You know you’re in a bad place when a guy who said “yes” to Caveman is saying “no” to you:
“Didn’t the Vatican say we were satanic?” Starr said during an interview with CNN. “And they still forgive us?”
“I think [the Vatican] has more to talk about than The Beatles,” he added, alluding to the child sex abuse scandal that continues to plague the church.
The Vatican offered its latest peace offering to The Beatles in its recent issue of L’Osservatore Romano, its official newspaper, on Monday.
“It’s true they took drugs, lived life to excess because of their success, even said they were bigger than Jesus and put out mysterious messages that were possibly even satanic,” the newspaper said.
But, “what would pop music have been like without The Beatles?” it reasoned, describing the band’s music as “beautiful.”
Cerberus
Checking date. Not April 1st.
Ooohkay then.
I guess this is yet more evidence regarding the age-old question of how out of touch and morally bankrupt the Catholic Church is.
Oh, yes, we’ll forgive you for being humans and us being deluded about you. Now shake hands with the nice child molester to be all forgiven.
Mnemosyne
This is how you know that Vatican II is almost dead: when I was a kid and VII was going strong, we sang Beatles songs during Mass. Usually “Let It Be,” but I think there was one other that I can’t remember.
And people wonder why I say I don’t recognize the Catholic Church anymore.
Egypt Steve
Turn me on, dead man. I buried Paul. We all live in a Yellow Submarine. You’ll have to have them all pulled out. One, two, three, FUCK!
LittlePig
Caveman? What part of Barbara Bach do you not understand?
burnspbesq
Ratzo is probably singing “The Ballad of John and Yoko” these days.
“The way things are going, they’re gonna crucify me.”
Chyron HR
Possibly “satanic”… but “beautiful”?
They must be mistaking “Na na na hey hey hey Kiss Him Goodbye” for a Beatles tune.
Cat Lady
I’d really really like to know what John Lennon would’ve said about all this. As I recall he had a way with words.
cleek
i hope the next pope is named “George Ringo I”
4tehlulz
So in short, if the Pope likes Satanic music, and enough people like it and are influenced by it, it’s (de facto) no longer Satanic.
lolwutpear.jpg
I, for one, look forward to the Vatican’s defense of Slayer and Deicide as good music.
debbie
Stupid Church. Who cares that they “forgive” the Beatles? Lennon said they were bigger, not better, than the Church, and at that point in time, they were in fact more prominent than the Catholic Church.
Randy P
Good grief. This is that “if you play the record backward” urban legend. And here’s some official house organ of the Vatican stating it like it’s a well-known fact.
Anyone else get the feeling we aren’t dealing with a lot of intellectual wattage at the upper levels of the Vatican these days?
Zifnab
@Mnemosyne:
No kidding. Vactican II was the lifeline the church threw to itself to maintain relevancy. Now I simply can’t tell the difference between the Pope and James Dobson. It’s a completely different animal.
JGabriel
You know you’re in a bad place when even the gluttonous satanic acidheads who wrote Helter Skelter don’t want to be associated with you.
.
geg6
I didn’t notice that the Beatles did anything whatsoever as to need any sort of forgiveness or stamp of approval from the Vatican.
Damn, there are many times I wish John was still alive, but this is certainly one of them. His thoughts on this use of his band and music to distract from child rapists and child rape conspiracists would be, ummmm…interesting, to say the least.
dr. bloor
Winner winner chicken dinner. It’s too bad the Vatican doesn’t have Tom Ridge around to raise the homeland security threat level when awkward questions are asked. They’d be at Hyperflourescent Cardinal Hat Red by now.
Bill E Pilgrim
Forgiving the Beatles in 2010 is similar to forgiving Galileo in 2000, according to our modern accelerated version of time.
The point is they only do it when it’s become utterly non-controversial and non-threatening to their conservative view of things.
Which is pretty much how conservatives work, one day they’re spitting and ranting about people having long hair, then years later they all wear it that way themselves. They always become pretty much whatever progressives were decades before, they just wait until there’s absolutely nothing dangerous, edgy, or threatening about it.
JGabriel
@LittlePig:
Apropos of nothing, this video says Barbara Bach is a big fan of Yo La Tengo. Which is pretty cool if true. And the song is still great even if it’s not true – the sound is a little muddy on the video though.
Bop bop, ba-da
Bop bop, ba-da-da-da
.
Citizen_X
Ringo should have said, “OK, fair enough: then we forgive the Pope for having been a Nazi. But they’ve still gotta come to grips with that kiddie-rape problem.”
