The Beatles (116 page)

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 performance, 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 T
HE
B
EATLES
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 other—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.”