THE BEATLES

THE BEATLES

Updated September 10, 2001 (first published October 8, 2000) (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org) - The Beatles are the most popular and influential rock band of all time. The Beatles, in fact, are a synonym for rock & roll. Their music was re-released in 1987 via compact disc and continues to sell well, and it is played continuously on oldies radio stations. Their new album, titled “1,” debuted in November 2000 at No. 1 on pop charts in the U.S.A. and 16 other countries and sold more than one-half million copies the first week. The album contains 27 of the Beatles No. 1 singles. A recent television special, which was titled The Beatles Revolution, attracted 8.7 million viewers to its first showing on ABC and is being rebroadcast by cable networks. Their influence permeates Western society and can be felt throughout the world. Even Contemporary Christian musicians are Beatles fans. For example, Phil Keaggy pays “homage to the Beatles” on his 1993 Crimson and Blue album. Galactic Cowboys admits that their biggest influence is the Beatles. Caedmon’s Call often performs Beatles music. dc Talk opened its “Jesus Freak” concerts with the Beatles’ song “Help.” Jars of Clay names Jimmy Hendrix and the Beatles as their inspiration. The lead guitarist is said to be a “Beatles fanatic.”

Sid Bernstein observed, “Only Hitler ever duplicated [the Beatles’] power over crowds. … when the Beatles talk—about drugs, the war in Vietnam, religion—millions listen, and this is the new situation in the pop music world” (Time, Sept. 22, 1967, p. 60). Rock critic Vern Stefanic noted that “Lennon was more than a musician” because he promoted “an anti-God theme, and anti-America, pro-revolution stance” (Tulsa World, Dec. 12, 1980, p. 20). The Beatles even pioneered the long-haired look. “. . . the major impulse behind the rock androgyny of the Sixties was, in fact, of foreign origin . . . the Beatles. . . . the haircuts were so revolutionary by Sixties standards that they were viewed as signs of incipient transvestism” (Steven Simels, Gender Chameleons: Androgyny in Rock ‘n’ Roll, pp. 29,30,32). Paul McCartney admitted their role in destroying traditional convention: “There they were in America, all getting house-trained for adulthood with their indisputable principle of life: short hair equals men; long hair equals women. Well, we got rid of that small convention for them. And a few others, too” (Barbara Ehrenreich, “Beatlemania: Girls Just Wanted to Have Fun,” cited by Lisa Lewis, The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, p. 102).

HISTORY OF THE BEATLES. Called the “fab four,” the Beatles were composed of John Lennon (1940-1980), Paul McCartney (1942- ), George Harrison (1943- ) and Ringo Starr (born Richard Starkey) (1940- ). McCartney and Harrison had Catholic mothers, but their fathers were not religious. Paul McCartney’s father, Jim, considered himself an agnostic. (When Jim McCartney died in 1976, Paul did not even attend the funeral.) Ringo’s mother and father separated when he was very young and later divorced. Ringo’s mother worked as a barmaid at times. Lennon’s mother and father (Fred) had gotten married without her parent’s approval, and Fred left his little family to join the merchant marines when John was very small. John’s mother later lived with another man and had two daughters, though she never divorced Fred. In later life Lennon expressed great hatred for his mother. His father’s second wife, Pauline, testified that the mere mention of her name “triggered a vicious verbal attack on [his mother], whom he reviled in the most obscene language I had ever heard…” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 17). John was raised largely by his mother’s sister, his Aunt Mimi. She sent him to an Anglican Sunday school, where he sang in the choir. By age 11, though, he was permanently barred from Sunday services because he “repeatedly improvised obscene and impious lyrics to the hymns” (Rock Lives, p. 114). Lennon testified that none of his church experiences touched him and that by age 19 he “was cynical about religion and never even considered the goings-on in Christianity.” It is sad that all Lennon experienced was corrupt Christianity in the form of dead Anglicanism. By 1964, McCartney testified that none of them believed in God and that religion “doesn’t fit into my life.” Their drug experiences changed that, but the “god” they came to believe in was not the God of the Bible. McCartney described his God as “a force we are all a part of.” Lennon said, “We’re all God.”

John Lennon was the undisputed leader of the Beatles. By the late 1950s, he was a profane and brawling street youth. He shoplifted, abused girls, drew obscene pictures, lied “about everything,” despised authority, and was the ringleader of a group of rowdies. The young Lennon was also very cruel. He tried to frighten old people and made fun of those who were crippled or deformed. The new music called rock & roll fit his licentious lifestyle. Later Lennon described himself as “a weird, psychotic kid covering up my insecurity with a macho façade” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 2). The other Beatles were also juvenile rowdies, if not outright delinquents. Even as a young teenager, Paul McCartney “became about the most sexually precocious boy of his year.” Paul also stole things and drew dirty pictures. They rebelled against their fathers and other authority figures. Ringo’s first job was as a bartender on a ferryboat. He was also a thief and a truant during his youth. Even George Harrison, the “only one whose family background was normal and undramatic,” rebelled against the way his father wanted him to act and dress. He later testified: “Going in for flash clothes, or at least trying to be a bit different … was part of the rebelling. I never cared for authority” (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, p. 39). Harrison was in frequent trouble at school. When they began playing together in bands in their teenage years, they played in wicked places such as strip joints. They testified that they “got drunk a lot” and “had a lot of girls” (The Beatles, p. 77).

