Paul McCartney sets the record straight on who broke up The Beatles
In an interview with This Cultural Life, Paul McCartney tells fans that John Lennon broke up the band, not him
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It’s been long disputed who actually broke up The Beatles, but Paul McCartney is setting the record straight: it wasn’t him.
While speaking on an upcoming episode of the BBC Radio 4 show This Cultural Life (as reported by The Guardian), McCartney tells host John Wilson, “I am not the person who instigated the split. Oh no, no, no. John walked into a room one day and said I am leaving the Beatles. Is that instigating the split, or not?””
He makes it clear that he wanted The Beatles to live on: “This was my band, this was my job, this was my life, so I wanted it to continue.” He also agrees that if Lennon hadn’t left, the band could’ve been around longer.
From what’s been reported on the band’s final days, after tension within the band—with John Lennon and Paul McCartney often clashing—Lennon left the band in 1969, reportedly saying he was breaking up the group. But Lennon kept this hidden until the next year. Meanwhile, McCartney worked on his first solo album, McCartney, and it’s told he called up Lennon saying he too was ready to leave the band.
The Beatles worked on their final album, Let It Be, but McCartney had also made his self-titled debut solo record—as had Ringo Starr. McCartney was set to come out ahead of Let It Be, and that proved to be an issue with The Beatles, so it was decided by the rest of the band that McCartney’s release was going to be moved to a later date. McCartney, seething over the band’s decision, gave a self-interview where he said he was done with The Beatles—declaring this before Lennon had give the public announcement of his departure from the group.
As for why McCartney decided to be the one to carry the burden of announcing the band’s end, he recalls to Wilson that “for a few months we had to pretend [the band was still going strong]. It was weird because we all knew it was the end of the Beatles but we couldn’t just walk away.” But since he felt so deeply unhappy in the situation, he “let the cat out of the bag” because he was “fed up of hiding it.”
If you want to hear more 50-something-year-old Beatles gossip, this episode of This Cultural Life arrives on October 23.
196 Comments
This isn’t really shocking news to any deep Beatles fan.Probably a little shocking Paul finally came clean.But, yeah, Lennon deciding on Klein and Ringo and George going along is the real nail in the coffin.And of course as history showed, Paul was absolutely right about Klein. If Epstein doesn’t die and Lennon didn’t need another parent figure, Beatles history is different.
He’s practically the only one left; who’s going to argue with him?
Yoko?Lennon fan boys?You’re right, but, there will still be fan boys who would blame “Paul being controlling” rather than the host of bad decisions John was making post Epstein death.Or even accept a bit more nuanced, they were 30 year old dudes who spent almost 15 years together and without Epstein to placate egos and for them all to defer to, the balance shifted too much and everything ended poorly instead of cooler heads taking their time to make decisions.
Well, as it says above: Yoko is keeping mum on this (whether is out of genuine class or just “I know I’ll never win this one!”), as is Ringo.
Fan boys: yeah, but c’mon, they’re all jockeying for highest branch in the whogivesashit tree.
Not to make excuses, but a bit of John’s post Epstein decision making was influenced by being smacked out of his gourd.
Yeah I don’t like the idea of blaming John entirely, especially as Yoko gets the brunt of that blame. John was falling apart and it’s likely Yoko saved him from an even earlier grave, and undoubtedly made him a better human (he himself admitted to being an ex-wifebeater) That being said, Paul had very differing views on the direction of the band from others, had a huge rift with Phil Spector (turned out to be right on him) and his mangling of Let it Be, and both him and John were holding George back, who had outgrown the band.
Ringo? Yoko?
Ringo. But who is going to believe him?
Its true, fully half of all the Beatles have since died.
Paul was absolutely right about Klein. But he was probably too young/arrogant to realize how trying to get his father-in-law instead came across to the rest of the group and actually drove them to Klein. So many bad decisions, bad timing, immature egos, and bad communication led to their split.
McCartney very much wanted more control of the band at that point, and I don’t 100 blame him, but I could see how that would be off putting for others.
That’s debatable.He stepped up due to Epstein’s death because no one else wanted to. He definitely wanted control over his music. And wasn’t collaborative on his work while still being very collaborative with John and George on their works. But, Paul really just kept on pushing the band to do stuff when John and George were possibly at their peak of not wanting to do the thing until they did.
When I research the band’s later years after Epstein dies, (and granting potential bias in the authors and subjects) it seems Paul was the the only Beatle who actually gave a shit about being one anymore.That he was a perfectionist and was basically dragging the rest of them along with these projects rankled them, for sure. I think they all needed a break at that point after the double whammy of Sgt. Pepper’s artistic apex and Epstein’s death.
