Bigger than Jesus? What actually happened with The Beatles' most controversial moment
The full, true story behind the most controversial moment in The Beatles history. The Beatles rarely put a foot wrong in their relatively short, stunning decade together.
They shrugged off the departure of Pete Best, quickly switched up their shocking "butcher cover", and kept most of their feuding under wraps until it all eventually fell apart.
But there was one explosive moment that truly changed absolutely everything for the Fab Four.
“What’d you do? Screw up like The Beatles and say you were bigger than Jesus?" Bart Simpson asked Homer about his dad's barbershop quartet The B-Sharps, proving how the controversy has become so embedded in our culture.
The incident has remained shorthand for The Beatles messing up and maybe the beginning of the end of Beatlemania, in the US at least. But what's the truth about what really happened? Read on to find out. Did The Beatles really say they were "bigger than Jesus"?
The first myth around The Beatles' Jesus controversy is that the quote attributed to the band was totally mangled. Here's the exact phrasing of what John Lennon said, and the context.
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. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
Source: Mayer Nissim/goldradiouk.com