The Beatles were powerfully influenced by American bluesmen and Elvis Presley, and they formed a rock band called the Quarrymen in the mid-1950s. Lennon testified that “nothing really effected me until Elvis.” McCartney said: “[Elvis] was the biggest kick. Every time I felt low I just put on an Elvis and I’d feel great, beautiful.” Ringo said, “Elvis changed my life.” By late 1957, the band included Lennon, Harrison, and McCartney, plus other young men on bass and drums. They combed their hair and dressed like Elvis and played rhythm & blues and Chuck Berry/Little Richard/Elvis type music. The group changed its name to the Silver Beetles in 1960, then simply to the Beatles, referring to the beat of their music. “John Lennon changed the name to Beatles to accent the drive of their music, the BEAT” (H.T. Spence, Confronting Contemporary Christian Music, p. 78). Drummer Ringo Starr joined the group in 1962 just before they recorded their first single. That year the Beatles played with Little Richard in a Liverpool, England, club. Little Richard said, “They were little, strange-looking fellows; they all had their little bangs” (Dallas Times Herald, Oct. 29, 1978). By 1963, “Beatlemania” was raging in England, and by 1964 the Beatles had leaped to international fame when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” skyrocketed to the top of the charts in the United States and they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. By April 1964, the Beatles had the top five best-selling singles in America.

The Beatles set the tone for rock music and for the hippie youth culture in the 1960s until the band broke up in 1969. They led a generation of rebellious youth from marijuana to acid to “free sex” to eastern religion to revolution and liberal political/social activism. David Noebel observes: “The Beatles set trends, and their fans followed their lead. They were the vanguard of an entire generation who grew long hair, smoked grass, snorted coke, dropped acid, and lived for rock ‘n’ roll. They were the ‘cool’ generation” (The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 43).

THE BEATLES AND IMMORALITY. Ringo reported, “We got drunk a lot. You couldn’t help it. We had a lot of girls. We soon realized that they were easy to get” (TV Guide, July 29, 1978, p. 21). McCartney said: “We didn’t all get into music for a job! We got into it to avoid a job, in truth—and get lots of girls.” Lennon’s 21st birthday party was “a huge drunken noisy orgy” (The Beatles, p. 177). Lennon called marriage a stupid scene” and a mere “bit of paper.” He frequented prostitutes even in his teenage years, living in immorality before he was married, and then in adulterous relationships during his two marriages. His first wife, Cynthia, was pregnant with a child when he finally married her in a clandestine ceremony in August 1962. No parents attended and the other band members dressed in black. On their wedding night, John hurried away for a performance. Lennon and Yoko Ono lived together for a year while he was still married to Cynthia and Ono was still married to an American filmmaker. When Cynthia returned from a vacation in Greece, she found Ono living with her husband in her own home. Ono was still married to another man when she announced that she was expecting a baby by Lennon. The mocking Two Virgins album cover featured the nude photos of Lennon and Ono on the front and back. (The album, which had no songs, was composed of sound effects and random voices.) Ono had been married several times and had a number of abortions before her alliance with Lennon. Lennon said, “…intellectually, we knew marriage was a stupid scene, but we’re romantic and square as well as hip and aware. We lived together for a year before we got married, but we were still tied to other people by a bit of paper” (Davies, The Beatles). The two finally got married in March 1969. Ono wore a short mini-skirt and sunglasses. On their honeymoon, Lennon and Ono spent seven days in a public bed in Amsterdam, “to protest violence.” Later Lennon spent 18 months with his and Yoko’s secretary, May Pang, while he was still married to Ono. Lennon was involved with an adulterous relationship with the wife of the Beatles’ manager, Malcolm Evans (Giuliano, p. 107). In his last year, he was addicted to pornography movies and other vile things.

After several years of immoral partying, Ringo Starr married Maureen Cox in February 1965. She was already pregnant with his child when he proposed to her after a night of drinking. In 1975, they went through a “rather messy, acrimonious divorce.” George Harrison had announced that he was in love with Ringo’s wife, and Ringo, for his part, admitted that he had an adulterous affair with actress Nancy Andrews. After the divorce, Ringo “started a wandering life.” In 1981, he married an American actress and former Playboy model.

George Harrison lived with Pattie Boyd for about a year before they were married in January 1966. In 1970, Eric Clapton wrote the famous rock love song, “Layla,” for another man’s wife; for the woman Clapton was illicitly “in love” with was George Harrison’s wife, Pattie. By 1973, Patti began living and traveling with Clapton. George Harrison and Pattie were finally divorced in 1977, and she married Clapton in 1979. That marriage only lasted a few years. George Harrison married Olivia Trinidad Arias in 1978. Harrison also had an adulterous affair with Ringo Starr’s wife Maureen.

Paul McCartney lived with Jane Asher for many years. She told the press: “I certainly don’t object to people having children when they are not married, and I think it is quite sensible to live together before you are married” (Noebel, The Marxist Minstrels, p. 92). McCartney and Asher became engaged in January 1968, but she called it off after discovering his affair with an American woman. McCartney also lived with Linda Eastman for a few months before they were married in March 1969. They had a one-day engagement. She was four months pregnant at the time of the marriage. (It was her second.) Linda died in 1998.

George Harrison promised to reporters that the Beatles would not be afraid to use any four-letter words in their songs. In fact, obscenities are quite common in Beatles’ compositions (Noebel, The Marxist Minstrels, pp. 104, 92).

