John Lennon, Jesus Christ & Mark David Chapman

Every year March 4th marks the anniversary of one of the most famous controversies in the history of music. In 1966 the “London Evening Standard” published an interview with John Lennon where he said that “The Beatles were more popular than Jesus” in the context of a conversation where he argued that the public were more infatuated with the band than with Jesus, and that Christian faith was declining to the extent that it might be outlasted by rock music. However, his opinions drew no controversy back then, but drew angry reactions from Christian communities when republished in the United States, leading to a scandal of enormous proportions.

The interview conducted by Maureen Cleave tried to explain how the life of a Beatle was back then, when a 25 years old John Lennon was in a moment of success and popularity that nobody had ever experienced before. In that particular fragment of the conversation, John tried to explain the bad moment that the Church was going through in which youth seemed to be finding in the cinema or music their new mass idols.

No one in England raised an eyebrow at that statement. Neither the “London Evening Standard” nor anyone in England seemed to see anything weird in that interview until July 29th when the American teen magazine “Datebook” (in favor of racial or LGBT rights) published the interview, changing without pretending the Beatles' course forever.

After public record burnings, massive demonstrations, multiple pressure and threats, a John Lennon now turned into the devil himself tried to clarify what had happened at a press conference on August 11th in Chicago, where he apologized for such a tremendous misunderstanding.

But fate seemed to be marked for him. One of those Beatles fans who failed to forget the offense was Mark David Chapman, the same that 14 years later would wait for John at the entrance of his New York apartment in the Dakota Building, and would shoot him 5 times, making John Lennon a martyr.