Cleave observed in the UPI report. “He was deploring rather than approving this. He said things had reached a ridiculous state of affairs when human beings could be worshiped in this extraordinary way.” Later, speaking with Pittsburgh’s KDKA, she pointed out that John’s words had been “taken out of context and did not accurately reflect the article or the subject as it was discussed.” Like Martin, Cleave argued that in the interview Lennon had intended to communicate that “the power of Christianity was on the decline in the modern world and that things had reached such a ridiculous state that human beings (such as the Beatles) could be worshipped more religiously by people than their own religion.”21
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