The Beatles manager, BRIAN EPSTEIN, was a homosexual. After hearing the Beatles in a London pub, he become obsessed with making John Lennon his lover. Two years after the Beatles’ wildly successful 1964 America tour, Lennon accompanied Epstein to Barcelona, Spain, for a weekend that possibly included homosexual activity (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, introduction to the 1985 edition). There were probably other homosexual episodes in Lennon’s life. Biographer Geoffrey Giuliano, who had access to Lennon’s diaries, concluded that there was “a pronounced homosexual element in Lennon’s makeup” (Lennon in America, p. 13). During his last days, Epstein was constantly in the depths of depression, living on pills, having tantrums with his staff and closest friends over petty things” (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, introduction to the 1985 edition). He was also involved in extremely sordid homosexual alliances. Before signing as the Beatles’ manager, he had been arrested for solicitation in a public restroom or park. Epstein died in 1967 at age 37 of a drug overdose. The death, from a cumulative effect of bromide in the drug Carbitral, was ruled accidental; but he had attempted suicide once before. Two other drugs were found in his body. At the time of his death, the Beatles were in Wales, sitting under the teaching of Hindu guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Britain had decriminalized homosexual activity one month before Epstein’s death.

THE BEATLES AND DRUGS. Testifying before the House Select Committee on Crime, popular family entertainer Art Linkletter, who lost a child to drug abuse, referred to the Beatles as the “leading missionaries of the acid society” (Crime in America—Illicit and Dangerous Drugs, October 1969). Media researcher Brian Key observed: “The Beatles became the super drug culture prophets … of all time” (Key, Media Sexploitation, 1976, p. 136). The student newspaper for the University of Wisconsin noted that the Beatles have “proselytized the use of drugs so subtly that words and conceptions once only common to drug users are found in sentences of teeny-boppers and statesmen alike” (Daily Cardinal, Dec. 3, 1968, p. 5, cited by David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 63).

The Beatles began taking drugs during their earliest band days before they became popular. They started by taking slimming pills to stay awake during long performances. They were high on “prellies,” a form of speed called Phenmetrazine and marketed as Preludin. John Lennon was so out of control one night, that “when a customer over-enthusiastically approached the stage, he kicked him in the head twice, then grabbed a steak knife from a table and threw it at the man” (Waiting for the Man, p. 107).

Many of the Beatles songs were about drugs. These include “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Day Tripper,” “Yellow Submarine,” “Help,” “Rubber Soul,” “Cold Turkey,” “Glass Onion,” “I Am the Walrus,” and “Penny Lane.” (The Beatles have admitted that these are drug songs.) BBC removed the Beatles’ song “A Day in the Life” from the air because of its drug implications. Their 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s album heralded the drug revolution in America (“Approbation on Drug Usage in Rock and Roll Music,” U.N. Bulletin on Narcotics, Oct.-Dec. 1969, p. 35; David Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, pp. 56,58). Time magazine reported that Sgt. Pepper’s was “drenched in drugs” (Time, Sept. 22, 1967, p. 62). The album “galvanized the acid subculture and gave LSD an international platform” (Waiting for the Man, p. 145). On the Sgt. Pepper’s album Ringo Starr sang, “I get high with a little help from my friends.” The members of the Beatles later openly admitted that the album was “a drug album” (Flowers in the Dustbin, p. 253). Sgt. Pepper’s was hugely influential, one of the best-selling albums of rock history. The London Times’ theater critic Kenneth Tynan observed that the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album was “a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization.”

Lennon admitted that he began taking LSD in 1964 and that “it went on for years. I must have had a thousand trips … a thousand. I used to just eat it all the time” (Rolling Stone, Jan. 7, 1971, p. 39; cited by Jann Wenner, Lennon Remembers, p. 76). John Lennon read Timothy Leary’s book The Psychedelic Experience in 1966, after Paul McCartney took him to the Indica, a hip New Age bookshop in London. Lennon wrote “Tomorrow Never Knows” after taking LSD and wrote the songs “Come Together” and “Give Peace a Chance” for Leary.

Lennon claimed that he had been on pills since he was 17 and soon after turned to pot. He said: “I have always needed a drug to survive. The others, too, but I always had more, more pills, more of everything because I am more crazy, probably (Noebel, The Marxist Minstrels, p. 111). Lennon admitted to a Rolling Stone interviewer that there were “a lot of obvious LSD things in the music.” Lennon said, “God isn’t in a pill, but LSD explained the mystery of life. It was a religious experience.” In an interview with Playboy in 1981, Lennon said the Beatles smoked marijuana for breakfast and were so stoned that they were “just all glazed eyes.” The Beatles took out a full-page ad in the London Times (June 1967), calling for the legalization of marijuana. In 1969, Lennon said: “If people can’t face up to the fact of other people being naked or smoking pot … then we’re never going to get anywhere” (Penthouse, Oct. 1969, p. 29, cited in The Legacy of John Lennon, p. 66). Paul McCartney told Life magazine that he was “deeply committed to the possibilities of LSD as a universal cure-all.” He went on to say, “After I took it, it opened my eyes. We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think what all we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part. It would mean a whole new world. If politicians would use LSD, there would be no more war, poverty or famine” (Life, June 16, 1967, p. 105).

