The comment was made in an article written by his friend, Maureen Cleave, as part of a series she was writing on The Fab Four for the Evening Standard. It was published on March 4th 1966, although, mercifully, the media furore didn't happen straight away. In fact it didn't actually break until August of that year.
Although us Brits didn't pick up on the comment, in the summer it was seized upon by the American Bible Belt.The Beatles went from being media darlings to being lambasted by the American tabloids, with thousands of people burning their records and even a high ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan explaining his 'moral objections'. You couldn't make it up.
McCartney, the consummate PR man, went around with a permanently apologetic expression, while John remained wilfully defiant. That is, until he too was bullied into contrition.
John was always known for being outspoken, but this time it appeared he'd crossed the line. But, as he later pointed out, he was merely making an astute observation: The Beatles WERE more popular than religion, which has been on the decline for decades, never mind years.
Rereading the article now, it's more poignant for the fact John Lennon was clearly approaching a crossroads in his life- even in 1966. It might have been on the distant horizon but, nonetheless, was already inching closer.
In fact, there's something tremendously touching about this timely interview. John was living in a huge house in Weybridge, among the 'wooded hills and stockbrokers', but was clearly already doing some soul searching- as many people do when they reach a quarter of a century.
'Weybridge,' he said reflectively, 'won't do at all. I'm just stopping at it, like a bus stop. Banker and stockbrokers live there; they can add figures and Weybridge is what they live in and they think it's the end, they really do. I think of it every day- me in my Hansel and Gretel house. I'll take my time. I'll get my real house when I know what I want.
He was twenty-five years old and, thanks to the unreal world of fame, didn't even know what day it was. The Beatles were better friends than ever, watching films together and playing rowdy games of Buccaneer. They wiled away the small hours of the morning making 'mad tapes'.
In a way they were having something of an extended adolescence, with bedtimes and mealtimes having no meaning.
John was shopping in Aspreys, had fine wine in his cellar, and lived in a mock Tudor house on a hill with his wife, three year old son, and a cat named after his aunt Mimi. He described himself as 'famous and loaded' and said he wanted money 'just to be rich'.
'If you have money,' he said, 'that's power without having to be powerful.'
It appears at this point John Lennon aspired to be a plutocrat, not a philanthropist.
'We're never had time before to do anything but just be Beatles,' John said. Yet now they did.
During this time, Maureen described John as 'imperious, unpredictable, indolent, disorganised, childish, vague, charming and quick-witted'.
In other words, conducive conditions for an extremely controversial comment to pass his lips.
Thanks to fame, he was living a curiously cloistered existence, and was definitely searching for some kind of meaning beyond his current life. In the article, he said that 'to live and have a laugh' were things to do; but Maureen mused, was that enough for a 'restless spirit'?
He spent many fruitless hours on the telephone and 'only once got through to a person', but unfortunately, 'they were out'. He claimed to have read millions of books.
'That's why I know so many things,' he told her proudly.
He admitted to being incorrigibly lazy, and could lay claim to being 'the laziest person in England'. He told her he could sleep indefinitely; that sex was the only physical thing he could be bothered with.
He put on some Indian music for Maureen and exhorted her to listen properly.
'It's amazing,' he said. 'So cool. Don't the Indians appear cool to you? Are you listening? This music is thousands of years old; it makes me laugh, the British going over there and telling them what to do. Quite amazing.'
He hadn't yet met or become disenchanted with the Maharajah; Sexy Sadie was yet to make an appearance.
After this comment, he switched on the television set, and that's when he made his infamous comments:
'Christianity will go,' he said ingenuously. 'It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first: rock n' roll or Christianity,'
For me, the most touching part of this article is the end, when he says: 'You see, there's something else I'm going to do- only I don't know what it is. That's why I go round painting and taping and drawing and writing and that, because it may be one of them. All I know is, this isn't it for me.'
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