Comrade Dread
Uh, guys, just a note from a Protestant: now may not be the time to be making pronouncements about pop culture from 50 years ago.
Basilisc
Who was it who said “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”? Damn, just can’t remember. Someone important.
Alex S.
Beatlemania pwns Catholicism.
Linda Featheringill
I always thought that John’s comment on being “bigger than Jesus” or whatever he said was a complaint, and not a boast. The popularity they had to cope with had to be overwhelming at times.
“The way things are going, they’re gonna crucify me” — still apropos.
Now I’m going to spend the rest of the day with Beatles songs in my head.
Heh heh heh. Life is good.
slag
It’s funny when people whose feet are so clearly molded out of the brittlest of clays still envision themselves as standing above everyone else. High enough to feel empowered to proffer “forgiveness” even. Must be a conservative thing.
mxh
Caveman had John Matuzak, Shelly Long and Dennis Quaid. If so much awesome is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
cleek
Caveman also had this classic exchange:
Scene: three cavemen standing around a pile of dinosaur crap:
caveman 1 : “doo-doo.”
caveman 2 : “ca-ca.”
caveman 3 : “shit.”
me and my 10 year old friends could not get enough of that scene.
we also loved the one where Ringo (?) smashed a dragonfly the size of a basset-hound, resulting in a huge glop of greenish bug guts on someone’s face.
Bill E Pilgrim
Vatican Enters ‘Full-Fledged Damage Control Mode’ Over Abuse
This must be one of the first volleys in that campaign. I can just see them “So listen, we’ve got to take this seriously. Let’s reverse our position somewhat on those beatnik counter-culture mop-tops from a few years back, that should do the trick.”
Yes, and next, I know– guitar masses!
Sarcastro
The Eagles? WTF? “Witchy Woman”?
The other bands he singled out, btw, were The Rolling Stones, AC/DC and Alice Cooper. Even going so far as to claim AC/DC stands for “Anti-Christ Death to Christ”.
So what I want to know is how the hell did KISS escape getting condemned? At least 30 years out of the limelight? Check. Vaguely disturbing stage show? Check. Urban legend regarding the Satanic meaning of the name and/or songs? Check. It’s a travesty they weren’t mentioned. Led Zeppelin too.
Tom Levenson
@JGabriel:
That’s just a perfect sentence.
Punchy
Did he link The Beatles to pedo**lia and homosexuality, too?
Egilsson
Dude, Caveman is one of the great movies ever*.
I have a copy and I think it has aged very well because of how unseriously it takes itself.
The scene when he mashes the giant insect on the other dude’s face!!…. that’s good stuff.
*ok, not really. But it’s fun.
Osprey
When they realize “shit, we forgave the Beatles, and they’re still attacking us over molesting children, what else can we try”, they’ll start by forgiving Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire for steroid use. Next, Pope Ratfucker will forgive the Nazis for all those dead Jews. Then, the Church will say “God spoketh to us, and he said ‘really sorry about inflicting the Jonas Brothers, Twilight, and that Bieber kid on you guys, I just smoked a whole bowl and wasn’t myself’.”
Maybe they should forgive the children, the families, and the faithful for condoning the abuse of young children, then light themselves on fire. For starters.
Tim O
!ereht nwod em dehcuot epoP ehT
Quaker in a Basement
Is “L’Osservatore Romano” Italian for The Onion?
Mark S.
@Sarcastro:
I’m surprised they didn’t include Spinal Tap.
FlipYrWhig
OH JOHN RINGO NO. OH, JOE? RINGO: NO. (c.f.)JGabriel
@Tom Levenson: Heh. Thank you. I check in on your blog occasionally, and coming from you, I consider that high praise.
.
slag
@Tim O: Awesome.
Ed Drone
@Randy P:
What do you mean, “these days?” When, if ever, has an IQ been a prerequisite for Vatican position?
And it always amazed me that the religious wackos were so outraged by John’s “bigger than Jesus” line. In Jesus’ time, he was so “big” with the crowd and the society of the day that they fucking crucified him! That’s not “big!”
The Beatles were bigger than Christ? Hell, Madonna is bigger. Liberace was bigger. When it comes to name recognition by the “man in the street,” even Lenny Bruce was [maybe] bigger. Why not admit that Jesus Christ was, in his day, nearly unnoticeable in terms of the impact of his life (and death) on the world? It’s that (and death) part that makes the difference. Or at least, it should to Christians. So those who still castigate Lennon should think about what that says about themselves as “Christians,” I’d say.
Oh, right! I said “think about” it, which may not always be a strong suit for Christianists. Never mind!
