10 Rock Artists Who Got Banned From Certain Countries
1. The Beatles - Israel
There's a great story about how The Beatles accidentally snubbed Filipino first lady Imelda Marcos and essentially got chased out of the country.
However, this did not lead to a ban.
One country that The Fab Four were absolutely prohibited from visiting was Israel, and it was all Cliff Richard's fault.
The former Shadows man had made a big splash in the country in 1963, causing Israeli officials to become suspicious of this new-fangled rock craze. A businessman named Yacov Ori thought that it would be a good idea to bring The Beatles over to Tel Aviv in 1965, partially based on the Jewishness of their manager Brian Epstein.
When Ori approached a government committee with his idea, he was shut down because "the band didn't stand on a high cultural and artistic level and had a bad influence over youth."
Clearly someone had never heard Yellow Submarine.
And that was it; The Beatles never played a single show in Israel.
Upon a visit to the Beatles museum in 2008, Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor finally issued an apology over the ban. Considering that over 40 years had passed and two of the Beatles were dead, this may have been a little too late.