It’s very clear by their post-Beatles career that John needed Paul to motivate him to make music and Paul needed John to say, “No, that’s crap.” Paul liked being in a band (that’s why he formed Wings), John liked being an artist (that’s why he and Yoko focused on their performance art). From essentially Pepper on, the ideas for albums, film, and TV projects come from Paul. John was struggling with addiction, Ringo actually quit the band during the White Album, and George resented the fact that he had a trunk full of songs that would NEVER see the light of day on a Beatles record. If John hadn’t quit when he did (they were in talks to start another record, and John and Paul loved the addition of Billy Preston), they wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway.
Yes, the professional Lennon-McCartney rivalry was an essential ingredient in getting the best music out of both of them. In their solo years, it was replaced by a more personal rivalry that was actively detrimental to some of their work. Probably the only musician that either of them would’ve seriously listened to when told “no” was each other. They still produced plenty of great music on their own, but they both needed that editor to enhance or throw out the crap. George, yeah. He was always like their kid brother in the group, and they were unable to recognize when he had come into his own.
George was definitely ready to go in the likely event they’d keep ignoring his songs.
Your take is spot on. McCartney’s account jibes pretty well with what we know about Lennon’s attitudes in ‘69. I have no doubt it was Lennon who actually pulled the trigger on the Beatles, though I think everybody but McCartney was ready to cut ties at that point.Starr always had interests outside the band—like Charlie Watts in the Stones, Ringo was the grounded, normal guy in the Beatles. Harrison was also actively developing a rich life outside the band. I don’t think either really shed too many tears over the breakup after a decade of listening to McCartney and Lennon squabble like an old married couple.Of course, the only other two people alive today who can support or refute McCartney’s account are Starr and Ono. As I recall Ono has always remained silent on the subject, while I think Ringo has too much class to make a public comment.My big question is, given how much success McCartney has enjoyed since the breakup, why does he feel the need to rehash it in the press 50 years later?
Maybe the whole world assuming incorrectly that you broke up the world’s most popular band for fifty years did it.
Maybe. But why now? It’s not like this is the first time a reporter brought the subject up in the last five decades.
Keep in mind, the Let It Be remix comes out on Friday.The Get Back documentary comes out in a little over a month. He’s doing press about what is considered the breakup /final album.Even though any Beatles fan can say it’s not a breakup or final album.So contextually, of course they’re going to ask him about it.
Good point. It’s all part of the junket.
No, but they’ve brought it up, and he’s always answered. I see nothing wrong with it. It’s a fact. This reporter said McCartney broke them up, and he said, “No. John did.” I honestly don’t get the problem. He’s not raking John over the coals, and he’s been singing the guy’s praises as an artist for decades now. Lennon could also be an asshole, but McCartney doesn’t remotely seem to be saying, “That fucking asshole broke us up.” I know they were just a rock band, but everybody who can grasp the situation knows they were much, much more than that as a cultural force. It’s history, and he’s saying “this is how it happened.” It’s not an attack. It’s a statement of fact.
He corrected the interviewer. It’s not exactly a rehash, like he specifically sat down to make sure everyone knows. And why shouldn’t he be able to say what happened? It happened!
Granted, but I have to wonder why he didn’t make this comment a few decades earlier. Even if he didn’t want to say anything while Lennon was alive, he’s had ample time to comment on this before now.
He has! I just watched an old Howard Stern interview with him several months ago and he says exactly the same thing when Stern says, during an interview about all kinds of stuff, “People say you broke up the Beatles.” And he’s said it many times before that. Repeatedly. The crazy thing is that this story is being treated like new information.
In the twilight of his life Paul has come off as very concerned about his Beatles legacy. In interviews in the past 10 – 20 years he has gone out of his way to point out his specific contributions…”I wrote that bit”…”The medley was MY idea”…etc.It comes across as petty and insecure. Dude, you were part of the greatest band in history. You’re richer than God. People have loved you and worshipped you for more than half a century. Just bask in it and Let It Be already.
Eh, there was definitely a time (basically pre 2000) where McCartney’s contributions to the band (and music in general) were largely denigrated while Lennon’s were put on a pedestal. I can see how that immediate backlash has left a lasting sore spot for him.
Which I really hate, Paul had some masterpieces in contrast to Lennon’s garbage. The entire last half of Abbey Road was mostly Paul’s doing.
Years ago Paul released a live album in which he flipped the credits of Beatles songs to “McCartney/Lennon” instead of “Lennon/McCartney” claiming that he and John had agreed years ago that they would flip the credits after a certain period of time had elapsed. Nobody believed him.
“Nobody believed him.”
Including the lawyers, if I recall correctly.