Ed
Punchy
An electrician he is not.
Winston Smith
Zug-zug.
Pure genius.
Brent
It would appear the pope and his cult are the satanic ones.
Joseph Nobles
Shorter Catholic Church: “The Beatles may have been satanic, but now we see what young, beautiful boys they were and forgive them.”
Persia
@debbie: And they appear to have raped far fewer little kids.
artem1s
new tag!
common! We forgave the Beatles for something they did 50 years ago, surely you can drop that annoying CT law and forgive us for things we did 50 years ago?
see what they did there?
I.also.too. would love to hear what John would have said about this nonsense but I fear if he were still alive the teabaggers would have already sent him back into seclusion. Can you imagine the immensity of the conservative, head explosions had President Obama invited JOHN LENNON to the white house?
Pete Butler
@cleek: If I recall correctly (and I might not — damn, has it been a while), Caveman #3 from that exchange was some kind of time-traveling anthropologist who just happened to be hanging with the tribe. This was never explained or acknowledged in any way; the fact that one of the tribe spoke English and knew what the hell was going on was purely a throwaway gag.
God, I loved it.
And now I have the tuba-riffic “Caveman” theme song stuck in my head. This is not a bad thing.
I think I need to watch this silly thing again.
ericblair
@Ed Drone:
I don’t think they’re dumb: to get where they are you have to have a few brains in your skull (since nepotism isn’t a real issue these days). However, most of these elderly gents have had very little contact with society at large, have an educational background that doesn’t deal with physical reality a whole lot, and are sitting in the biggest, oldest, most sanctimonious echo chamber in the world.
I’m guessing they figured they’d let bygones be bygones and forgive this new bunch of musicians that are all the rage these days, and everybody will realize how silly they were to keep harping on about those incidents with those totally inconsequential boys tempting our innocent priests.
chrome agnomen
@Sarcastro:
black sabbath. heh heh. go oz!
and a jillion others; it’s the devil’s music, after all.
John Lennon's Perturbed Ghost
“Yeah, y’know, it’s nice an’ all that to ‘ear the Vatican thinks our music was “beautiful”, but after fifty years, I don’t think this is the kind of “gettin’ down with the kids” people are really interested in ‘earin’ about right now, know warra mean?
Y’shoulda stuck t’ fiddlin’ with yer rosary, Father.”
(Being from Liverpool, I’m allowed to do that)
Cris
It really wasn’t even that. He was simply making an observation that Christianity was declining in popularity, that the youth of the day were far more enthusiastic about popular culture than religion.
Cris
By the way, it’s hilarious that this notion of secret messages persists, when Lennon’s biggest solo hit explicitly asks the listener to envision a world without religion or an afterlife.
TooManyJens
@FlipYrWhig: Genius.
Nathan
That boy took my love away
Oh, he’ll regret it someday
But this boy wants you back again
That boy isn’t good for you
Though he may want you too
This boy wants you back again
Oh, and this boy would be happy
Just to love you, but oh my
That boy won’t be happy
Till he’s seen you cry
This boy wouldn’t mind the pain
Would always feel the same
If this boy gets you back again
This boy, this boy, this boy
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
The Beatles did little more in this regard than your average group of college students. All of them eventually settled down to fairly conventional family lives.
One of them said this and was correct.
Er, no. Not even if you’re high and have a turntable that can play backwards.
These guys in the Vatican apparently have too much time on their hands. Maybe they bang altar boys out of sheer boredom.
Geoduck
Just adding to the Caveman.. well, maybe not love, but like. Another highlight I don’t think anyone’s mentioned are the surprisingly-good stop-motion dinosaurs, including a T-rex who accidentally gets blitzed on weed.
scav
It’s really becoming a classic Monty Python sketch that should have been with a color-blind bomb defuser pulling at incorrect wire after incorrect wire. I mean, you’ve now got the B Bloody C putting scare quotes around the word “data” provided by the Vatican.
Steve M.
Ringo Starr made a better Pope in Ken Russell’s Lisztomania than Ratzo does in real life.
Comrade Kevin
I have relatives who claimed it meant “Anti-Christ/Devil’s Child”.
Bubblegum Tate
Meh. Call me when the Catholic Church apologizes to NAMBLA for somehow making kiddie fuckers even more contemptible.
Tony J
@FlipYrWhig:
God, I’d almost forgotten about that. It’s like John Norman’s Gor fantasies crossed with The Survivalist series.
Having the author over for drinks with the rest of the Military-Fiction posse must be a slightly strained affair.
