With the Beatles’ breakup in the late 1960s, the rock landscape would never be the same. Rumors swirled about what contributed to the band’s untimely end. And a fascinating group of individuals worked to reunite the famed boy band. As attempts mounted and negotiations took place, the thirst for Beatlemania 2.0 increased throughout the 1970s.
The most fascinating effort involved Muhammad Ali. It teetered on success throughout the 1970s. The most famous man in the world at the time, the heavyweight boxer was a confessed Beatles fan. His attempt involved crowdfunding well before the internet, President Jimmy Carter, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono.
The Beatles touched off Beatlemania and the “British Invasion” on February 7, 1964, when they stepped off an airplane at New York City’s JFK Airport. Yet only 4,000 people turned out to greet them. Contrast this with their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show mere days later, and nearly 74 million people tuned in to watch them perform.
The Beatles’ arrival in America launched an iconic career for the band, who churned out one hit album after another. Think Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), the White Album (1968), and Abbey Road (1969). By 1967, however, the band fragmented when Brian Epstein, their manager, died. The Beatles dissolved after six years together. It marked a relatively short career for a band with so much impact.
As rumors swirled about what pulled the band apart, reunion attempts spurred resistance. John Lennon noted, “After Brian died, we collapsed. Paul took over and supposedly led us. But what is leading us, when we went round in circles? We broke up then.”
Sadly, what followed the demise of the band made reconciliation difficult. Infighting spurred lawsuits and bad blood. The kind that made letting bygones be bygones impossible.
But then boxer Muhammad Ali , an acquaintance of the band, got involved. Known affectionately as “The Greatest,” Ali held numerous heavyweight boxing titles. He was also a passionate advocate for the impoverished and a well-known social activist. These last two passions played into his attempts to reboot the band.
The Beatles and Muhammad Ali first met in 1964 after their celebrated appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show . The Britons had requested a meeting with heavyweight champ, Sonny Liston. After being refused, they turned to his opponent, Muhammed Ali, then known as Cassius Clay.
The photoshoot occurred on February 18, 1964, at the 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach. The result? Iconic images still celebrated today. What makes these photos so fascinating is that all five men were on the cusp of cataclysmic fame.
The meeting bred an affection between the bandmates and heavyweight boxer. This would come in handy by the late 1970s when Ali and two other men attempted to reunite the group.
Other individuals and groups also attempted to get the Beatles to reconcile. Most did so by trying to entice them with money. But Muhammad Ali took a different tack. After all, the last thing he and the Beatles needed was more money.
Instead, he proposed the equivalent of crowd-sharing and charity. Ali worked on the endeavor with Alan Amron, a 28-year-old entrepreneur from Long Island, and Joel Sacher of New Jersey.
Amron came up with the idea of funding a Beatles reunion by asking their fans to contribute one dollar apiece to the cause. Amron reasoned, “There are 200 million Beatles fans in the world. This is a fact. And if there are 200 million Beatles fans, it could reach 100 million of them, and [if] only half send in a dollar, that’s $50 million.”
But money alone would not be enough to bring the Beatles together. Ali and Sacher recognized uniting them would take more than money. It would require a movement.
So, they created an agency tasked with “feeding and clothing the poor people of the world.” Negotiations with the band began in earnest in January 1977 after a fateful meeting between Ali, Sacher, Amron, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono. The meeting happened organically at President Jimmy Carter’s inaugural ball in the nation’s capital.
Lennon listened patiently to the surprise and delight of the men. And he didn’t reject the concept of crowdfunding and capitalizing on the reunion to help those less fortunate. But initial negotiations produced a stalemate.
So, Ali took the matter to the public. He did an interview with New York’s Daily News to spur the movement. In the story, Ali explained, “I don’t need the money, and neither do the Beatles. The idea is to create this fund, and to help people develop a quality of the heart.”
Endless back-and-forth conversations followed. The years dragged by, and yet the Beatles came no closer to reuniting. Then, on December 8, 1980, the effort was forever laid to rest with John Lennon’s untimely murder.
According to Sacher , Ali took the news especially hard. “Ali was devastated, and not the fact that we couldn’t get the Beatles back together, but that another person could take someone’s life as such a talented individual. It had a profound effect on Ali for a while. It had that effect on all of us.”
The passage of time means many of the players in the story have passed away. The Ali attempt at a Beatles reunion has been lost to the sands of time, too. Little more than a fascinating footnote in history books. And yet it provides a fascinating window into mid-20th-century pop culture. It also highlights a moment when boxing and music converged for the greater good.
Head on over to Ripley's Believe It or Not! Grand Prairie and see John Lennon made from crumpled cassette tape!
Still not enough? Get Up Close & Peculiar with Beatles memorabilia straight from the Ripley's vault!