In 1968, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were arrested for marijuana possession. The drug conviction nearly cost Lennon the right to live in the United States. In April 1969, George Harrison and his wife, Patti, were arrested at their home and charged with possession of 120 joints of marijuana. The drugs were found by a police dog. They pleaded guilty and were fined. In 1972, Paul McCartney and his wife, Linda, pleaded guilty to smuggling marijuana into Sweden. In 1973, McCartney pleaded guilty to growing marijuana on his farm in Scotland. McCartney’s wife was arrested in Los Angeles in 1975 for possession of marijuana. In 1980, McCartney was arrested by customs officials at Tokyo International Airport when nearly a half-pound of marijuana was discovered in his suitcase. He was kicked out of Japan after being detained for nine days. In 1984, McCartney and his wife, Linda, were fined 70 pounds by Barbados magistrates for possession of marijuana. A few days later, Linda McCartney was charged again, for importing marijuana into Heathrow Airport.

Drugs were involved when Mel Evans, former Beatles road manager, was shot to death by police in 1976 during an argument involving a rifle. His girlfriend had called the police and told them that Mal had taken Valium and was “totally messed up,” and when he allegedly made threatening gestures with the gun, they shot him. The rifle was not loaded. He was in his 40s.

THE BEATLES AND REVOLUTION. The Beatles promoted the revolutionary overthrow of authority and communism in songs such as “Revolution No. 9,” “Working Class Hero,” Back in the USSR,” “Power to the People,” “Sometime in New York City,” “Give Peace a Chance,” “Bloody Sunday” (which called British police “Anglo pigs”), “Attica State” (“now’s the time for revolution”), “Angela” (which glorified communist Angela Davis), and “Piggies.” Lennon performed at anti-America rallies and called upon America to leave Vietnam to the communists. He said: “I really thought that love would save us. But now I’m wearing a Chairman Mao badge, that’s where it’s at. I’m just beginning to think he’s doing a good job” (Lennon, cited by Wenner, Lennon Remembers, p. 86). Lennon gave the violent Students for Democratic Society (SDS) $5,000, hoping it would assist those who were being sought by police for bombings. Though Lennon later characterized his radicalism as “phony” and motivated by guilt for his wealth (Newsweek, Sept. 29, 1980, p. 77), “its effect was deadly real” (Noebel, p. 78).

Even as early as the beginning of 1961, before they became international rock stars, the Beatles experienced rioting at their concerts. “In most places the appearance ended in riots, especially when Paul sang ‘Long Tall Sally,’ a standard rock number but done with tremendous beat and excitement. They were beginning to realize the effect they could have on an audience and often made the most of it, until things got out of hand. Paul says that some of the early ballrooms were terrifying” (The Beatles, p. 94). The Beatles fans used fire extinguishers on each other at the Hambledone Hall. Paul McCartney said: “When we played ‘Hully Gully,’ that used to be one of the tunes which ended in fighting.” Neil Aspinall, the road manager for the Beatles, testified that “they were beginning to cause riots everywhere.” A British rock fan magazine of that time observed that the reason for the violence was that the Beatles “symbolised the rebellion of youth.” When the Beatles broke into international fame, the rioting became even worse. The British parliament discussed “the thousands of extra policemen all around the country who were being made to do extra, and dangerous, duty because of the Beatles” (The Beatles, p. 184). At a concert in Manila in 1966, the Beatles were kicked and punched by the crowds because they were perceived to have been discourteous to the President’s wife. During the Beatles’ last tour in the States, the crowds surged forward and viciously bashed in the roof of the limousine they thought the Beatles were in. As it turned out, the Beatles had been smuggled out in an ambulance.

THE BEATLES AND PAGAN RELIGION. In the summer of 1967, the four Beatles and other rock stars, including Brian Jones and Mike Jagger of the Rolling Stones, visited Guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi during his trip to North Wales and listened to the teachings that he called the “Spiritual Regeneration Movement.” This false teacher claimed to have a path of regeneration other than that of being born again through faith in Jesus Christ. Later the Beatles, along with Donovan, Mia Farrow, Beach Boy Mike Love, and others, visited the Maharishi’s ashram on the banks of the River Ganges in India to study Transcendental Meditation. The Beatles soon split with the Maharishi. One reason was his suggestion that they turn over 25 percent of their income to his work. Another reason was they caught the Guru eating meat, which was not allowed to his disciples, and engaging in acts of immorality with female disciples. Lennon later composed a song about the Maharishi titled “Sexy Sadie.” Though he rejected the Maharishi, Lennon continued to believe in yoga till the end of this life. “If John’s energy level and ambition were running high, a half hour or more of yoga was next on the agenda. . . . Outside of walking, yoga was the only exercise he ever did. But spiritual rather than physical reasons motivated him to continue meditating. . . . [He believed yoga could help him achieve his greatest ambition, which was] a state of spiritual perfection by following The Way of The Masters: Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna and Gandhi. . . . John believed that if he meditated long and hard enough, he’d merge with God and acquire psychic powers, like clairvoyance and the ability to fly through the air. And he wanted those powers as badly as he wanted anything” (Rosen, Nowhere Man, p. 18).

