‘Fixing a Hole’: The Beatles recording session that Jesus sat in on

“I said, ‘Who are you?’ He said, ‘I’m Jesus’, so I said, ‘Well, you better come in then’.” Paul McCartney recounted the moment that he and The Beatles were recording the Sgt Pepper track ‘Fixing a Hole’, and he heard a knock at the door. Stood in the doorway was a man who claimed to be the messiah, who McCartney welcomed into the session with open arms.

The Beatles may have been slightly nervous at seeing Jesus standing in the doorway, given the controversy surrounding the band and the son of God. Once John Lennon proclaimed that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus, the religion and its followers were in uproar, claiming the band were blasphemous.

The satanic panic took over rock music from the ‘60s onwards as a lot of religious people believed that rock and pop music was a front for the devil. You can likely track a lot of those reservations back to The Beatle’s comments, as the main concern that filled a lot of religious people at the time of John Lennon’s biblical proclamation wasn’t the fact that it was disrespectful to their lord and saviour, but the fact it wasn’t far from being true.

People used to be obsessed with their religion, and thanks to the likes of Elvis Presley and now The Beatles, their obsessions were shifting. They were no longer fixated on God but instead turned towards these people who they treated like God. A lot of devout religious people didn’t like this, and in that doorway, there was likely a small part of McCartney that believed it was the real Jesus who stood there, ready to have a strong word.

McCartney welcomed the apparent messiah into the room and had to justify his presence to the rest of the band. “He says he’s Jesus,” McCartney told the rest of the band, who were preparing to record more songs for what would be one of their most successful albums. “I don’t know, but I’m not taking any chances. Is it okay if he sits in the corner?”

According to the band, the messiah was as quiet as a mouse, sitting in on the session and watching The Beatles do what they do best. “So, he sat there for the session of ‘Fixing A Hole’,” recalled McCartney, “We just made it, made the record, said goodnight, and I’ve never seen him since.”

The divine element that had been put into the song and, subsequently, the album, means that it was always going to be a hit. In fact, listening back to ‘Fixing A Hole,’ it’s almost as if the stranger’s presence can be felt within each note of the track. It turns out that the most shocking proclamation to come from the band wasn’t the fact that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus; it’s that Jesus was a fan.

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