The American show that almost destroyed The Beatles: “We were quite frightened”
The Beatles were never meant to survive as a touring act for the rest of their lives.
Even if they were happy to play to thousands of screaming fans every night, it probably wasn’t the best feeling in the world knowing that they could hardly hear themselves and that their audience was overpowering the music. But even if they soldiered through every one of their tours before retiring from the road, there are more than a few times when they had to survive by the skin of their teeth to get out of a few hairy situations.
But long before anyone had ever heard of them, there were already a few situations where they almost lost themselves on tour. Some of their biggest gigs were only the result of them nearly freezing to death when their car broke down or when they had to dodge more than a few drunken patrons in Hamburg in their earliest days. Then again, the band did have one rule in place before they even went across the Atlantic: don’t go to America unless they had a smash hit.
And while most of their biggest hits seemed to sink without a trace on the charts at the time, all it took was a couple of radio stations to hear about what these long-haired pop geniuses were doing. So when the band finally arrived to play the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, you would have sworn that they were native sons finally coming back home based on how everyone was reacting.
But although Beatlemania resulted in absolute pandemonium, it could be redirected in the opposite direction when they said the wrong thing. Sure, so many girls wanted to be with them, and guys wanted to be them, but when John Lennon gave his infamous ‘bigger than Jesus’ interview, it seemed to roll off their backs when they got to England. The whole thing felt like a bit of fluff from their press tour, but once they entered the Bible Belt, people were absolutely furious.
Then again, even some of the anti-hype press junkets were a farce as well. Some of the biggest radio DJs in the South were talking about never wanting to play Beatles music ever again, but since those stations only played country music half the time, it didn’t really matter. But if you get enough hate manifested in one place, it doesn’t take much for the true scum of the Earth to start rearing their heads.
So when The Beatles played their only song in the Bible Belt in Memphis, Tennessee, they were threatened by the KKK on local television that they shouldn’t play. Nothing ended up happening, but George Harrison remembered the band getting a bit spooked, saying, “Apparently the members of the Klan who were outside the stadium were chased away by the fans. So although we were quite frightened…nothing happened.”
As with any stunt like this, though, that didn’t mean that the band didn’t have a few close calls as well. Halfway through the set, someone threw a firecracker into the air that made every member of the band think that one of them had been shot, but even after having one of the biggest shocks of their professional lives, it’s a testament to them that they never stopped playing for a second.
So while The Beatles may have potentially escaped “assassination” at that gig, there was no point in trying to give those scumbags the time of day. While Lennon’s comments did indeed ruffle a few feathers, that’s no excuse for people to decide to channel their inner serial killer and start trying to exact their warped form of vigilante justice.
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