George Harrison has continued to follow Hinduism. Harrison admitted to Rolling Stone magazine that the drug LSD opened his mind to this pagan religion. “Although up until LSD, I never realized that there was anything beyond this state of consciousness. … I think for me it was definitely LSD. The first time I took it, it just blew everything away. I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass” (Rolling Stone, Nov. 5 - Dec. 10, 1987, p. 48). The creator of LSD, Dr. Albert Hofman, also acknowledges that the hallucinogenic drug led him into Hindu meditation (The Heartbeat of the Dragon, p. 75). He eventually purchased the Krishna Temple in London and financed the publication of the Krishna magazine. Harrison’s song “My Sweet Lord” (1971), which he published the year following the breakup of the Beatles, is a song of praise to the Hindu god Krishna. It mentions the long process of achieving Nirvana through meditation and mysticism. It ends with the Hare Krishna chant. Harrison also sang about Krishna in his albums Living in the Material World (1973) and Dark Horse (1974). Living in the Material World had the lyrics: “I hope to get out of this place/ By the Lord Sri Krishna’s grace/ My salvation from the material world.” During his 1974 concerts in America, Harrison led audiences in the Hare Krishna mantra. In 1987, Harrison testified that Hinduism was still a part of his life. “I still believe the purpose of our life is to get God-realization. There’s a science that goes with that, the science of self-realization. It’s still very much a part of my life, but it’s sort of very personal, very private” (People, Oct. 19, 1987, p. 64).

The song “Tomorrow Never Knows” was inspired by John Lennon’s “drug-addled readings of the Tibetan Book of the Dead” (Stairway to Heaven, p. 140). The lyrics say: “Turn off your mind relax and float downstream. It is not dying. It is not dying. Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void. It is shining. It is shining. That you may see the meaning of within. It is being. It is being.” As we shall see, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were heavily involved in occultism toward the end of Lennon’s life.

Lennon “was strongly influenced by Van Gogh and Marcel Duchamp [depraved artists and philosophers who taught that life is meaningless]; these men were the textbook teachers of Lennon when he attended the Liverpool Art School. Both he and Yoko Ono were much involved in avant-garde art, and their music certainly reveals this fact” (H.T. Spence, Confronting Contemporary Christian Music, p. 41). In 1965 Lennon was asked, “What will you do when Beatlemania subsides?” He replied: “I don’t suppose I think much about the future. I don’t really [care]. Though now we’ve made it, it would be a pity to get bombed. It’s selfish, but I don’t care too much about humanity—I’m an escapist. Everybody’s always drumming on about the future but I’m not letting it interfere with my laughs, if you see what I mean” (Stairway to Heaven, p. 128).

Lennon and Yoko Ono were fascinated by the occult. He purchased entire sections of occult literature in bookstores (Hellhounds on Their Trail, p. 181). Occultist John Green was hired by Yoko Ono in 1974 to be her tarot card reader. “As time went on he became Lennon’s advisor, confidant and friend. Until October of 1980, he worked closely with them. They did everything according to ‘the cards.’ He advised them on all of their business transactions and investments, even to the point of how to handle the problems Lennon was having with Apple, the Beatles record company” (Song Magazine, Feb. 1984, p. 16, cited by More Rock, Country & Backward Masking Unmasked, p. 105). “People were hired and fired based on the findings of the tarot card reader, Charlie Swan; the Council of Seers, an assortment of freelance astrologers, psychics and directionalists; and Yoko’s own consultations with the zodiac and Book of Numbers” (Rosen, Nowhere Man, p. 38). Yoko followed the Asian philosophy of katu-tugai, which combined numerology with cartography. According to the tenets of katu-tugai, traveling in a westerly direction ensures good luck. In 1977, Yoko spent a week in South America studying magic with a seven-foot-tall Columbian witch, who was paid $60,000 to teach Yoko how to cast spells. “The Lennons saw magic as both an instrument of crisis management and the ideal weapon” (Rosen, p. 62). They cast magic spells against their opponents in lawsuits (Giuliano, p. 119) and even against Paul and Linda McCartney when they simply wanted to visit the Lennons in 1980 (p. 208). Lennon also believed in UFOs, and he religiously read the tabloid reports on these. He claimed to have seen a UFO hovering over the East River in 1974, and his song “Nobody Told Me,” which appeared on his Milk and Honey album, was about UFOs over New York. Lennon was fascinated with a book called The Lost Spear of Destiny, which was about the spear used to pierce the side of Jesus Christ when He was on the cross. Lennon fantasized about finding the spear. When asked what he would do with it if he found it, Lennon replied that he could do anything in the universe (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 81). Lennon and Yoko participated in séances, and Yoko believed that she was a reincarnation of a 3,000-year-old Persian mummy that she had purchased in from Switzerland (Giuliano, p. 157). She collected Egyptian artifacts, believing they possessed magical powers.

Yoko Ono believed the Hindu myth that a son born on his father’s birthday inherits his soul when the father dies. Thus, they arranged to have their son, Sean, delivered by cesarean on Lennon’s 35th birthday, October 9, 1975 (Hellhounds on Their Trail, p. 183). She “was convinced the baby would be a messiah who would one day change the world” (Giuliano, p. 101).

Lennon and Yoko’s prognosticators frequently gave false predictions. When Yoko was pregnant, I Ching predicted the baby was a girl; but it was actually a boy (Giuliano, p. 88). In 1976, Yoko’s psychic advisers suggested that Lennon should not resume his musical career until 1982, but he died two years before then (Giuliano, p. 108). A psychic Yoko consulted in 1977 in Rome predicted that Lennon would become musically productive again in 1980 and that this phase would last two years, but Lennon died in 1980 (Giuliano, p. 144). In 1979, only a year before Lennon’s death, Yoko’s advisers forecast that she and John would have two more children (Giuliano, p. 192).

