Posted on 07/29/2019 4:43:12 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
With one sentence, John Lennon changed The Beatles’ prospects in the United States.
In March 1966, the renowned singer sat down for an interview with The London Evening Standard.
“We’re more popular than Jesus now,” Lennon said during the interview.
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The sentence alone appears to compare the band’s fame to Christ. But in full context, Lennon wasn’t attempting to say what would be regarded as a blasphemous and negative comment. Lennon simply stated that rock music, The Beatles in particular, were more popular in England than Christianity at that point.
(Excerpt) Read more at wfaa.com ...
Just peruse the lyrics of Imagine and you can see that.
Notice too that John sang “Imagine no possessions” but he wasn’t big about sharing his own possessions.
Well I looked it up. This is from wiki so take from it what you will.
Motive and planning
Edit
Lennon in 1980, shortly before his death
Chapman allegedly started planning to kill English musician John Lennon three months prior to the murder. A longtime fan of Lennon’s band the Beatles, Chapman turned against Lennon following a religious conversion, and was angry about Lennon’s highly publicized 1966 comment that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” Jan Reeves, the sister of one of Chapman’s friends, reported that Chapman “seemed really angry” toward Lennon and spoke frequently about Lennon’s claim, saying it was blasphemy.[14] Some members of Chapman’s prayer group made a joke in reference to Lennon’s song “Imagine”: “It went, ‘Imagine, imagine if John Lennon was dead.’”[10] Chapman’s childhood friend Miles McManushe recalled that he said that the song was “communist”.[14]
Chapman had also been influenced by Anthony Fawcett’s John Lennon: One Day at a Time about Lennon’s lifestyle in New York. According to his wife Gloria, “He was angry that Lennon would preach love and peace but yet have millions”. Chapman later said: “He told us to imagine no possessions and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed the lies and bought the records and built a big part of their lives around his music.”[4] He also recalled having listened to Lennon’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album in the weeks before the murder:
I would listen to this music and I would get angry at him, for saying that he didn’t believe in God… and that he didn’t believe in the Beatles. This was another thing that angered me, even though this record had been done at least ten years previously. I just wanted to scream out loud, “Who does he think he is, saying these things about God and heaven and the Beatles?” Saying that he doesn’t believe in Jesus and things like that. At that point, my mind was going through a total blackness of anger and rage. So I brought the Lennon book home, into this The Catcher in the Rye milieu where my mindset is Holden Caulfield and anti-phoniness.[4]
Chapman’s planning has been described as “muddled.”[15] Over the years, Chapman has both supported and denied whether he felt justified by his spiritual beliefs at the time or had the intention of acquiring notoriety.[3] The only time he made a public statement before his sentencing — and for several years afterward — was during a brief psychotic episode in which he was convinced that the meaning of his actions was to promote The Catcher in the Rye, which amounted to a single letter mailed to the New York Times asking the public to read the novel.[3] According to Chapman, he had an alternate hit list of potential targets in mind, including Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney, talk show host Johnny Carson, actress Elizabeth Taylor, actor George C. Scott, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, just-elected US president Ronald Reagan, and Hawaii governor George Ariyoshi. In 2010, he said that the only criterion for the list was being “famous”, and that he chose Lennon out of convenience.[16] Journalist James R. Gaines, who interviewed Chapman extensively, concluded that Chapman did not kill Lennon to become a celebrity.[3]
It is rumored that Chapman traveled to Woodstock, New York during one of his New York visits in search of Todd Rundgren, another target of obsession. Chapman was wearing a promotional T-shirt for Rundgren’s album Hermit of Mink Hollow when he was arrested and had a copy of Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren in his hotel room. Rundgren was not aware of the connections until much later.[17] On the day of the murder, singer David Bowie was appearing on Broadway in the play The Elephant Man. “I was second on his list,” Bowie later said. “Chapman had a front-row ticket to The Elephant Man the next night. John and Yoko were supposed to sit front-row for that show too. So the night after John was killed there were three empty seats in the front row. I can’t tell you how difficult that was to go on. I almost didn’t make it through the performance.”[18]
I’m not sure he died an atheist. Some accounts have him becoming “born-again “ in the years prior to his death.
RE: John Lennon was an atheist.
Then again...
https://www1.cbn.com/books/john-lennon%3A-one-of-jesus%27-%22biggest-fans%22
...maybe not
Too early to say whether he is wrong. With the assistance of leftists around world, the caliphate looms and looks unstoppable.
And that's the thing with most celebrity liberals. They live in gated mansions and get ferried around in limousines and private planes. They certainly do not practice what they preach for the rest of us.
Yes, that’s interesting.
LOL, thanks for posting that!
He almost became a Christian. Too bad.
Isn’t there a line in the song that says “You don’t know how lucky you are”?
“You don’t know how lucky you are boys, back in the U.S.S.R.”
But it’s talking about girls. Listen to the song, I think you’ll agree it’s a novelty piece and not any sort of communist propaganda.
White. Album.
Obviously rassist
Okay - gramps has lots of old 45’s we rescued from a couple of jukeboxes. Then too, no girls in the UK?
I have never been a huge Beatles fan, and I never liked John Lennon. Neverthless, I knew, even as a Christian boy at that time, what he was saying. He was not intending blasphemy.
I bet Lennon has regretted that statement now for about 40 years.
Agreed.
By the bye:
I did live through the Sixies, and I do remember it - vividly...
... because I did not do any drugs, although I was surrounded by those who did, including my two siblings, who destroyed themselves.
I grew up in Palo Alto, less than a mile from Stanford. Yes, I remember the Sixties all too well.
Well, yes of course, but that’s how they wrote the song. According to McCartney “I just liked the idea of Georgia girls and talking about places like the Ukraine as if they were California, you know? It was also hands across the water, which I’m still conscious of. ‘Cause they like us out there [in Soviet Russia], even though the bosses in the Kremlin may not.”
I suggest you listen to this youtube video of the song, with lyrics. I don’t think you’ll wind up thinking it’s communist propaganda:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7RAPnZBGQk
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