Those "Other" Beatles

It's my contention that our Paul and our John never made it to the 1966 American concerts:  in 1966, we were seeing half of the Beatles that American fans came to love.  I found a Youtube video that suggests that the John that toured in 1966 was not our John.

The video is at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLxBcALNE6c  .

Beginning at 1:44 in the video, the 1966 American tour John was explaining "his" comment on the "Beatles-as-more-popular-than-Jesus" controversy.  He said:

I was talking to the effect the word "Beatles" as a remote thing.  Not what I think as Beatles:  as those, those other Beatles, like other people said.  I just said they are having more, more influence on kids and things than anything else, including Jesus."
 

It's pretty clear that he was saying that he was not a part of those "other Beatles."  What I think happened is that our Paul and our John knew they were going to be ousted from the group and decided that if they were going to go, they were going to try to take the group down with them.  Hence the "butcher" cover, the "more popular than Jesus" statement, Paul allowing his broken tooth to be shown in the Rain and Paperback Writer videos, etc. 

The music press was scrambling to neutralize the damage, but, as original fans know, Paul's and John's efforts took their toll on The Beatles' popularity in America in 1966.  I also think that is why the music press fell over their faces to try to convince the world public that the Sgt. Pepper album was a classic (I'll print some of the gasping praise of the album in a future post).  That massive Cash Cow called The Beatles was too good of a thing to lose.