“Jesus is a garlic-eating, stinking, little yellow, greasy fascist bastard, Catholic Spaniard.” —John Lennon, Spaniard in the Works, June 1965
Remaking the World. Dionysianism made flesh.
I used to think The Beatles more or less existed alongside the 1960’s counterculture, more than they ever led it (they didn’t play at Woodstock after all). But the following excerpt from a very early Playboy interview, February 1965, exactly one year after their first world famous Ed Sullivan Show appearances, would suggest otherwise.
…Playboy: “You guys seem to be pretty irreverent characters. Are any of you churchgoers?”
John: “No.”
George: “No.”
Paul: “Not particularly. But we’re not antireligious. We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believe in God.”
John: “If you say you don’t believe in God, everybody assumes you’re antireligious, and you probably think that’s what we mean by that. We’re not quite sure ‘what’ we are, but I know that we’re more agnostic than atheistic.”
Playboy: “Are you speaking for the group, or just for yourself.”
John: “For the group.”
George: “John’s our official religious spokesman.”
Paul: “We all feel roughly the same. We’re all agnostics.”
John: “Most people are, anyway.”
Ringo: “It’s better to admit it than to be a hypocrite.”
John: “The only thing we’ve got against religion is the hypocritical side of it, which I can’t stand. Like the clergy is always moaning about people being poor, while they themselves are all going around with millions of quid worth of robes on. That’s the stuff I can’t stand.”
Paul: “A new bronze door stuck on the Vatican.”
Ringo: “Must have cost a mighty penny.”
Paul: “But believe it or not, we’re not anti-Christ.”
Ringo: “Just anti-Pope and anti-christian.”
Paul: “But you know, in America…”
George: “They were more shocked by us saying we were agnostics.”
John: “Then they went potty; they couldn’t take it. Same as in Australia, where they couldn’t stand us not liking sports.”
Paul: “In America, they’re fanatical about God. I know somebody over there who said he was an atheist. The papers nearly refused to print it because it was such shocking news that somebody could actually be an atheist… yeah… and admit it.”
Ringo: “He speaks for all of us.”
Nothing is Real
Derek Taylor, former press secretary for the Beatles declared:
“Here are four Liverpool lads who are rude, profane, vulgar, yet they have taken over the world. It is as if they have founded a new religion. They are completely anti-Christ. So much so, they shock me! This is not easy to do.” (Saturday evening Post, Aug. 8, 1964, pg. 28)
Many “artists” from approximately the mid to end of the 19th century began the push towards a Utopianism with quasi-Marxist and occult overtones (beginning largely in Europe). And those artists were soon fueled by big money and institutions with revolutionary interests who could see the commercial handwriting on the wall and who placed new financial and cultural values on those passions.
But almost everyone acknowledges that due in large part to the new and phenomenally complex media, as well as the various money powers behind it all, the Beatles were able by ever-changing catchy tunes and good looks to accomplish more in a very short time than all the others who came before combined.
The Beatles helped place almost every young person in the West in a simulated counter-reality which easily manipulated masses of other peoples in an unprecedented revolutionary way.
We thought of The Beatles as merely “four gifted lads from liverpool,” but they were actually far more culturally.
The very early Hugh Hefner Playboy interview simply set the stage for the real upheaval. It was nihilist, a warning that all was not as harmless as it first appeared.
Those “cute lads” early joined the same revolution Hefner was part of: the aggressive deconstruction of Western Civilization, disengaging the young from all traditional values. All in the names of an ill-defined (“free”) “love,” “freedom” and “Revolution”.
Hefner paralleled their media-driven power like few others. They played into it, aided it, and took it much, much further playing Pied Piper to millions of others. And many other bands and artists joined them. It created a counter-culture indeed.
The Beatles’ considerable natural talents were extremely seductive and this was recognized globally by those with both the big money and philosophical influence. And this was exploited by the revolutionary Frankfurt School’s philosophical agendas, by the Freudian school, Jung, et al, all in the name of art, or spirituality, or “peace,” etc.
Global Hallucination
Yoko Ono: Yes, I’m a Witch
Culturally speaking the Beatles, with the very many artsy performers who joined the Revolution, became more and more devastating culturally, not less so as time went on. And we were witness to Western Culture and civilization rapidly collapsing before our very eyes, year after year. A new “eye,” television,” spread the images and messages like lightning globally. It was New Time, a New Age.
Before they broke up as a band after such a relatively short time the Beatles left a considerable opus which was loaded with potent mixed signals for a pampered generation whose parents had been pulverized by war and political assassinations broadcast almost live. By 1970 they had convinced millions that they were superior to all previous generations.
Everybody wanted to be The Beatles. They sang us to sleep like guru Pied Pipers, and hypnotically we followed:
“Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream…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…I’d love to turn you on…nothing is real…”
The Stones Too
“Nothing is real,” that is, except the hyperreal counter-reality they helped to raise culturally to the delight of the Frankfurt School, at the expense of traditional Western values and lives … and got very rich doing it.
This was the cultural revolution that went beyond the earlier and explicitly “free,” (i.e., godless), Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll mantra; today it is total “freedom” from the entire traditional moral law.
It was a dangerous dive with countless casualties (human lives) aided by drugs into pure subjectivism and which spread fast, into deeper nihilism, where we are today on route to to “transhuman” man. And loads of other talented people were drafted seductively into the Carnival counter-reality (Mr. Kite), and paid very handsomely for it, as millions read their album covers like mystic Tea Leaves.
Replacing God with the Cosmos. Again.
To put a fine point on it all. The Beatles can and should be evaluated not just by their music (some of which showed obvious talent), but by their engineered cultural revolutionary effect, fueled by the new technology.
Hindsight is 20/20. Many of us were wounded.
To understand our cultural chaos, one has to understand The Beatles, Hugh Hefner and The Beats together, and the kaleidoscopic philosophical currents at play, as well as the big money which made it all happen. And we’re in a better position today to do that.
They were New Agers, syncretistic, extremely talented, and they wrote some creative songs along the way, all the way to Strawberry Fields. — SH
The Religion of Futurism
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— Paul McCartney on his lyrics: ‘Eroticism was a driving force behind everything I wrote’
— John Lennon and The Seductions of Beautiful Nothing
— Lennon’s brief interest in Christ passes fast
— Marcuse: The Philosopher of Antifa
Marcuse on the Left’s Strategy for “Repressive Tolerance” (sic) 4 Parts
— Utopia, Remaking the World. Herbert Marcuse, the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School and “Repressive Tolerance” (James Lindsay)
— Bork on Radical Feminist
[photo: Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club album cover. Look.]
Updated
Catholic Critique 