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By Root 289 0

to records in those days. You consumed them, poring over the album covers, inserts, and liner notes. Like all things, the Beatles set the standard in covers and Revolver’s—designed by Klaus Voorman, a German friend from their days in Hamburg—was an iconic standout, still instantly recognizable forty years later. An album cover as bold and adventurous as the songs—“Taxman,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “She Said She Said,” “For No One,” “Tomorrow Never Knows.” So melodic. So much fun. So mysterious. They told me about the Beatles’ lives. What they were experiencing. How grand life could be. They were showing me a world that was magnificent, wondrous, and exciting, even more so with them in it.

The number one hits of 1966 around the time of Revolver’s release were “Hanky Panky” by Tommy James & the Shondells, “Strangers In the Night” by Frank Sinatra, “Cherish” by the Association, and “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones. Though great songs and catchy tunes, the Beatles’ Revolver eclipsed them all with experimentation and artistic depth. Each of the Beatles made the listener witness to the changes and growth he was experiencing. These were not the love songs of the Beatles’ other albums. They were complicated musically and lyrically. The sitar that was just an affectation in “Norwegian Wood” was now part of a full Indian ensemble in George’s “Love You To.” The lead guitar (Paul’s contribution) on “Taxman” was jarring and fantastic. Beautiful and haunting, “Eleanor Rigby” spoke of loneliness and empathy. “Tomorrow Never Knows” took us through a time warp converging the past and the future. I listened to Revolver incessantly. My musical tastes, my values, and my conscious life were in no small part being structured by the Beatles and this album in particular. It was at this moment that I believe I appropriated the Beatles completely for they could do no wrong. They felt the passion I felt for life. We were in it together.

Even during controversy, I was behind my heroes all the way. During their final 1966 tour, word spread rapidly about an interview John Lennon gave to the Evening Standard in England that was published on March 4, 1966. In that interview, and in the context of commenting on the fame of the Beatles, he said:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with 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 and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

That comment exploded in the States. Record burnings, protests, the Ku Klux Klan, death threats—all those things happened during that tour. It frightened the Beatles and their handlers. The outcry was so great that John was pressured to hold a press conference on August 11, 1966, to explain himself. Looking pained, but with his Beatle brothers at his side, he was reservedly contrite.

I suppose if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I would have gotten away with it. I’m sorry I opened my mouth. I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion. I wasn’t knocking it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact and it’s true more for England than here. I’m not saying that we’re better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it’s all this.

I remember how frightening that was. Some members of the media were beginning to turn on the Fab Four. Those who always saw them as a threat were using this as proof of their insidious influence. First long hair. Then lasciviousness. And now blasphemy. John’s experience during that time in no small part laid the seeds of the peace campaign that would be the catalyst for a revolution for many people and in my life particularly.

Nineteen sixty-six was a time of many formative pop influences on me in addition to the Beatles, and yet they all seemed to go together. The Batman TV show with its campy, pastel-color