Cris
Lucky twenty-first century stoners have Audacity. They can listen to backward messages with impunity. We had to disable the turntable drive, risk wear and tear to our needle, and rub the grooves the wrong way. Damn kids.
gbear
Did the pope mention that he especially liked songs that Ringo sang? “Boys” has always been a big favorite.
Bap-shoo-bah.
edit: not the same song as Nathan@52
asiangrrlMN
@cleek: This fits. Honestly. Eddie Izzard’s pope bit. (This was when Pope John Paul II was still large and in charge).
Nellcote
Reason #seventy gazillion for why I always liked the Stones better.
Mike E
Then there’s the comment on the Daily News article making the tired argument that Ringo was lucky to be in the band–fuck all the
concern trollsBeatle-haters. No Rings, no Fabs. Pure and simple, assholes.Nellcote, don’t make me find that Rolling Stones song in your prized collection that Lennon/McCartney wrote. Listen, don’t get me wrong–I love the Stones, but even they know who the Beatles were (their fucking contemporaries) and they will tell you to can the comparisons, sport.
Cris
@Mike E: Sing it, brother. I strongly recommend that everybody read Cara’s defense of Ringo. Read the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:
Nellcote
@Mike E:
Ah hem.
;)
Mike E
@Nellcote:
Rolling Stones=greatest rock ‘n roll band. They should rename that joint in Cleveland ‘The Rock and Rolling Stones Hall of Fame.’ They are the flagship of the fleet; proud, with many sails furled.
The Beatles=greatest popular music act of all time. They are the fucking yellow submarine. Another ridiculous analogy: If they were an Apollo mission, they would have gone to the Moon, only to scream past it on their way to fucking Mars.
Please don’t try to ruin my love for the Stones with your trivial shit; and comparisons w/The Fabs are dumb.
Panurge
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I know what you mean, but it’s interesting that you should mention “people [! I know we’re not supposed to exclude women, but plainly this is about men] having long hair”, because there’s plainly a lesson to be learned there, too:
[/me mounts personal hobby horse]
1. Conservatives start abandoning their crewcuts.
2. Liberals think, “Oh noes! Long hair has COOTIES!”
3. Liberals get haircuts (somehow Oligarchy short hair has suddenly lost its COOTIES in some unknown fashion): “It’s not about long hair”, yadda yadda.
4. Conservatives think, “OK, great–let the liberals think they’re rebelling against us by getting the haircuts we really always wanted them to get. Meanwhile, we’ll threaten their ability to get (1) hawt sex or (2) a decent job, and that’ll help things along, because this is all really about preserving our Norman Rockwell tableau before anything else.”
5. Ronald Reagan gets elected POTUS.
6. Start feedback loop.
7. Arrive at a world where being rebellious means your crewcut is slightly tousled in that punk kinda way. I mean, think about it–all this reactionary “real guy” stuff couldn’t be happening in a society where long hair on males was still both popular and fully approved. But generations have now grown up with that “hippies thuck–>be a rebel–>get a haircut” message planted in the backs of their minds, whereever it might come from. (As if you could really rebel against the ’60s; you can’t call it rebellion if you’re not acting against a site of real power.)
And let’s not even talk about Madison Avenue…
Anyway, the point is: If conservatives start doing it, that’s not necessarily “co-optation”; that’s an indication that things are moving our way. It’s our tragedy that the left “tribe” couldn’t figure that out in the ’70s.
[/me dismounts personal hobby horse]
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Mike E:
People can hash it any way they want but the Beatles were what they were because it took all four of them to make it so. That is history and no amount of ‘what if’ will change it. They were a force that was unseen in the music world until that time so it’s easy to understand what John said when you look at it from that context.
I grew up listening to them and they sure changed the way that I looked at, listened to and play music. While I love listening to George Harrison and his guitar work, I always thought that Ringo was the base of the band. He laid down the beat and they made the music with it. While you can say that for any of the instruments used, drums are not a ‘solo’-type of instrument to begin with so I consider them in a different manner than instruments that are more ‘musical’.
Drums are the base for the music and Ringo did an excellent job of doing just that.
gbear
I heard an interview with Ringo where he talked about being left-handed but for some reason was forced to learn to drum right handed. When I heard that, it clicked for me as to why Ringo’s drumming is so cool and unique. You can hear it in his fills and where he throws the accents and the tom punches. He’s leading with ‘wrong’ hand.
minordomo
Wow, that’s an excellent take on the “If by whiskey” speech…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey
Russell60
I thought it was the Rolling Stones who were a trifle too satanic.