Who broke up The Beatles?? Was Yoko Ono the fifth wheel? Did Paul get too controlling?
Here's how the Fab Four went from playing eight days a week to saying, "Let it be."
The story of the Beatles begins in Liverpool. The band had formed
a smoking-hot stage show and a dedicated local following among the rock 'n' roll
fans at the world-famous Cavern Club. In November 1961, the group really took
off when local businessman Brian Epstein offered to become the Beatles' manager.
Years after Epstein led them to worldwide fame, Paul McCartney claimed,
"If anyone was the fifth Beatle, it was Brian."
Epstein put the Beatles through a grueling touring
schedule — including a performance for the royal family within six months of
his meeting them — interspersed with ample studio time. The trajectory that
Epstein set the Beatles upon created the phenomenon we know today as "Beatlemania."
Epstein died suddenly of an accidental overdose on August 27,
1967, aged just 32. Though his abilities as a businessman have been up for debate
in the years since his death, to the band, his death meant losing crucial guidance and
focus. Epstein acted as arbiter in the band's creative disagreements,
which would plague the Beatles until their eventual breakup just three years later.
When talking about the White Album, aka The Beatles, John Lennon claimed,
"The break-up of the Beatles can be heard on that album."
Paul McCartney later dubbed it "The Tension Album," according to the Independent,
as a result of the grumpy atmosphere that
permeated the recording process. It was a sign of what was to come.
The White Album is now celebrated as some of the group's best work,
featuring classic tracks such as "Back In The U.S.S.R." and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."
But the album is a collage of different creative directions, with personal differences between the
band members reportedly leading to much of the album being recorded in three separate studios.
Lennon took exception to the traditional forms of songwriting that McCartney was attempting
to pursue, claiming that he was writing music for "grannies." McCartney himself
took exception to the avant-garde, experimental direction that Lennon,
influenced by Yoko Ono, was taking. McCartney felt so strongly about the
matter that he would later accuse Lennon of destroying the Beatles.
Within the vacuum created by the loss of Brian Epstein, Paul McCartney attempted to guide the
creative side of the increasingly directionless group. The group resisted his leadership,
however, with George Harrison especially critical of McCartney's approach, which,
according to Beatles Bible, the guitarist found bossy.
The result of McCartney's direction was the ill-fated Get Back sessions,
which the Beatles considered an attempt to return the band to its roots. The project was
an attempt to capture the rehearsals on film for a television special,
beginning with regular recording sessions captured candidly on camera. The resulting conditions,
however, led to much animosity, with Harrison briefly quitting the group in January 1969.
"All that footage of film which could make about half a dozen of films."
"Yes. It's a film of us making an album."
"But that's visual." "Yes. Yeah."
The project would ultimately be seen as a costly misstep, with the material
reworked to form the basis of what would be the Beatles' final studio release, 1970's Let It Be.
The tensions that emerged during the recording of The White Album continued after its recording.
With George Harrison continuing to grow as a songwriter, vying for space on albums,
the Beatles no longer felt like a single unit and it became more obvious in their final releases.
Harrison complained about how readily his compositions were excluded from
discussions of what would make the cut for album playlists. The fact that his
1970 solo album All Things Must Pass was released as a triple LP came to prove his
status as a prolific songwriter during the Beatles' final years.
Lennon claimed,
"The trouble is that we've got too much material. Now that George is writing a
lot we could put out a double-album every month, but they're so difficult to produce."
"I'm trying to get us to do one of George's for the first batch."
According to McCartney Times, Harrison claimed,
"The usual thing was that we'd do 14 of their tunes,
and then they'd condescend to listen to one of mine."
The perceived lack of generosity on the part of his fellow Beatles formed the basis for
Harrison's "I, Me, Mine," which also took aim at the group's hangers-on. The band's early unity
and focus — reflected in their matching outfits — are contrasted with their later
work. In the video to "Something," the four members walk separately but with their wives,
signaling to fans that they were growing up and apart.
It's not fair to blame the Beatles' breakup entirely on Yoko Ono, but her relationship
with John Lennon did cause some trouble in the band. Ono was a near-constant presence in the
Beatles' final years, with Lennon himself stating that he was unwilling to be without her company.
As a result, Ono went wherever Lennon went, including recording sessions and band meetings,
and would leave with Lennon for extended periods when his interest in the group waned.
Lennon's dependency on Ono wasn't simply based on infatuation, though. According to Salon, the
pair had begun using heroin around the time of The White Album sessions. Paul McCartney later said,
"This was a fairly big shocker for us because we all thought we were
far-out boys, but we kind of understood that we'd never get quite that far-out."
The drug made Lennon more erratic and confrontational, hindered his performances,
and further added to the sense that he was retreating from his bandmates into his own
private world. The strain was particularly felt in his relationship with George Harrison,
who had shared a creative experimentation with psychedelics with him throughout
the mid-stage of the band's career. Lennon and Ono would later go through
rehab and record the song "Cold Turkey" about their experiences.
Allen Klein was named by the Wall Street Journal and many others as "The Man Who Broke Up The
Beatles." Originally, Klein entered the Beatles' orbit through John Lennon, who impulsively
hired the New York businessman to manage his personal affairs, according to Rolling Stone.
