But papal validation doesn’t stop the large-scale burning of Beatles records known as Beatles bonfires. On August 11, the AP publishes a photo from Chester, South Carolina, of a KKK grand dragon feeding albums into the flames of a burning cross. And though WAQY-AM disc jockey Tommy Charles releases a statement accepting John’s apology and canceling the Birmingham bonfire, the one organized by radio station KLUE in Longview, Texas, happens on August 13. Two days later, a picture of a teenage Longview girl armed with a torch, igniting a pile of albums, goes out over the UPI wire. By then, the Beatles are already at DC Stadium (later RFK Stadium) for their August 15 show.

In the clubhouse of baseball’s Washington Senators, who were in the midst of a losing season in the American League, the Beatles face down a press corps primed to throw curveballs. Yet the Washington Post’s Leroy Aarons had scooped them all with an advance sympathetic interview headlined “CAN’T EXPRESS MYSELF VERY WELL”; BEATLE APOLOGIZES FOR REMARKS, which explained that the religious views of the twenty-five-year-old John were “more of a groping than a finding.” Regarding the ten days of bonfires: “That was the real shock, the physical burning. I couldn’t go away knowing that I created another little piece of hate in the world.”

Hate personified appears at the stadium in the form of five red-, white,- and green-robed members of the Prince George’s County, Maryland, Ku Klux Klan. They picket but don’t interrupt the concert. The music goes on in Philadelphia, Toronto, and Boston—where numerous Kennedys, including Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s teenage children, Joseph and Kathleen, have traveled from Hyannis Port to join the audience of twenty-five thousand.

They are scheduled to perform two shows at the Mid-South Coliseum, in Memphis, on Friday, August 19, even though on August 10, local leaders issued a unanimous resolution to “advise the Beatles that they are not welcome in the City of Memphis.”

Despite warnings made to Tony Barrow that “religious zealots…were actually threatening to assassinate John Lennon if the Beatles came to Memphis,” the band boards its charter flight.

“Send John out first. He’s the one they want,” George suggests jokingly, while John plays the sacrificial martyr: “You might as well paint a target on me.”

But John is truly fearful.

George is, too. “All the time, constantly,” he feels “frightened by things” because it’s been less than three years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

“There was always an edge in America,” Ringo says later. “We knew they did have guns.”

Yet more than twenty thousand adoring fans have paid the ticket price of $5.50. One young woman tells a reporter, “I love Jesus, but I love those Beatles, too.”

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