Professor Brian Ward:
“The ‘C’ is For Christ”:
The Beatles,
Arthur Unger and Datebook Magazine
While much has been
written on the “more popular than Jesus” controversy which engulfed the Beatles
in 1966 during their final US tour, little attention has been paid to Arthur
Unger, the man whose decision to re-print an English interview with John Lennon
in his magazine Datebook sparked the furore. This talk explains that, contrary
to conventional wisdom, Datebook was not a typical teen magazine, but a vehicle
for the progressive politics of its publisher-editor Unger who had been using it
for years to expose various kinds of intolerance and bigotry to American teens.
Moreover, the Beatles had known Unger and supported his magazine's covert
politics long before 1966. Indeed, far from cynically ripping Lennon's quote on
religion—and an equally important one from Paul McCartney on racism—out of
context and without permission to make a quick profit, it was the band’s own
management which initially encouraged Unger to use the interviews. Ultimately,
the argument here is that it is impossible to understand impossible to
understand the genesis, evolution, or cultural significance of the “Jesus”
controversy without attention to Unger.
His major publications include Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations (Berkeley: U of California P, 1998), Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South (Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2004),and The 1960s: A Documentary Reader (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
He is just completing editorial chores on a three volume series of books devoted to new directions in the study of the American South, is just starting a book on pre-World War Two Artists and Repertoire men, and is perpetually working on a book about the relationships between the American South and the world of British popular music from Delius to the Kings of Leon.
2nd floor lecture theatre, Adelphi House, 4.10 - 5pm;
Weds 25 April
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