“It comes across as petty and insecure. Dude, you were part of the greatest band in history. You’re richer than God. People have loved you and worshipped you for more than half a century.” This is all true, but let’s be real: Lennon the Wise One is a martyred saint. We’re already having debates about who did what and who mattered more, and Lennon’s champions are carrying the day. That’s only going to get worse when McCartney has passed on himself. His desire to protect his legacy is perfectly rational.
You have a legacy but who gives a shit if people know what part you played in it? That’s a pretty stupid outlook. An artist taking ownership over their art is totally justified, and frankly, fans want to know who contributed what.
Clarifying some of the many many mistruths about his own band is apparently a sign of pettiness and insecurity. You’re supposed to just agree when people tell you things about you that you know aren’t true.
My
big question is, given how much success McCartney has enjoyed since the
breakup, why does he feel the need to rehash it in the press 50 years later?Because people asked and he was answering a question. And, if he really disagreed with the decision, having some people believe it was his decision has to rankle him.
Why would McCartney rehash the breakup 50+ years ago and set the record straight? Because it’s the most talked about breakup of all-time and he’s been cast as the villain for 50+ years.
He was asked a question that had already been answered years before.
Because they asked him? What was he supposed to do, lie or refuse to answer? Who cares?
Harrison was growing annoyed that his songs were being ignored/overlooked. It was just a matter of time before he would eventually get fed up and go solo.
My big question is, given how much success McCartney has enjoyed since the breakup, why does he feel the need to rehash it in the press 50 years later?From the description of the interview (and this may be clearer when it’s actually available), it sounds like the interviewer brought it up first. And between the upcoming Peter Jackson series and Paul’s sort-of-autobiography, maybe he just felt it was time to relieve the pressure and get it out there.
What If… John Lennon saved Iron Man?
This kind of caught me by surprise because I always thought John was the reason the Beatles split. Like I didnt know it was controversial.
Agreed. And George said many times that he had already mentally left. Paul is probably the person I would attribute the actual breakup to least.
Honestly, the Beatles staying together for even another year past 1970 could only detract from their legacy. Whoever broke them up deserves credit for stamping The End at exactly the right time. They had traced a perfect artistic arc that had circled back to their beginnings (Let It Be) and had just made what is arguably their finest studio creation (Abby Road). They also encapsulated the spirit of a decade that was very much now over. They avoided the bloated 70’s rock opera, the coke-fueled 80’s synth-pop album, there were no myth-shattering reunions, no Boomer cash-ins (as an extant band) — it was time to quit, they quit, and stuck to it. That choice is as much the reason for their status as Greatest Ever Band as anything else.
“If Epstein doesn’t die and Lennon didn’t need another parent figure…”Holy shit! Even Julian was in on the break-up?!Maybe put a warning up top for “Mind-Melting Revelation 100% Guaranteed To Annihilate Anything You Ever Thought You Knew About EVERYTHING” next time you decide to inexorably alter historical records.I understand if you can’t find it in your heart to do it for the AV Club commentariat. But in the name of all that is painstakingly organized in a reliably ordered sequence…Think of the Dewey Decimal System!
Yeah I thought Lennon owned up to it either in the ‘70 or ‘80 Rolling Stone Jann Wenner interview. He came into Apple for a meeting and said, “I want a divorce” and was pissed that the other Beatles convinced him to keep quiet but then Paul revealed it in the publicity for McCartney.
Once you’re big enough that the only people who ever really challenge you on anything are the other guys in the band, the countdown to the end begins.
This is not new information, I’ve read about it for years. Hell, even Wikipedia mentions it in the opening paragraphs of this article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break-up_of_the_Beatles
No it literally does not say that but thanks for posting
Paragraph 3: “Lennon privately informed his bandmates that he was leaving the Beatles on 20 September [1969], although it was unclear to the other members whether his departure was permanent.”Later, same article: “During a band meeting at Apple on 20 September, he informed McCartney, Starr and Klein of his decision (Harrison was not present at the meeting), telling them he wanted a ‘divorce’.”
If I was writing a tv show about the Beatles, in season 7, the penultimate episode would be them going out for a photo session, and seemingly having a fun time, ending with Paul remarking “Well that was a grand day out!” and the others agreeing and John saying “I want a divorce.” Cut to black. This is why I’m not a writer.
yeah but AVC did some analytics and found they could get pageviews reposting non-news apparently
I really just think as the first megastar group, they really had no other people to draw from on how to behave. It was like they all thought they had to break up and a band should only have a certain time frame to exist. It seems like the idea of “taking a break” or slowing down their album studio work never occurred to them. U2 and the Rolling Stones both had huge long careers because they learned that you do not kill the goose that lays golden eggs and you take a break and only release an album once every three of four years.
