38 years ago: John Lennon apologizes for saying The Beatles are "Bigger Than Jesus"

Posted on: Thursday, August 14, 2014

It was March, 1966 when John Lennon said,
"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity."


CBS Chicago has a piece about how, once the remarks hit the U.S. – and Beatles album burnings by Christians ensued – John Lennon issued an apology in August 1966.

“I didn’t mean it the way they said it,” he said at the news conference held at the Astor Tower Hotel on Chicago’s Gold Coast. “It’s amazing. It’s just so complicated. It’s got out of hand, you know. But I just meant it as that.

You can see impressions of John Lennon, The Beatles, and over 50 other baby boomer icons performed by Rick Miller in the new one-man show BOOM, which has its U.S. premiere at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center on September 20, 2014.

Produced by KDOONS and WYRD Productions, this is an explosive solo performance that documents the music, culture and politics that shaped the Baby Boom generation (1945-1969). BOOM takes us through 25 turbulent years, and gives voice to over a 100 influential politicians, activists and musicians. BOOM chronologically documents a historical period stretching from that first ‘boom’ of the Atomic Bomb in 1945 all the way to the Apollo 11 bringing the first human beings to the Moon in 1969. These two iconic moments span 25 of the most tumultuous years in modern history, fuelled by a generation of children with incredible influence due to their numbers, and to the advances of technology and communication. In the BOOM generation, politics and culture merged like never before – and perhaps never again.

Incidentally, this is not the first time Rick Miller has taken inspiration from John Lennon: the WYRD Production Bigger Than Jesus – which explored the history of the real and cultural figure of Jesus through the centuries – has been performed across Canada, the U.S., Australia, Germany and italy. So evidently, John Lennon was wrong.

Read the CBS Chicago story here.

Get info about BOOM at TulsaPAC here.

Buy tickets to BOOM Sept. 20 here.