“We love you, John and God,” read the cover of Melody Maker on August 20, 1966. The main photo showed a young fan holding a small flower in one hand. She was identified as Marie Martin, 14 years old, who went to Boston airport to wait for the Beatles to arrive in the city for their show at Suffolk Downs Racetrack. “Marie got much more than a glimpse. She took the rose from John Lennon’s lapel. For her, the fans’ banners with the inscription ‘We love you, John, and God’” took on a new meaning,” the magazine reported.
Despite their successful streak in the U.S., the Liverpool group was going through a complicated moment with unusual calls to burn their records, not play them on the radio, and not attend their concerts. All sparked by some statements from Lennon, originally given during an interview for the London Evening. “We are now more popular than Jesus, I don’t know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were ordinary,” said the Beatle, then 25 years old.
At first, not much happened with those words, but in July of that year, the U.S. Datebook replicated the Evening interview. But unlike the original, editor Art Unger decided to title it with the Beatle’s phrase about religion. That’s where the whole conflict began, especially in the “Bible Belt” area. By the time the Fab arrived in North America for their new tour on August 11, the controversy had exploded. From there, the media became interested in following the group’s tour and exploiting everything that happened to the fullest. Like the fans who arrived at airports to wait for them.
The controversy over Lennon’s words dominated all conversation about the Beatles. “When we arrived in Chicago there was a press conference with all the radio stations and newspapers there. John is very sad about the whole matter and explained what he meant and everyone seemed satisfied. Certainly, he is not against religion or anything like that,” wrote Kenny Everett, the Melody Maker reporter who covered the tour. He also noted the mood of the moment. “Local radio station WAYX burned all its stock of Beatles records last week as a gesture against John Lennon’s comment that they were ‘more popular than Jesus.’ But incidents like this have been few and far between. On the tour, fans have once again shown that the Beatles remain their favorites.”
The uproar soon became known in Chile. The Ritmo Magazine also reported on the controversy in its pages. The Beatles were by far the most popular foreign group in the country and had already made covers. In its issue 53, dated August 23 of that year, they carried a note titled “In the Hot Seat!”. There they elaborated on what happened and gauged the impact among local fans. “The problem reached Chile somewhat softened, and the Beatlemaniacs were divided into two groups: those who understood the intention of John Lennon’s words and downplayed the matter and another group that, holding that John could NEVER have said such things, created a real conscience problem because of these statements,” the note detailed.
They also sought a reaction from the popular host Agustín Fernandez, creator and host of the program The Beatles Club. “The Beatles have achieved extraordinary diffusion. They are known in places where even Christianity, the highest expression of diffusion through the centuries, has not yet managed to penetrate as deeply as Beatlemania, as happens in Japan and India. In no case do I think they have tried to declare themselves superior to Christ in terms of the respect he deserves as the highest representative of religious doctrine. They have limited themselves, I believe, to the vulgar level of their daily activities: publicity.”
All the mess with John’s words, the burned records, and the divided fans happened while the group was releasing their new album, Revolver. The group’s seventh album was released on August 5 of that year, just before the start of the North American tour that would end up being the last of their career. At least commercially, it had a favorable takeoff in the UK. The mentioned edition of Melody Maker detailed that by the end of that month it had already climbed to number 1 on the LP chart.
Alongside this, the double A-side single Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby, two of the most accessible tracks from the album, was released and despite everything, managed to carve out a space. That is, it is clear that the EMI record company bet on the single over the album. Even in the U.S., with the embers of the controversy still burning. “As for sales, however, there does not seem to be any drop at all in the Beatles’ power. Their most recent Capitol single seems to be another double hit – Melody Maker reported in the same cited issue -. Yellow Submarine is already in the Top Twenty in its first week of release, while the B-side Eleanor Rigby closely follows. It is now reported that stations are switching to the Rigby side, which could be the bigger hit of the two.” Meanwhile, in Chile, the single Paperback Writer/Rain, not included on the album and released a few months earlier, was among the top three bestsellers and by the end of the month had a slight decline.
The commercial performance of the most accessible single from Revolver helped save the situation. The album was noticeably more experimental and eclectic; from the start with the acidic Taxman, to the classical suite of Eleanor Rigby, the Indian fantasy of Love You To, to the saturated and bright guitars of And Your Bird Can Sing and the thunderous finale with the adventurous and psychedelic Tomorrow Never Knows. “Probably, this album took longer than any other for fans to fully appreciate its revolutionary musical evolution, or rather, its authentic revolution,” British author David Bedford, a Beatles history specialist with several published books (including one with Hunter Davies, the group’s first biographer), tells Culto.
