Elektra and Beatles vs. Stones

According to The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's, the person responsible for publicizing John Lennon's notorious "more popular than Jesus" comment was, quelle surprise, a Jew: Danny Fields (Daniel Feinberg), managing editor of Datebook magazine, which fired him after the incident.

Or as Paul McCartney later said to Fields upon learning of his role in the Jesus article's release, "So you were the one." Yes, this gay Jewish outsider from Richmond Hill in Queens, this grad-school dropout and Warhol acolyte who fled from his background almost like Holden Caulfield, was indeed the "punk" who helped put an end to live performance by the Beatles.

Not that being fired bothered Fields. As he says, he was an avowed Rolling Stones fan, and he'd recently been offered a much more exciting job elsewhere. "Elektra hired me to create a publicity department . . . ."

This is the first mention of Elektra Records in the book, and it's juxtaposed with a reference to preferring the Stones to the Beatles. I recently highlighted the comic-book character Elektra (same unusual spelling) in "Pumping iron into a sword" (October 4). The day before, I had posted "Sympathy and dice," which quotes these lines from the Metric song "Sympathy":

Gimme sympathy

After all of this is gone

Who'd you rather be?

The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?

It was on October 6 that I started reading The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's. I'm not sure what date I read the passage quoted above. I'm on p. 117 now, and the quote is on p. 57.