VATICAN "FORGIVES" LENNON FOR '60s REMARK

(ANSA) - Vatican City, November 21 - The Vatican on Friday praised the Beatles in a newspaper article that appeared to bury the hatchet on John Lennnon's infamous 'more famous than Jesus' remark.

Vatican daily Osservatore Romano said Lennon's comment, which sparked outrage in the mid-1960s, ''today just sounds like a quip from an English working-class lad struggling to cope with unexpected success after growing up with the Elvis myth''.

In the article, marking the 40th anniversary of the famous White Album, Vatican music critics said ''snobs'' might dismiss the Fab Four but ''the talent of Lennon and the other Beatles gave us some of the best pages in modern pop music''.

The critics said: ''38 years after the band split up, the Lennon-McCartney songs have shown an extraordinary resistance to the effects of time, providing inspiration for several generations of pop musicians''.

Osservatore Romano made its peace with Elvis in July.

It recalled the the once-outlawed pelvis-twister as a ''nice, sensitive young man'' who was doomed by fame.


Lennon made his comment on March 4, 1966, to London's Evening Standard.

''Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink... 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''.

The response was immediate. Christians, especially in the American South, made huge pyres of Beatles albums and Protestant pastors threatened fans with excommunications - though the Vatican did not comment.

Elvis fans had been threatened with excommunication by Protestant churches a decade earlier.

Here comes the sun: Unique photos of the Beatles in the summer of 1963 before worldwide fame

By SIMON CABLE - 21st April 2008

Four weeks later their lives were to change forever.

But in this photograph the Beatles can still enjoy a quiet few hours sunbathing without, it appears, a care in the world - or being swamped by fans.

It was taken in July 1963 during a week when the group had packed out the Odeon cinema in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

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Pictured from the left: George Harrison, 20, Paul McCartney, 21, John Lennon, 22, and Ringo Starr, 23, relax in the sun in Weston-Super-Mare during a week's appearance at the local cinema

The band had already had three top ten hits - Love Me Do, Please Please Me and From Me To You.

But it was to be August of that year, when She Loves You shot straight to number one, that saw Beatlemania unleashed and the transformation of the four young Liverpudlians into global stars.

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In the deckchairs pictured from the left: Management organiser Tommy Quickly, George Harrison, John Lennon and a waving Ringo Starr

In the calm before the storm, the band was captured in a scene typical of an English resort of that era.

The lack of response to their presence from the holiday crowds can be judged by the dozing sunbather in the picture who lies there in his underpants without a flicker of interest in the soon-to-be superstars.

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Famous bands: The Beatles chat with Gerry and The Pacemakers in the Weston-Super-Mare hotel in July 1963

The unknown photographer who took this shot was persuaded to part with the copyright-by Beatles publicist Tony Barrow.

The picture has remained unseen since.

Mr Barrow, who worked with the group between 1963 and 1968, said: "This is before the pressures of the Beatles got to them, they are not putting anything on for the camera.

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Tea time: The Beatles and Gerry and The Pacemakers enjoy a drop of tea at the hotel

"They just wouldn't be able to do this again in a month's time, there's a real innocence here."

The picture is from a collection Mr Barrow aims to publish in a book about the Beatles.

Source:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=560961&in_page_id=1773

Lock of Lennon's hair to go up for auction

Buy John Lennon's hair!




(Wednesday October 31, 2007 12:29 AM)

A lock of John Lennon's hair is to be sold at auction later this year, it has been announced.

The strands from the dead Beatle's head are being sold by the group's former hairdresser Betty Glasgow.

She worked as a stylist on the Fab Four films "Hard Day's Night" and "Help" and was given the lock along with hand-written note from Lennon.

Worthing auction house Gorringes will be putting the lot under the hammer as part of "The Betty Glasgow Collection of Beatles and Film Memorabilia" in December.

The hair sample is expected to reach between £2,000 and £3,000, although Glasgow admits she will be sorry to see the many items go.

"It was great fun working with the boys on the films. They were always together in a group and having a laugh.

"My job was to keep their hair in order as the film was made over three months, so their trademark, mop-top haircuts had to be regularly trimmed", she explained.

Watch John Lennon's music videos here...