Midway through their careers the Beatles went from crooners to preachers. They possessed a message - a message of freedom, peace, and love. The song "The Word" (recorded in 1965) is "the first gospel song of the Beatles ('This could be a Salvation Army song,' said Paul at the time)" (5). Like all good preachers, they believed that something was clearly wrong with the world. Their answers were secularized versions of Christian teachings: "love, peace, hope, truth, freedom, honesty, transcendence" (11). Initially, drugs opened the Beatles up to the mystical and transcendent. Both Paul and George attribute their belief in God to LSD. Because of these experiences, the Beatles' songs about love went from personal and erotic to universal and spiritual. This led to the East, then to disillusion for all except George. This book is a fascinating look at the Beatles in relationship to their faith, beliefs, and message. Whether one agrees with their answers or not, they certainly hungered for transcendence, and asked the right questions. Perhaps their greatest flaw was in putting "freedom" before "truth." Quoting Jesus' statement, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free," Turner comments, "Instead of believing that the truth would set us free, we believed that the freedom would make us true. In other words, we thought that by following our appetites and instincts we would eventually be led to the truth about ourselves, that the road of excess, as William Blake had said, would end up at the palace of wisdom. But Jesus insisted on truth as the prerequisite for real freedom and said that truth could only be found if we 'hold to my teaching.' If we didn't put truth first, we wouldn't be able to distinguish freedom from license" (205). A great book for any Beatles' fan!
The Gospel According to the Beatles
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