Beatles 1964 US Tour Part 4: Use Of An Anti-Jewish Slur

Larry Kane's tour memoir, Ticket To Ride, contains an unsettling revelation about the use of the word 'kike' by a Beatle in 1964. British journalist Ivor Davis summarized the incident here:

"I was sitting next to Jewish journalist Larry Kane on the plane and he got upset when he heard the word 'kike' coming from where The Beatles were sitting.

"I challenged Derek Taylor as to who it was, even though I knew it was John.

"He had a very black sense of humour - I remember being in a hotel suite with him while he performed Hitler salutes. It peed Brian off and he used to tell him off.

"I know it sounds as though John was antisemitic, but I don't think he was - he just satirised, rather wickedly, whatever he fancied."

Kane gave this account in an article for Esquire in 2014:

Another time, we were flying to Seattle and I sat about five rows from where they were in the back and I heard someone say the word kike. I don't know what made me do this, but some things sort of make you explode. So I got up, went to the back, and said, "I'm not going to take that kind of shit." I know they weren't talking about me, but I grew up in a very bigoted environment in southwest Miami and I was unhappy. So I went back to my seat and everybody on the plane was like, "Oh my God, what's going on?" John, George, and Ringo each individually came up to me and sort of leaned down and explained they were being silly and apologized. Paul came by and said, "You okay?" I still felt weird about it days later.

Interestingly, Kane feels that this helped his bond with Taylor and The Beatles. Immediately after he had complained on the plane, Lennon made amends:

we had a relaxed and compassionate conversation about the roots of prejudice in Liverpool. It was a good talk. As we spoke, Ringo and George walked by. Ringo gave a wink, and George just said, "How you doing, Larry?" Paul didn’t make a special trip. He did pass by on the way to the bathroom and said, "Great working with you, Larry." It was, I interpreted, his way of smoothing the episode over. I felt good, but still self-conscious that I had responded so aggressively. Whatever the roots of the prejudice, and whatever the reasons someone had spoken that word, I knew I would never hear it again for the remainder of the tour. And this incident did something else; it showed me that the Beatles possessed genuine compassion and feeling [Kane, Larry. A Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles' 1964 Tour That Changed the World (Kindle Locations 687-693). Dynamic Images, Inc.. Kindle Edition]. 

On Taylor, he reveals that:

Two years later, Derek, who was by then the former Beatles press secretary (he was released after the 1964 tour by Brian Epstein), accompanied another rock group, the Byrds, on a publicity tour to Miami. At a private dinner with me, he brought up the subject. I had long forgotten, but Derek had not. He confirmed that he wasn’t the one who had said the word and that the boys had been embarrassed. When I asked him who’d said it, he changed the subject. 

He concludes:

In a strange way, this episode added to the familiarity developing between the Beatles and me. Certainly such episodes weren’t the best way to get acquainted, but sometimes adversity can bring people closer [Kane, Kindle Locations 695-699].

Lennon had a tendency to take his anger and sense of humour out on Jews up to his death. In his December 1970 interview with Jann Wenner, Lennon said, "Eastman is a Wasp Jew, man, and that’s the worst kind of person on earth." In his September 1980 Playboy interview, he jests about the "Jewish schmaltz" of Sid Bernstein and jokes to Yoko about the time "when you went to the meeting with the ten Jewish lawyers wearing an Arab headdress that we brought back from the pyramids (Sheff, pages 12 and 79)." However, I am inclined to agree with Ivor Davis that, rather than being antisemitic, Lennon "just satirised, rather wickedly, whatever he fancied."