Another Reason to Hate Imelda Marcos
My mom and I were talking yesterday when suddenly, she said something that I have never heard of before:
“Pinabugbog ni Imelda yung Beatles nung andun sila sa Pilipinas,”
[Translate: Imelda (Marcos) had the Beatles beaten up while the group was in the Philippines.]
And boy, was I shocked to say the least! 
My brother came in and joined in the conversation. He agreed and said that one of his high school teachers told them about it. The Beatles were beaten up by some of Imelda Marcos’ thugs at the airport, on their way out of the country during their 1966 visit.
Imelda Marcos had the Beatles beaten up at the airport? Why haven’t I ever heard of this before?
So I did a bit of research and ended up with this brilliant page that features a transcript straight from the fab four’s recollection of their traumatic Philippine visit. This was taken from The Beatles Anthology documentaries.
To those who, like me, are quite shocked by this, I recommend that you read the entire webpage to be enlightened. Their ordeal has some eerie resemblance to the last few events in the movie, The Last King of Scotland.
The story in a nutshell [according to their Wikipedia page, at least]:
In July 1966, when The Beatles toured the Philippines, they unintentionally snubbed the nation’s first lady, Imelda Marcos, who had expected the group to attend a breakfast reception at the Presidential Palace.[69] When presented with the invitation, Brian Epstein politely declined on behalf of the group, as it had never been the group’s policy to accept such “official” invitations.[70] The group soon found that the Marcos regime was unaccustomed to accepting “no” for an answer. After the ’snub’ was broadcast on Philippine television and radio, all of The Beatles’ police protection disappeared. The group and their entourage had to make their way to Manila airport on their own. At the airport, road manager Mal Evans was beaten and kicked, and the band members were pushed and jostled about by a hostile crowd.[71] Once the group boarded the plane, Epstein and Evans were ordered off, and Evans said, “Tell my wife that I love her.”[72] Epstein was forced to give back all the money that the band had earned while they were there before being allowed back on the plane.[73]
I guess that dictators’ wives are really spoiled rotten like that. The fact that she even had the nerve to maltreat the Beatles like that and give the country a bad name just shows how God-like and superior she thinks she is. To be able to tell everyone that “Hey, I beat up the Beatles! Get it? Get it? *roflmao*” would be a big ego-booster, I guess. She is, after all, the dictator’s wife.
Don’t you just love to hate Imelda?
And oh, look, they’ve made fun of her! XD
To my Filipino friends: Am I living under a rock this entire time? Have you guys heard of this before?
Tagged as Commentary, Music + Categorized as Uncategorized
Wow. I never knew that. I should ask my mom about this. Haha. :p
And this just shows and proves how powerful she was back then, and how much she abused that power (because, wow, she had the Beatles beaten up!). Really, though, what she did to them was pretty frightening, and probably traumatized them for a lifetime:
“John: No plane’s going to go through the Philippines with me on it. I wouldn’t even fly over it.
We’ll just never go to any nut-houses again.”
Yeah, scary no?
Glad to hear I’m not the only one who didn’t know this.
My mom said that there was some sort of gag order for during that time [I guess they had gag orders for everything!!!] that’s why people never knew the real story. But still, she had the Beatles beaten up!
Oh, and this just in:
Wow.
shet!!! ‘di ko ‘to alam! but don’t think i’m evil for wanting to be like imelda. i just want her power, but i’ll use it for the greater good. haha! grabe mehn! that’s soooo… evil! as in straight out of satan’s bitch’s womb evil!
ps. witty u ah. “hey, i beat up the beatles!” hahahaha
HAHA WALA PILYA LANG SI IMELDA KASI SINCE BEATLES KELANGAN I-BEAT! NYEHEHE. PARA SAKIN ASTIG UN PERO NAKAKALUNGKOT. MINUS POGI POINTS SATIN
@julie: Haha, I love your description, “straight out of satan’s bitch’s womb evil!” Yeah, I’m witty like that.
Hmm, and yeah, I do recall you having some Imelda-ish layout on your old tabulas blog. 
I didn’t really have a problem with Imelda before, but after hearing about this, I just realized that wow, this is like the generic “dictatorship” stuff that I hear from other countries. Pero meron pala sa ‘Pinas. Tapos Beatles pa yung pinabugbog nya. Tsk tsk… 
@lara: Haha, astig ba yun?
Sabagay, halos natawa ako nung unang pagka-rinig ko. Kasi para ngang joke eh. “Hey, I beat up the Beatles!” Bad bad joke, I know. 
PS: I just installed a Comment Preview plugin.
Would perhaps make commenting easier. 
Oh my, I can’t believe this! This is also the first time that I heard about this. Imelda Marcos is the shit! :p LOL!
Hell yeah, she is!
I guess nobody knew what she did to the Beatles, then…
Time to spread the word.