Compo / DECCA DL 9157 (vinyl LP)
The media frenzy in the USA and Canada in 1966 over John Lennon's alleged remark that "The Beatles Were Bigger Than Jesus" led to many news items touching smaller communities in the USA and Canada. Below is a scan of a newspaper story supplied by UPI to "The Telegraph", Painesville, Ohio, USA which ran this story on page 2 on Friday, August 12th., 1966. The story discusses The Beatles' arrival in Chicago for the summer 1966 tour as well as John's "apology". There is a lovely line here stating that "American Airlines had placed Bibles by their seats on the plane as a «special gesture»".
In the USA, Decca Records produced two LPs of UPI (United Press International) Audio Network material; one called "Playback '65" (DL 9153 mono, DL 79153 stereo) and one called "Playback '66" (DL 9157 mono, DL 79157 stereo). "Playback '66" was issued in the USA in early 1967 in both mono and stereo formats and is the only one of the two LPs to include Beatles material.
The "Playback '66" LP was also issued in Canada by Compo (see picture above) and to date only the mono copy DL 9157 has been verified. The news clips appear to have been recorded in mono anyway ... the audio clip half way through Side 2 of this LP lasts approximately one minute and features a telephone-recorded interview with John Lennon and also a brief interview with Birmingham, Alabama DJ Tommy Charles (a Dj who had organized a much-publicized campaign to burn Beatles records).
In this brief clip you can sense from Lennon's voice that he is pretty much tired of talking about this issue. However, the Christianity issue would dog him for the few weeks that they toured the USA and Canada in the summer of 1966. For example, reference was made to the same issue again during the Beatles' Toronto press conference at Maple Leaf Gardens on August 17th, 1966 when one of the media members there asked Lennon to comment yet again about the contentious statement that he had made.
Apart from all of that, the Canadian Decca LP offers a nice slice of one of that year's top media stories.