No two prayers sound exactly the same, which could be a clunky explanation for hundreds of radio stations across the United States banning The Beatles’ newly released single, “The Ballad Of John And Yoko”, in July 1969. The song had been out for just over one month by midsummer of that year, having been officially distributed on May 30.
And while national dissemination took several weeks, the controversy and pushback seemed to spring up overnight.
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John Lennon Compared This Rock ‘n’ Roll Track to a Prayer
Ironically, controversy and pushback were what the song was all about, in its purest form. John Lennon’s composition was about as autobiographical as he had ever been, referencing his experience with his second wife, Yoko Ono, and the near-constant public scrutiny they faced. The narrative ballad references their marriage, their bed-in, and common insults the papers would lob at the couple. “They look just like two gurus in drag.”
The chorus proved the most problematic. “Christ, you know it ain’t easy / You know how hard it can be / The way things are going / They’re gonna crucify me.” Using “Christ” and “crucify” was at the peak of taboo in the staunchly conservative, Christian landscape of 1960s America. Just over a month after The Beatles released the song as their follow-up single to “Get Back”, radio stations were splitting into “refuse to play” and “will play” camps.
Lennon, meanwhile, defended the song in the press, comparing it to a prayer and arguing that “Christ” and “crucifixion” were not only appropriate but necessary in this context. “It has two meanings,” Lennon told WABC-FM in 1969. “It’s like a prayer, you know. ‘Jesus, you alone should know it ain’t easy.’ And it has that street language connotation, too. Even when it’s used irreverently, it’s in effect a prayer, too. It’s a gospel song. I’m a big Christ fan. The song is a prayer.”
The Beatles Anticipated the Controversy Around “Ballad of John and Yoko”
The Beatles released “The Ballad Of John And Yoko” three years after John Lennon’s infamous “bigger than Jesus” comment sparked citywide record burnings across the American South. Everyone knew the potential implications of referencing Christ and the crucifixion in a rock ‘n’ roll song. But at the time, the two Beatles who actually recorded the song, Lennon and Paul McCartney, felt that upholding the song’s meaning was more important than avoiding controversy.
“John came to me and said, ‘I’ve got this song about our wedding, and it’s called, ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko, Christ, They’re Gonna Crucify Me’,’” McCartney later said, per Kenneth Womack’s Everything Fab Four: The Beatles Encyclopedia. “I said, ‘Jesus Christ, you’re kidding, aren’t you? Someone is going to get upset about it.’ He said, ‘Yeah. But let’s do it.’ I was a little worried for him because of the lyric. But he was going through a lot of terrible things.”
McCartney added that he wasn’t sure whether George Harrison and Ringo Starr “hated” him and Lennon for recording the song without them. “John was on heat, so to speak,” McCartney said. “He needed to record it. So, we just ran in and did it.”
Yoko Ono would later corroborate McCartney’s tolerance for potential pushback. “Paul knew that people were being nasty to John. He just wanted to make it well for him. Paul has a very brotherly side to him.”
Photo by David Redfern/Redferns