Fall Of The Peacemakers

In March 1966, at the height of Beatlemania, John Lennon remarked to a journalist from the London Evening Standard - probably in his usual deadpan style - that the Beatles were now more popular than Jesus. Later in the year, when that comment found its way into an American teenagers' magazine, it provoked uproar in the Bible Belt, and led to a DJ in Birmingham, Alabama boycotting their records, a boycott that spread like wildfire, many teenagers actually burning their records. In view of this, probably no one would have been more surprised than Lennon himself that a Southern musician, if a Southern rock musician, should have written a tribute song to him. Although Molly Hatchet guitarist Dave Hlubek's epic "Fall Of The Peacemakers" alludes to both Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy as well, it is primarily about Lennon with its overt references to "Imagine" and "Give Peace A Chance." The last verse alludes to the funeral of President Kennedy, who some might say saved the world from a potential nuclear disaster by his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis the year before his assassination.

There are at least six recordings of "Fall Of The Peacemakers," the definitive is probably the original from the 1983 No Guts, No Glory album, which runs 8:04, but the 1998 acoustic version (which is heavily keyboard-based) is also a notable rendition. This can be found on Silent Reign Of Heroes, and runs 6:55.