At the time, the Beatles were still on the hunt for an adequate replacement for the
much-missed Epstein. Paul McCartney suggested hiring both his father- and brother-in-law,
Lee and John Eastman, but his suggestion was turned down because the others were still
worried that McCartney was trying to take over. Instead, Klein, a notoriously ruthless operator,
was installed to rescue the Beatles' company Apple Corps and the financial future of the band.
Klein succeeded in keeping the company afloat but his questionable business practices eventually
led to the Beatles forming a new management company of their own. The result would be a
lengthy court battle with Klein that eventually cost the Beatles many millions of dollars.
Like Brian Epstein, the Beatles' longtime producer George Martin has regularly been given the title
of "The Fifth Beatle." After originally partnering with the group way back in 1962,
Martin's relationship with the Beatles was instrumental to their growth as artists.
So it was a shock for Martin when, at the will of Allen Klein, a new producer was brought
into the fold to work on the material that would eventually become Let It Be.
As reported by The Guardian, Martin had begun to be "frozen" out of the Beatles'
studio sessions after the group felt that the producer had received unfair praise
as the "mastermind" behind Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
"It's hard to say who did what. I mean he taught us a lot and I'm sure we taught him a lot."
Superstar producer Phil Spector was now charged with polishing the Beatles' Get Back material for
a commercial release, which reportedly hurt Martin immensely. On top of this,
McCartney became upset by what he perceived to be Spector's unauthorized changes to
his material. "The Long And Winding Road" underwent significant changes,
like flamboyant orchestration and backing vocals, which completely altered the mood of the song.
Martin returned to the fold eventually, to produce 1969's Abbey Road.
On April 9, 1970 the music press received copies of Paul McCartney's debut solo LP,
McCartney. With it is a Q&A with responses from McCartney himself, full of information
regarding his first steps into a solo career and his recent relationship with his bandmates.
The Q&A states that his solo work has had no input from Allen Klein or his company, ABKCO.
Most shockingly, another of McCartney's answers
drops the bombshell that the Beatles, as a group, are no more.
John Lennon had actually announced he was quitting the group first,
a year before McCartney's announcement. Lennon, however, had kept his decision
quiet for the sake of business and the release of Let It Be, according to The Conversation.
The responses after Paul's perceived betrayal of the group were brutal. John,
George, and Ringo saw his press release as a cunning act of self-promotion. By tying
the announcement of the breakup of the Beatles to the marketing of his solo LP,
Paul had selfishly abandoned the notion of the Beatles operating together as a
single business unit. What's more, he no longer thought of them as friends.
Years later, McCartney would publicly admit he regretted the way he left the band.
Will they, won't they?
After Paul's bombshell announcement, the Beatles were caught on the back foot in terms of their
own futures. "Paul Quits The Beatles" was the headline that reverberated around the world,
according to The Conversation, but what did that actually mean? Was this the end, permanently?
Or was it simply a hiatus, a break from the stresses of a decade of being the Fab Four?
Nobody, including the Beatles themselves, knew for sure. For example, John Lennon had privately
informed the group of his leaving back in 1969, but he was considering a future tour
with the Beatles when he spoke to the press in early 1970, according to Rolling Stone.
But McCartney was also making legal steps to distance himself from the group and its
business. Though his three bandmates argued that the band was still together on paper,
a judge ruled in favor of McCartney for the dissolution of the group.
After the split hit the papers, the solo output of the separate members of the Beatles became
fodder for the press, hungry for details of what remained of the four friends' relationships.
The main point of interest was the rupture between what is now considered one of the
greatest songwriting partnerships of all time: John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
On 1970's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Lennon defiantly announced, quote,
"I don't believe in Beatles," as though washing his hands of the escalating feud. Coded insults in
the early solo music of both men meant that fans continued to observe the pair's mutual resentment.
In 1971, McCartney released Ram, featuring the song "Too Many People," which Lennon couldn't help
but interpret as an attack on him and his wife, Yoko Ono. In the same year, Lennon released "How
Do You Sleep?", a vicious album track which rips into McCartney and his solo "muzak."
However, several years later, Lennon did reflect that perhaps some of his
insults were really a veiled self-criticism.
"It's not about Paul, it's about me, I'm really attacking myself."
George Harrison joined Lennon on the track and the two continued to collaborate together.
The four members would work on each other's solo work throughout the '70s,
though the four Beatles would never be in the same room again.
The Beatles never got back together, despite rumors in the press,
the hopes of millions of fans, and, at one point, an offer of $50 million to do so,
according to Ultimate Classic Rock. Although the breakup was heartbreaking for both those
involved and the group's admirers, the bond between the Fab Four somehow managed to endure.
All four members worked together in one way or another after the split. Even
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, whose final session together, according to Open Culture,
was captured and eventually released under the title A Toot and a Snore in 1974. The two had
also rekindled their relationship enough that in 1976, the two were together watching television
when Lorne Michaels playfully invited the pair to come down to the studio and perform on Saturday
Night Live. HuffPost claims that the two childhood friends considered taking him up on the offer.
John Lennon was tragically murdered in New York in December 1980,
putting a sad end to any hope of a full Beatles reunion. But in one of the final interviews he
gave at the end of his life, he said that he considered McCartney a brother to him.