Love, love, snub. The Beatles, Manila, and Imelda.

Abstract

The Beatles went to Manila at 4:30pm on Sunday July 3, 1966. The next day they played two concerts to a total of 80,000 people - the largest one-day audience in their entire touring career. But the visit is remembered largely for their chaotic departure from Manila airport on the afternoon of Tuesday July 5. Officials denied the band the usual courtesies due the world’s most famous entertainers and, worse, encouraged abuse and intimidation by Presidential security guards. The immediate cause of this mess was a perceived snub of the Philippines’ First Lady the previous day, when the Beatles did not attend a lunch party ostensibly held in their honor by Imelda Marcos herself. The incident is now seen as pivotal in the Beatles story – as it marked a decisive turning point when they opted to stop touring and concentrate on studio recording. As George Harrison put it “after the Philippines we thought, ‘Hey, we’ve got to pack this (touring) in’.” Accounts of this Anglo-Filipino “miscommunication,” as Imelda Marcos describes it, have largely been from the Beatles’ perspective and repeated endlessly without much examination. This can partly be attributed to the subsequent notoriety of the Marcoses – as Paul put it in the Anthology: “when we found out what they’d ‘allegedly’ been doing to their people, we’re glad we didn’t go.” Nearly all the published accounts of the incident are from members of the Beatles or their touring party. The “memory industry” is far less developed in The Philippines. None of the Filipino protagonists – from the promoters to the politicians, to the musicians, have ever published books about what happened. There are one or two fictionalized accounts of the incident by Filipino writers, but these have not greatly impacted the historical narrative. The reasons for the ‘snub’ of Imelda Marcos by the Beatles, the subsequent events, and the telling of this tale in the many histories, biographies and movies about the band are the subject of this book. In aiming to understand what these events were, and the reasons behind them, we will be considering the written accounts by Filipinos at the time – and interviewing some witnesses to the events today. In doing so, we aim to gain a fresh perspective on the emergence of the Philippines from its colonial past, and the relationship between its people and politics with Western pop music through the lens of this single historic moment: when the Beatles didn’t meet Imelda.