For most 60’s bands, yearly output was very much the thing. It looks like it was in the 70’s that a gap of 2-4 years between albums became more of a norm.So much so that when you had an artist like Prince who later had enough music to do the yearly release, his label prevented him.
It was me. I did it. I’m sorry everybody.
Hi, Yoko!
I cancelled Star Trek!
I always thought that was because Shatner wanted to do his solo album.
I convinced George Lucas that Greedo shot first.
I killed Kenny!
You bastard! If they’d stayed together longer, they might have put out a really shitty album and then we wouldn’t have to have spent the last 40 years hearing quite so much from boomers publicly creaming themselves over how great the Beatles were.
And I wouldn’t have to keep buying the White Album every time technology advances and the format changes—vinyl, 8-Track, cassette, CD, MP-3, and now vinyl again.
I look forward to the White Album’s reissue on 8-Track.
☠
You left out reel-to-reel and Digital Audio Tape (DAT).
and various special editions and master tape re-recordings with a previously unheard track or demo thrown in.
They were great, though. And, you wouldn’t have to hear so much about them if another band had led an, at least, equally large cultural tsunami in the interim.
Yeah, they were great, and hugely influential, and we’ve fucking heard enough about them. It’s been 50 years since they released an album and music has moved on.
“if they had made a bad record we wouldn’t be talking about all their good records”hmm
You are selling the Boomers short. Look at how much Easy Rider is talked about, 50 years on, despite being a solid B of a film at best.
Or Woodstock, where they saved the fucking world by spending a weekend at a concert and somehow managing to not all kill each other.It turns out, of course, that if their parents hadn’t sent in the National Guard to feed the poor dears, it might have devolved into a cannibal holocaust.
It hasn’t stopped them with every other Boomer favorite band that’s spent the last forty to fifty years putting out zombie albums and doing greatest hits tours. The ability to willfully overlook contradictory evidence is among the Baby Boom generation’s most developed and enduring skills!
The Rolling Stones has spent more time playing greatest hits than making them.
so you’re saying they’d be the Rolling Stones
I think by now, its pretty obvious the Beatles would have done a couple of progressive death metal albums and had 40 ‘last tours’ like KISS. Even with only half the band still around.
I’ll let them go on about the Beatles because of just how influential they still are beyond their generation. We don’t have a hit movie with Who/Stones songs released in 2008, or a Cirque Du Soleil act. We don’t have a Jay Z remix album of the Monkees. Elvis on the otherhand, I’m glad he’s no longer the be all end all of Rock n Roll and that some of the earlier Black artists that paved the way are getting their due.
While we are at it, I’d like to confess I was behind the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
I took the cookie from the cookie jar.
Forget the Beatles splitting, you broke up Austria-Hungary!
Dammit. You probably let the dogs out too.
LENIN, Donnie! Vladimir Ilych Ulianov!
Paul’s evoking the old “Shaggy Defense”?
Now you’re making me wish there was a mid 70s Wings deep album cut of the song.
My wife hates McCartney. I’m actually somewhat indifferent on the whole breakup subject and am neither Team John nor Team Paul. They were two sides of the same coin—capable of simultaneously being great artists and huge assholes. I think that it was inevitable no matter what specific events happened. Huge egos and a decade in a pressure cooker can do that.Still, I really liked Wings.
Eh, both sides-ing John and Paul as equally “huge assholes” draws a false equivalence between “bossy workaholic” (Paul) and “wife-beating child-neglecting pathological narcissist”(John).
Are you sure he beat Cynthia? Like, I know he was an absolute asshole and did beat up women (not to mention people in general) in his early years, but is there proof he physically abused his first wife?I’m sure he was emotionally abusive as fuck. To his credit though, he did at least appear to try and atone for that later in life. To a greater degree than men were expected to do in the 1970’s, which is still not saying much.
I think Paul is the only Beatle to not cheat on/abuse his wife or have any major addictions. Though he did get arrested for weed in Japan.
Have you checked out Chaos and Creation in the Backyard?
You married a woman who hates Paul McCartney? Does she also hate Disneyland, hamburgers and Christmas? Jesus Christ.
Paul should just live and let die
I’m not as immersed in Beatles history as some, but from what I have heard it really seems a small miracle that Lennon was willing to be in a band as long as he was. There’s an anecdote that Paul shares in “McCartney 3-2-1″ that Lennon never wanted to say anything good about what anyone else did. He once said “I like this song” to McCartney and, decades later, McCartney still remembers it as high praise, given the source. If it was “John Lennon and the Beatles” maybe he would have been OK with things going on a bit longer, but he really needed to be the center of attention in a way that group affiliation wouldn’t allow him.