The Beatles immensely aided in the promotion of one-world, New Age thought. In 1967, for example, their song “All You Need Is Love” (referring not to the love of God through Jesus Christ or to love defined biblically, but to a vague humanistic “love”) was broadcast to more than 150 million people via a television program called Our World.

After his wife Linda’s death, Paul McCartney told the press that he was committed to “fate.” He said: “The Beatles had an expression: something will happen. That’s about as far as I get with philosophy. There’s no point mapping out next year. Fate is much more magical” (Paul McCartney, USA Today, Oct. 15, 1999, p. 8E).

LENNON’S VIOLENCE AND LACK OF LOVE. The man who sang about love (“all you need is love”) and peace (“give peace a chance”) was actually very noncompassionate, self-centered to the extreme, and violent. His biographers speak of “the infamous Lennon temper.” He frequently flew into rages, screaming, smashing things, hitting people. He admitted, “I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I beat women” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 20). On one adulterous weekend fling with his secretary, May Pang, Lennon “accused her of cheating on him, and flew into a rage, trashing the room and trampling her eyeglasses” (Giuliano, p. 16). Lennon admitted: “I was a very jealous, possessive guy. A very insecure male. A guy who wants to put his woman in a little box and only bring her out when he feels like playing with her” (Ibid.). When the owner of a nightclub said something that upset Lennon, he “beat the poor man mercilessly” (Giuliano, p. 8). At a party in California in 1973, Lennon “went berserk, hurling a chair out the window, smashing mirrors, heaving a TV against the wall, and screaming nonsense about film director Roman Polanski being to blame” (Giuliano, p. 57). During the recording of his Rock ‘n’ Roll album, Lennon “was so out of control he began to kick the windows out of the car and later trashed the house” (Giuliano, p. 59). Lennon confided to a friend, “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to kill a woman, many women! It was only becoming a Beatle that saved me from actually doing it” (Giuliano, p. 20). When Yoko was pregnant with their son (Sean Ono Taro Lennon), John Lennon once kicked her in the stomach during an explosive confrontation; Lennon later hit the young Sean, even kicking him once in a restaurant (Giuliano, pp. 111, 138). In 1979, Lennon flew into a rage and trashed his apartment while “filling the air with a stream of profane invective” (Giuliano, p. 179). As for love, even Lennon’s celebrated relationship with Yoko Ono was filled with everything but love. After 1971, “John and Yoko’s great love was pretty much a public charade designed to help prop up their often flickering careers” (Giuliano, p. 147). In 1972, the Sunday Mirror described John Lennon and Yoko Ono as “one of the saddest, loneliest couples in the world . . . two people who have everything that adds up to nothing.” On their 10th wedding anniversary in 1979, Lennon thought Yoko was mocking him when she gave him a sentimental little poem referring to him as the ruler of their kingdom, and he flew into a selfish rage when she gave him an expensive pearl-and-diamond ring, claiming that “she never got him what he really wanted.” After that, Lennon retreated to his room and fell into a narcotic-induced slumber. After Lennon’s death, his son Julian (the son by his first wife) perceptively asked: “How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces, no communication, adultery, divorce?” (Giuliano, p. 220).

LENNON’S NEAR INSANITY. There were many evidences of insanity during Lennon’s final years. In the early 1970s, Lennon and Yoko underwent psychological therapy at the Primal Institute in California. Dr. Janov testified: “John was simply not functioning. He really needed help” (Giuliano, p. 18). The therapy consisted of giving oneself over to hysterical outbursts in an attempt to purge the psyche. Lennon would scream and wail, weep, and roll on the floor. “John eventually confessed to several dark sexual impulses: he wanted to be spanked or whipped and he was drawn to the notion of having a spiked boot heel driven into him. . . . Later in his life, John gathered together a collection of S&M-inspired manikins, which he kept tucked away in the bowels of the Dakota. These dummies, adorned with whips and chains, also had their hands and feet manacled. John’s violent sexual impulses troubled Yoko” (Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 19). Lennon was plagued by nightmares from which he awoke in terror (Giuliano, pp. 83, 137, 142). Though never really overweight, Lennon was obsessed with his weight and when he found himself overeating, he would hide in the master bedroom and force himself to vomit (Giuliano, p. 92). After the couple moved into the Dakota apartments in New York in 1973, Lennon spent most of the time locked indoors. He referred to himself as Greta Hughes, referring to Greta Garbo and Howard Hughes, famous recluses. “More and more, the increasingly reclusive Lennon began to shun his friends. . . . Lennon’s anxieties were rapidly getting the better of him. . . . Everybody’s working-class hero was sliding steadily into a morass of hopelessness and solemnity” (Giuliano, pp. 84, 97, 105). He “quietly slipped into a dark hibernation,” spending entire days in bed (Giuliano, p. 129). To help him conquer his $700 per day heroin habit, Yoko introduced him to a form of therapy involving self-hypnosis and “past-life regression.” He thought he was actually traveling back into his past lives. In one session he discovered that he had been a Neanderthal man. In another, he was involved in the Crusades during the Dark Ages. Lennon was so paranoid that when he visited Hong Kong in 1976, he did not leave his suite for three days. He thought he had multiple personalities, and he would lie down and imagine that his various personalities were in other parts of the room talking to him. “In doing so, Lennon was in such a state of mind that the slightest noise or shadow would terrify him” (Giuliano, p. 122). When he went out into the crowds he would hear “a cacophony of terrible voices in his head” which filled him with terror. When he returned to New York, he became a virtual hermit, “retreating to his room, sleeping his days away, mindlessly standing at the window watching the rain. Once Yoko found him staring off into space groaning that there was no place he could go where he didn’t feel abandoned and isolated…” (Giuliano, p. 142). In 1978, Lennon “locked himself into his pristine, white-bricked, white-carpeted Dakota bedroom. Lying on the bed, he chain-smoked Gitane cigarettes and stared blankly at his giant television, while the muted phone at his side was lit by calls he never took. . . . he stayed in a dark room with the curtains drawn…” (Giuliano, pp. 173, 174). By 1979, at age 31, “John Lennon was already an old man haunted by his past and frightened by the future” (Giuliano, p. 177). He swung radically “from snappy impatience to bouts of uncontrolled weeping” and could only sleep with the aid of narcotics. Yoko talked Lennon into visiting their Virginia farm in 1979, but he became so paranoid and shaken from the brief excursion into the public (they rode a train) that when they arrived back at their home in New York he “erupted violently, reducing the apartment to a shambles.” The man who is acclaimed as the towering genius behind the Beatles had “all but lost his creative drive and confessed he’d sunk so low he had even become terrified of composing” (Giuliano, p. 130).