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The controversy had overshadowed a reality; the Beatles were leaving Beatlemania behind and beginning to think in more sophisticated musical terms, exploring studio effects and compositions that went beyond the conventional pop song. David Bedford points out a personal story in this regard. “When Revolver was released, it surprised everyone. How was it possible that a group that two years earlier had released a magnificent soundtrack for A Hard Day’s Night, composed of excellent pop and folk rock songs, had evolved so much in such a short time? A good friend of mine, upon buying and listening to Revolver for the first time, was not impressed, he put it down and started listening to the Monkees. A few months later, he listened to it again and, after several listens, realized how incredible the album was and resumed his fondness for the Beatles.”
The group’s interest in going beyond conventions also has an explanation. Always competitive, they noticed that the bar was high that season; the Beach Boys surprised with the phenomenal Pet Sounds; Bob Dylan extended his folk rock fusion in the ambitious Blonde on Blonde; the Rolling Stones tried new instruments on Aftermath; and The Byrds deployed adventurous rock on Fifth Dimension. That’s why they needed to present an album that was up to the moment. So, they dedicated themselves to listening carefully.
“Lennon and McCartney were aware of everything happening in the music scene on both sides of the Atlantic,” explains David Bedford. “The group was making giant strides in composition, as well as in technological advances in the studio, which meant that no one could stand still, especially John and Paul. Their eagerness for continued success led them, instead of settling for producing the same musical genres on each album, which would have sold anyway, to lead the revolution from the front line. They listened to all their competitors’ albums and then set out to improve what they produced. This pushed them to achieve greater and greater success.”
In September of that year, Lennon and McCartney agreed to comment on the recent North American tour with Melody Maker. On that occasion, the former made it clear how attentive he was to what was sounding, commenting on his liking for some U.S. groups. “I think, for example, Brian Wilson is great, he’s doing very good things. We like the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Mamas & the Papas, many of them. They make sounds we like. You know? And we listen to everything we can.” Meanwhile, Macca, always confident, assured that the group was in good shape. “There will be no fall for us,” he said. “We’re not worried. We’re not afraid. When we get tired of all the nonsense and the press and the screams, we’ll just take some fat vacations with our fat wallets.”
To the Beatles’ misfortune, their interest in expanding their music did not have the same media reception. After their U.S. tour, rumors of dissolution began, fueled precisely by that scandal, the complex reception of Revolver, and the personal projects the musicians cultivated after returning from the other side of the Atlantic. “THE BEATLES, meanwhile, continue to make news,” Ritmo noted in November 1966. “PAUL MCCARTNEY, the single Beatle, is writing the music for the new film of the English starlet HAYLEY MILLS titled ‘IN GOOD TIME.’ Meanwhile, the chief Beatle: JOHN LENNON, is filming the last scenes of ‘HOW I WON THE WAR’ in Almería and Spain, a film he stars in alone, without his famous companions.”
That same month, Melody Maker asked in an article “Are the Beatles dead? Long live the Beatles!”. The author was Derek Taylor, who had been the group’s press chief in 1964 – a role he resumed in 1968 until the end – and knew them well. He revealed that after the tour, each was resting separately. “Not a word is said about tours; there is a very dignified denial of a miserably invented rumor that they would leave [Brian] Epstein. They go out little to clubs, and recording plans are not rushed. Absolute calm. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starkey, having shown they were capable of an independent life without harming the main body, now make it clear they are capable of seeking separate and rapid growth.” They didn’t know it then, but the group was already preparing to return to the studio to advance even bolder material, like the single Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane and the acclaimed album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
That eventful 1966 for the Beatles had left a mark and at the media level was not too memorable. In his year-end review for Ritmo Magazine, Enrique Santis Tellez summarized: “In general terms, we can say that 1966 was a transitional year characterized mainly by the consolidation of cumbia as a popular rhythm; the noticeable decline in the popularity of THE BEATLES, due to the saturation of their records.” In fact, when choosing the best titles of the year, the magazine chose Fiesta by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass as the most outstanding internationally. Revolver? Nothing. At least the single Yellow Submarine had managed to establish itself among the best sellers in the last part of the year.
Only time positioned Revolver as a revolutionary album. “For most Beatles fans, only a few months at most – says David Bedford -. But I still think that today most music fans do not realize that this was a more significant and important album than Sgt. Pepper, released the following year. Revolver proudly stands as the most incredible and culturally important album of the 1960s.”
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