I’m not so sure he wanted to be the center of attention so much as he couldn’t bear to have anybody tell him what to do. Ever. He was ill-suited to be in a group as time went on, and could be a dick about being trapped in the most popular group on earth. I absolutely love the Beatles, but I can fully understand any one of them eventually wanting to get out of it. The pressure and the workload must have been mind-frying.
It’s astounding when you read any of the many books chronicling their day to day life/recording sessions. They produced a stunning amount of quality music in about 8 years, and basically had cumulative 1-3 months off a year (much less in the earlier years). They worked liked dogs. If the concept of just taking a hiatus had been more popular back then, they may have been able to regroup in the mid-70s after a few years break. But the very bad business conflicts that were part of their break-up also soured that possibility.
It really is staggering how hard they worked, especially in the first three or four years, and that the vast majority of it is absolutely brilliant. It’s insane.
What’s also stunning is that in nearly every interview they did in the first 2 years or so, they were asked, “So what are you going to do in six months when this is all over?” Their success was never expected to last, and when it took them about 4 months to record Pepper (as opposed to about 2 for Revolver), the music press began to say, “Well, maybe these guys are done.”
It’s sometimes hard to realize how unprecedented they were. Rock and Roll was still a very new art form, and no artist/group had yet successfully maintained a consistent career out of it. (Even Elvis had his army years bump and was keeping popular with movies)They thought they were going to be a fad because everyone thought this Rock and Roll revival was just a fad like the 50’s boom.
I really love how Paul stresses that all the time, that it was all the hours of work they devoted to it that was the key.
I think the observation about hiatuses is especially good. I’ve often thought that what really broke up the Beatles is that they basically came first; sure, there were other rock acts before then, and Sinatra and Elvis had been similar cultural phenomena, but the Beatles had the misfortune of being the first group to hit that level of Big Thing.And it seems silly in retrospect, but no one knew how long that Big Thingness was going to last. In fact, there was every reason to think from past history that the Beatles would be a two or three year fad and that rock music would go the way of Big Band music and every other trendy flavor that had ever come before. Which meant there was this extreme pressure on the Beatles to keep producing while they were In, keep marketing while they were Hot, and for the love of God don’t dilute the brand with side projects. Any side projects—I mean, my understanding is that Parlophone kinda had a cow about John Lennon taking a couple of weeks off to promote a book of poetry he’d done, because my god what if teenagers get confused and spend a few pounds on a bloody book instead of Beatles For Sale?These days, Damon Albarn can be in fifty bands, the guys in Radiohead can all have solo careers making soundtracks or programming their laptops to bloop, and a band can go 22 years between studio releases and it’s just a thing they did. No one knew that in 1965. Or 1970. If the Beatles had known these were options, maybe they could have all decamped for a bit after Sgt. Pepper’s, had nice working vacations away from each other, blown off some steam. Instead they just killed themselves.
I think they all felt this way. I mean, there’s a reason that there are John or Paul songs with the occasional Ringo or George song thrown in. There aren’t too many true Beatles (as in the group) songs.They were *always* like a group of solo artists who tolerated each other to release as a group…
“There aren’t too many true Beatles (as in the group) songs.” True, but While it’s easy to say “this is a John song, and that’s a George song,” I really think it was their ability to evolve songs as a group, from writing to production, that made them great. Very few songs by anyone ever were written by the entire band. The Beatles did this as well as anyone. The only reason it’s easy to say “Something” was a George song and “Hey Jude” was a Paul song, etc, is bc they are so well known and the songs are so ubiquitous. Not bc they wrote their music in separate silos.
Part of this is also how much of a novelty it was for a band to write their own songs. They had already written a bit, but their pre-label act mostly consisted of covers. It was George Martin who encouraged them to write more when he saw the quality of it, and let them in on the $$$ of music publishing.So I don’t think it’s fair that they were solo artists who tolerated each other, at least not in the pre-Pepper’s era. They seemed to operate like most bands of the era.
Yeah, what adds to the Beatles legend is just how much they either invented or popularized when it comes to the rock band mythos. So many things we just take for granted nowadays.
I took a few art classes in college, and there was always “that kid”.
John Lennon was “that kid”.
Right, I admittedly just especially dislike John Lennon but he sounds like an incredibly frustrating person to work with. I’m not in a band of any sort, let alone a famous band, so I obviously don’t know anything about those dynamics but it seems sort of shitty to have one bandmate consistently trashing everything else other people want to do!
Who’s not in a family where, you all really love each other, but cant stand to be stuck in a room with them for more than 2 or 3 days?
I seem to remember a playboy interview where Lennon shits on almost all of the songs they did one by one.
As someone not very knowledgeable about the Beatles, Lennon has always seemed like an asshole
He was a really mean, violent piece of shit
Yes, incredibly unlikeable to put it mildly, especially after having learned of how he treated Julian and Cynthia Powell.