THE BEATLES WERE ANTI-CHRIST AND BLASPHEMOUS. Their press officer, Derek Taylor, testified: “They’re [the Beatles] completely anti-Christ. I mean, I am anti-Christ as well, but they’re so anti-Christ they shock me which isn’t an easy thing” (Saturday Evening Post, August 8-15, 1964, p. 25). In 1964 Paul McCartney stated, “We probably seem to be anti-religious ... none of us believes in God.” McCartney still doesn’t believe in God in a traditional sense. In an interview with Larry King on June 21, 2001, he said: “The moment the man upstairs wants me, I am his. I know at some point I’m going to die, so I don’t worry about it. . . . I don’t have very strong religious beliefs, but I have spiritual feelings about that [death]” (Paul McCartney, interview on Larry King Live, CNN, June 12, 2001). We have seen that by age 11, John Lennon was permanently barred from Sunday services in his aunt’s Anglican church because he “repeatedly improvised obscene and impious lyrics to the hymns.” He did things even cruder and viler than that, such as urinate on members of the “clergy” from second floor windows and display homemade dummies of Christ in lewd poses. In 1966, Lennon created a furor by claiming: “Christianity will go, it will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and will be proved right. ... We’re more popular than Jesus now” (Newsweek, March 21, 1966). Though he claimed that he was misunderstood and gave a half-hearted apology (after learning that his remarks might financially jeopardize their United States tour), it is obvious what the head Beatle thought about Christianity. In his 1965 book A Spaniard in the Works, which was published by Simon and Schuster, Lennon portrayed Jesus Christ as Jesus El Pifico, a “garlic eating, stinking little yellow, greasy fascist bastard Catholic Spaniard.” In this wicked book, Lennon blasphemed the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by calling them “Fahter, Sock, and Mickey Most.”

Lennon’s 1970 album, Plastic Ono Band, contained two anti-christ songs. On “I Found Out,” Lennon sang, “I told you before, stay away from my door. Don’t give me that brother, brother, brother, brother. . . . There ain’t no Jesus gonna come from the sky.” In the song “God,” Lennon boldly said, “I don't believe in magic. I don't believe in Bible. I don't believe in tarot. I don't believe in Jesus. I just believe in me. Yoko and me. That’s reality.”

George Harrison financed Monty Python’s vile and blasphemous Life of Brian, which even Newsweek magazine described as “irreverent.” Time magazine called it an “intense assault on religion” (Time, Sept. 17, 1979, p. 101).

Paul McCartney described himself and the other Beatles as “four iconoclastic, brass-hard, post-Christian, pragmatic realists” (Time, Sept. 5, 1968, p. 60).

Aliester Crowley’s photo appeared on the Beatles’ Sargent Pepper’s album cover. The Beatles testified that the characters who appeared on the album were their “heroes.” John Lennon explained to Playboy magazine that “the whole Beatles idea was to do what you want … do what thou wilst, as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody” (Lennon, cited by David Sheff, The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, p. 61). This was precisely what Crowley taught.

Lennon claimed that the Beatles knew exactly what they wanted to do. “We know what we are because we know what we’re doing. … There were very few things that happened to the Beatles that weren’t really well thought out by us whether to do it or not” (Rolling Stone, Feb. 12, 1976, p. 92).

