Maureen Cleave Maureen Cleave Maureen Cleave (born October 20, 1941) is an English journalist who worked for the London "Evening Standard" from the 1960s conducting interviews with famous musicians of the era, including Bob Dylan and John Lennon. Over the next 40 years she continued as a distinguished interviewer of people in all walks of life, in the "Standard", the "Telegraph Magazine", "Saga" magazine, "Intelligent Life" magazine and elsewhere. In her "Standard" interview with Lennon on 4 March 1966, titled "How does a Beatle live?", she quoted him as saying that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus now". Five months later,
More popular than Jesus came into contact with the Revd Ronald Gibbons, who told reporters that a Beatles version of "O Come, All Ye Faithful" might provide the Church of England with "the very shot in the arm it needs". The day after Cleave's article appeared in the "Evening Standard", Beatles press officer Tony Barrow offered "Datebook", a US teen magazine, rights to all four interviews. Barrow believed the pieces were important to show fans that the Beatles were progressing beyond simple pop music and producing more intellectually challenging work. As "Datebook" was a socially progressive magazine that addressed subjects such as interracial dating