Don’t forget he permanently damaged Sean’s hearing when he was a baby from screaming as loud as he could directly into his ear
Really? What an asshole.
As someone who knows way too much about them, you’re right…at least, he could sometimes be one. And Paul could be bossy. A very bad situation as they got older.
I love their music to death, but the more I read about all of them the more they all seem kinda like assholes. But what can you expect, they were all so young experiencing unprecedented success/fame and basically inventing the rock and roll star paradigm.But yeah, John seemed to definitely be the worst.
Let’s leave Ringo out of this!
Talking about Ringo is like fighting in front of the kids.
I would’ve, but then I read some stuff about how his first marriage ended.
Even Ringo and George did some awful stuff. George ups and cheats on the love of his life(with Ringo’s wife). Ringo had also cheated on his wife and was drinking heavily. All around the same time the band broke up. That must have also messed the band up quite a bit.
Yes, in addition to being a philandering alcoholic, Ringo was apparently also a wife-beater.
Yes beating your wife automatically makes you one.
truly, most geniuses do seem like assholes.
He was, it needs to be acknowledged he knew it and Yoko somewhat made him better, if not much much weirder.
I’m just happy for the the friends they made along the way.
That was the real treasure.
Well, they got by with a little help from their friends.
I know that when I say this I may be stepping on pins and needles, but I don’t like all these people slagging her for breaking up The Beatles. Don’t blame it on Yokey!
Is Yokey a new search engine I’ve not heard about?
Type something into it and it screeches for twenty minutes.
while Chuck Berry looks baffled
Lol. It’s a reference to a Barenaked Ladies song. “Be My Yoko Ono” if u want to look it up on YouTube.
People’s hatred for Yoko Ono was always more about misogyny, with a smattering of racism, than anything else. Maybe a little bit of the hate was because her art came off as pretentious, and certainly part of it was because her musical contributions to the Beatles and to John’s solo stuff were uncommercial, to say the least, but mostly it was because people wanted to hate on the nonwhite woman who didn’t know her place and was somehow breaking up the boys with her evil vagina.
Silliest defense of Yoko I’ve ever heard. I don’t hate Yoko; far from it. But it’s been made clear that none of the other wives or girlfriends were invited into the studio let alone try to direct some of the music. She was a distraction. Period. That’s not misogyny.
People’s hatred for Yoko Ono was always more about misogyny, with a smattering of racism,For real. John Lennon was a grown man. To blame Yoko for the band’s split when there were 4 band members in that group unable to communicate well anymore is just scapegoating. The most I will say is that Lennon’s preference for Yoko over the Beatles was a sign of his growing detachment from the group, and not a cause of it.
Misogyny, racism, and a touch of myopic ignorance. I was kind of blown away (and felt like I’d been pretty stupid) when I learned about Yoko’s pre-John Lennon career—Fluxus, being mentored by John Cage, collaborations with artists like Ornette Coleman—and realized she was the Serious Artist and part of what drew Lennon to her was that she had the Serious Artistic Career he so obviously and keenly aspired to. And that surely, from the perspective of her peers, Lennon was the one desperately trying to take advantage of her status to gain a little credibility as something more than a Pop Star.Everyone who ever accused her of being a starf***cker had no clue at all that there’s more things in heaven and earth than pop music.(I have to brag that one of the times I managed to get to SXSW I saw her interviewed and got to see her perform in that year’s iteration of the Plastic Ono Band, and she was utterly amazing as an interview subject and as an artist. High points of my life, seriously.)
I mean if I was John and you were Yoko, I would gladly give up musical genius.
This is not remotely a scoop, and, outside of saying you can watch a YouTube video of him telling Howard Stern the exact same thing a couple years ago, I’ll leave it at that.
I’m sick of hearing about why the Beatles broke up – why haven’t they announced a reunion tour?
Lorne Michaels offered them cash to do a reunion SNL and they passed on it.
Get your facts straight dammit – he offered them a check.
And he told them they could divide it up any way they wanted, that they didn’t have to give Ringo a full share.
McCartney has said he and Lennon were actually watching the show live when Michaels did that and considered running over the the studio to get in on the gag.
Yes, I remember reading that, too. I wonder what would have happened if they had gone down to Rockefeller Center and said they wanted to take Michaels up on his offer and perform right then and there? I think they were watching in Lennon’s apartment in the Dakota, so they could have gotten there fairly quickly. The chaos that would have caused would have been a legendary show business legend.
It would have been great if they had. It’s just the sort of humor that appealed to Lennon. They could have closed the show with John and Paul cornering Lorne backstage until he signed a check, then could have joined the house band for a quick jam.Alas, it never happened.
when will we get the real dirt – like why the Monkees broke up
when will we get the real dirt – like why the Monkees broke upThe Monkees got fired.