LENNON’S BRIEF FLIRTATION WITH CHRISTIANITY. In 1977, Lennon made a short-lived profession of faith in Christ while watching television evangelists. (This information was published recently in two different books—Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon and Geoffrey Giuliano, Lennon in America). Lennon began to use expressions like “Praise the Lord” and “Thank you, Jesus”; attended some church services; wrote a never-released song titled “You Saved My Soul”; took his son, Sean, to a Christian theater performance; called The 700 Club help line to request prayer for his troubled marriage; and tried to get Yoko Ono interested in Christianity. (Her first husband, Anthony Cox, had become a Christian in the 1970s, but she wanted nothing to do with it.) Even though he briefly professed faith in Christ, Lennon did not turn from his occultism. He continued to perform magical rites, consult the horoscope and prognosticators, and celebrate Buddha’s birthday (Giuliano, p. 133). Lennon’s Christian profession lasted only a few weeks. When two missionaries confronted Lennon with fundamental doctrines of the Bible such as the deity of Christ and a literal and fall, he rejected these (Giuliano, p. 134). In 1979 Lennon wrote a song titled “Serve Yourself,” in which he instructed his listeners: “You got to serve yourself/ Nobody gonna do it for you/ You may believe in devils/ You may believe in laws/ But you know you’re gonna have to serve yourself.” In interviews in December 1980, just before his death, he described his beliefs as “Zen Christian, Zen pagan, Zen Marxist” or nothing at all (Steve Turner, “The Ballad of John and Jesus,” Christianity Today, June 12, 2000, p. 86). He testified that he had never met a Christian who wasn’t actually a sanctimonious hypocrite (Giuliano, p. 134). In 1987, Lennon said that he did not believe in the Judeo-Christian doctrine that God “is some other thing outside of ourselves” (Spin, February 1987, p. 46). Thus to the very end of his short life Lennon continued to lead his followers into eternal destruction.

LENNON’S DEATH. Lennon was shot to death in December 1980 outside his apartment building in New York City. He was 40 years old. In an interview with Gannett News Service, Lennon’s murderer, Mark David Chapman, testified of how he prepared for the crime: “Alone in my apartment back in Honolulu, I would strip naked and put on Beatles records and pray to Satan to give me the strength. … I prayed for demons to enter my body to give me the power to kill” (cited by Evangelist Richard Ciarrocca, Observations, Dec. 1990). Chapman had also imitated Lennon, even taking his name for awhile, and marrying a Japanese woman.

Just hours before he was killed, Lennon had posed naked in a photo that was published on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

At the beginning of the Beatles song “Come Together,” Lennon mutters, “Shoot me.” One of the Beatles songs was “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” The lyrics are: “When I hold you in my arms (Oh, yeah)/ And I feel my finger on your trigger (Oh, yeah)/ I know nobody can do me no harm (Oh, yeah)/ Because happiness is a warm gun, bang, bang, shoot, shoot.” Since Lennon’s death, Yoko Ono has attempted to contact him beyond the veil of death. The cover to her album It’s Alright shows Yoko and her son, Sean, standing in a park with a spirit form of Lennon standing next to them. Lennon’s other son, Julian (his only child by his first wife, Cynthia), claims in his song “Well, I Don’t Know” that he has communicated with his dead father (Muncy, The Role of Rock, p. 364).

When Lennon died, his estate was estimated to be worth $275 million.

In summarizing the influence of John Lennon, rock researcher David A. Noebel stated: “The present rock ‘n’ roll scene, Lennon’s legacy, is one giant, multi-media portrait of degradation—a sleazy world of immorality, venereal disease, anarchy, nihilism, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, death, Satanism, perversion, and orgies” (Noebel, The Legacy of John Lennon, 1982, p. 15).

Lennon released his hugely popular song “Imagine” in 1971. He described it as “an anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic song.” Note the blasphemous words.

After Lennon was murdered, a memorial to him was set up in Central Park across from his apartment. Inscribed in the heart of the memorial is the word “Imagine.” When a crowd gathers every year to observe the anniversary of Lennon’s death, they sing this anti-christ song.

Two communists socialist dead, two more to go!

I too was put off by the Beatles' advocacy of left wing politics. I always think of Imagine as having the line: "Imagine no possessions. It's easy if you have $200 million."

But they were great. True, they were in the right place at the right time to capitalize on the burgeoning baby-boomer music market. But they rose to the challenge of their fame, when it would have been easy for them to just be a lucrative fad and fade away in a few years. They were true musical innovators, and their music was great and important.

I loved their music growing up, and their whole mystique. Now that I'm 52, my 3-year old has just discovered them, and she makes me play their music over and over. I bought the "1" CD for her, and hearing those songs again after all these years only reinforces my opinion of how great they were.

This post, and your comment, are appallingly mean-spirited. You should be ashamed. Personally, I am saddened by Harrison's passing.

For the record, Beethoven was an asshole too. Doesn't mean his music isn't worthy of the acclaim it has received in the last 200 years.

Yoko believed that she was a reincarnation of a 3,000-year-old Persian mummy that she had purchased in from Switzerland

There's a no-brainer.

I had always found it interesting that "Give Peace A Chance" Mr Womens Rights was well-known as abusive to women.

Two communists socialist dead, two more to go!

As a Christian, it always confounds me to see people who say they love Jesus, spending so much time spewing cruel things such as this.

This is one of the reasons society won't listen to Christians; fringe people like this scare everyone away.

The Beatles were blessed by God with immense talent and they used it, for the most part, well. The amount of joy they brought to people cannot be measured.Perhaps they didn't use it for His will; that is sad. But not as sad as this completely un-Christian diatribe.

I just don't get the whole Beatles thing. Maybe I'm too young, I'm only 40 : )

They gave their last concert when I was 5 years old, I learned this on Fox News this am. In fact I learned a lot about the Beatles today, more than I EVER wanted to know. Today all the news channels are All Beatles All The Time. I turned off the TV for the day.

They interviewed a guy at that mosaic thing in Central Park this am that said the Beatles changed his life, they were his reason for living.

Made me want to puke on my shoes, HELLO loser they are singers. They have not done anything of import in this world except write songs and sing them badly (my opinion only).

I don't begrudge anyone their love of the Beatles but to be so obssesed with anyone is just plain sick.

MKM

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