Pennsylvania senator Robert Fleming introduces a resolution to ban the Beatles—they’re supposed to play Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium on August 16—and pull their records from jukeboxes statewide.

“We can get along very well without the Beatles,” Fleming tells reporters, “but there are multitudes of us that cannot get along without Jesus Christ.”

When the city of Boston denies Democratic state representative Charles Iannello’s request to revoke the Beatles’ permit for a concert planned at Suffolk Downs (where the legendary thoroughbred Seabiscuit once ran), he asks, “Who are these four creeps to put themselves above the High and Mighty? Do you think they’ll do anything for the morals of our teenagers? We’ve got enough problems.”

*  *  *

So does John.

Freda Kelly, Brian Epstein’s personal secretary as well as the secretary for the Beatles fan club, delivers letters by the sackful to John’s mock Tudor mansion in Weybridge. Cyn divides them into two piles—fan mail and hate mail.

Each day, John asks Cyn which pile is bigger. The answer is always the same: “Letters arrived at the house full of threats, hate, and venom,” Cyn says.

Psychics are sending him their predictions. One foresees the Beatles will die in a plane crash, another that John will be shot while on tour in the United States.

On August 5, 1966 (August 8 in the United States), the album Revolver and the double A–side single “Eleanor Rigby” / “Yellow Submarine” are released in the UK. The Beatles’ fourteen-city concert tour is set to begin in less than a week. They’ve already decided not to play any of the new music live, since it won’t be heard over the screaming fans, but they haven’t planned for the screaming press.

On August 6, Brian Epstein holds an ineffectual press conference at New York’s Americana Hotel.

“What will it cost to cancel the tour?” Brian asks business associate Nat Weiss afterward.

“A million dollars,” Weiss answers.

But there’s another compelling financial reason to perform the American shows: British taxes.

During the spring recording sessions for Revolver, George Harrison contributed the song “Taxman,” a biting commentary on the 95 percent “supertax” that Labour Party prime minister Harold Wilson proposed on high earners. “Should 5 percent appear too small,” Harrison wrote, “be thankful I don’t take it all.”

“They were never happy with that,” Beatles’ accountant Harry Pinsker explains. “That’s why George wrote ‘Taxman.’ They’d been poor boys who’d worked hard and made money, and now someone was trying to take it away.”

The American tour will make them around $4 million (more than $32 million in today’s dollars). And they won’t have to contend with the supertax.