Their producer got fed up and pulled the plug.
thanks for the update to my sarcastic post (not being sarcastic; I wasn’t going to look it up)
Yeah, I knew you were joking, but I still thought it was a funny aside.As I understand it, the band were just employees of Monkees Inc, and when the cameras stopped rolling, they had surprisingly little to show for their time as Monkees.Also, I think Monkees songs are way better than they get credit for.
The Monkees had a murderers’ row of songwriters writing stuff for them, including Harry Nilsson, Goffin & King, Boyce & Hart, and Neil Diamond, among others. Not to disparage them in any way just because they didn’t write all their own material (the idea that there’s something illegitimate about artists if they don’t write their own material is bullshit anyway); point is, The Monkees had some amazing tunes written by some of the best songwriters of the era.(Oh, and the session players on those records included The Wrecking Crew, Jack Nitzsche, Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Ry Cooder, Carole King, Danny Kortchmar, and Leon Russell, among others. So those fabulously written songs were performed by some pretty phenomenal musicians over the years. And Mike Nesmith wasn’t a bad guitarist in his own right. Regardless, The Monkees had great songs performed and recorded extremely well, and that only gets lost when some people get distracted by some kind of abstract and kinda ersatz ideas about “authenticity”. You could do a lot worse than a whole record of Boyce & Hart songs performed by Jack Nitzsche and The Wrecking Crew, who cares whose name is actually on the front cover?)
Very true. Yes, the band was assembled for a TV show, but The Monkees were far from talentless hacks. Davey Jones had experience in musical theater. Mickey Dolenz was a child actor who had already been in a couple of garage bands. He auditioned and was hired for the Monkees as a singer. While he initially had to mime his part as the drummer, he learned on the job and was actually pretty good by the time the tours came.Mike Nesmith was already a pretty good guitarist, not to the level of the guys in the Wrecking Crew, but certainly competent. Peter Tork was actually a talented multi-instrumentalist—piano, guitar, banjo, etc.—and came up in Greenwich Village scene with Stills.
Michael Nesmith released some pretty good country rock albums in the early 70s that are worth exploring and yielded some minor hits. His biggest songwriting accomplishment is undoubtedly “Different Drum” which was a big hit for Linda Ronstadt.
I always liked this song.
Obligatory:
All that sweet White-out cash rolling in.
The Monkees are actually on their farewell tour right now.
I ended up saying a lot more about it, but hey. The Beatles. I have tons of other pop culture interests, but they’re the bedrock for me.
This is the first I’ve heard of anyone accusing Paul breaking up the band. I grew up hearing that it was Yoko using John as her proxy.
People say it because he was the first to release a solo album.
John released Unfinished Music 1 and 2 and the Wedding Album before Paul released his first solo record. Paul was the first one to publicly hint at a breakup in his “self interview” in 1970:Q: “Do you foresee a time when Lennon-McCartney becomes an active songwriting partnership again?”PAUL: “No.”Even though for the three questions beforehand Paul leaves the door open for it being “just a rest” the press latched on to the last one as Paul breaking up the Beatles.
You’re right about all that, of course (George did that electronic music album on Zapple Records, too.) But I meant it was the first record that was overtly presented as a break away from the Beatles, regardless of him not very believably hedging his bets with the whole “just a rest” routine.
It was essentially the first solo record anyone bought, so I got your meaning.
It was a pretty widespread opinion in the early 70’s. Rolling Stone basically panned his first few albums (including the absolutely brilliant Ram) because he pulled the plug on the Greatest Band Ever and they couldn’t get over it.
This isn’t really that shocking, McCartney discussed this on Stern years ago, and probably several times before then.
That being said, I still think the Beatles didn’t have that long of a shelf-life. Let it Be is known to have been a somewhat disastrous recording session. Starr had left at one point, McCartney and Lennon simply did not get along, and Harrison had come into his own as a song-writer at that point.
I think the talent in the band was ready to go separate ways, and I think if they had been a little less intense about their methods, and taken breaks, they would have lasted a while longer, but that wasn’t the case.
It will be interesting seeing the Get Back documentary as it, apparently, casts light onto the Let It Be sessions that it was actually a positive experience. The narrative has historically always told the tale that the band was largely at odds during those sessions.Having said that, the Abbey Road recording sessions actually followed weeks after Let It Be and any tension from the previous sessions probably came to a boil at this point. Maxwell Silver’s Hammer taking a “million” takes to complete, John & Yoko recovering from a car accident with John barely taking part in a number of sessions, and Paul arguing with John over Yoko’s constant presence in the studio when they were there, etc.
