Remember...this is the same man who said, at the height of the Beatles’ fame, “We’re more popular than Jesus Christ”.
Not the statement of a clear-thinking man.
If you listen to what he actually said and his “apology” afterwards (forced by the press) he said he was astonished that youth were holding the Beatles up more than they were holding up God and that it was crazy. He didn’t say The Beatles were greater or better, he said the world was treating them like they were. He wasn’t comparing himself or the group to God...the world was. Context means everything.