Was there any doubt about this?
Wait I thought we as a society agreed to blame this on a woman since that’s what we’re good at
For years, music fans and popular culture have told that Yoko Ono broke up The Beatles. Are you saying that was just a myth!? Oh no! How will I go on!?[/sarcasm]
Feels like the band had run its course by that point, honestly. They’d stopped touring in ‘66 and had been focusing on studio work, a lot of which was fairly experimental. The Beatles became more of a brand than an actual band. They collaborated, sure, but each member also became more enamored with doing their own thing within that arrangement. The next logical step was for each of them to strike out on their own.
Oh, Paul McCartney is a boring old biddy!
You’re more animal than man!
Been at the blackberry schnapps again, I see.
He has been ever since he died in the late 60’s. Perhaps his replacement was in actuality Maggie Smith
As someone who basically worships the Beatles’ catalog but who recognizes how absolutely toxic the personal dynamics became, I’m glad we’ve mostly moved beyond “blame Yoko” nonsense. Read any honest Beatles biography and you come away with the impression that Lennon/McCartney was always a time bomb, even before they were famous.
Blaming Yoko is absolutely absurd. Like, even if you were to contend that John broke the “Beatle code” by inviting Yoko in on every single Beatle session from ‘68 on. . . that was John. John fucking broke the code, not Yoko.
Ah so Paul read John Lennon’s 1970 interview with Rolling Stone. Cool cool
Genius is pain!
Great- now I’m going to have “Magical Misery Tour” running through my head all day.
I still blame Yoko
Tell people you’re a misogynistic racist without saying it
deep yawn in your direction
I don’t believe Yoko broke them up, but is he not allowed to have that opinion because she’s a Japanese woman?? Is there some sort of law of physics that says it’s impossible for a Japanese woman to break up a rock band?
Of course not and that’s a ridiculous stretch to make from what I said. We’re talking about the Beatles and Yoko Ono specifically in a thread about a member of the Beatles describing what broke up the Beatles and this person still insists it’s probably one of their girlfriends that did it. It’s at least misogynistic and probably there’s a smidge of racism in there, too.
It’s still silly. Yoko was certainly there, and she was certainly a part of the “this is all going to fall apart” mix. It’s like saying you’re anti-Semitic if you think Allen Klein was responsible, and, depending how you want to look at it, he sure as shit could have been.
No, but a lot of the stuff that comes out is always that somehow she was uniquely responsible. On top of that — certainly contemporaneously – there was some side-eyeing because, unlike the usual pattern, Yoko was a bit older than John was. (The reaction to Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher was not dissimilar in that, so some things seem pretty constant I guess). You can add that Ono was a pretty well-known artist in her own right, and ran into a lot of flak there too, whatever one thinks of her art (and whilst I am no great fan of it, I recognize that I’m not the hugest follower of her particular brand of art to begin with, I am not super into Damien Hirst either).
So the complaints about Ono are connected to a lot of pretty ugly stuff about the “proper” place of women w/r/t men, and male artists. She isn’t the only one to hit that, lord knows, but she’s probably the best-known.
It’s like when people complain about the role of international capital and use George Soros as a shorthand for that. Saying that the free movement of capital can be bad isn’t anti-Semitic, but focusing on the possible role George Soros and the Rothschilds have in some secret cabal is.
Is there a reason for that? I mean, it’s not like Yoko cared one way or the other, by all accounts, and we have a lot of evidence that John and Paul at the very least were on their way out if for no other reason than being sick of each other. One could just as well blame Linda Eastman, no?
(I’m assuming your comment isn’t being sarcastic/ facetious).
The narrative is that the Beatles were this close group of young lads, then the Woman shows up and manipulates him away from the gang with her vaginey ways. Which almost nobody who was there claims was the case. They all were at each others throats regardless. Yoko didn’t tell John to ignore George’s growing output. Yoko didn’t tell George to fuck Ringo’s wife. Yoko didn’t tell Ringo to drink 24/7
And she didn’t tell Paul to write “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” although it would have been a brilliant move on her part if she had.
Paul always gets penciled in as a vanilla granny but he writes songs about violent murder with such wholesome glee. John’s Run for Your Life came off as 100 percent serious.
That song honestly creeps me out pretty bad
My dad was hardly a feminist or cultural critic, but it even creeped him out.
both were sarcastic/facetious. Though I would say that someone can find Yoko pretentious without being a racist or a misogynist.Frankly I don’t give enough of a shit about the Beatles either way. Lennon was a woman beater to boot, so them breaking up is even less of a thing to be upset about
Yeah, I’ll defend Yoko the human being while not ever recommending listening to Kiss Kiss Kiss and hearing Yoko’s OhhOhhs
They broke up!?
Hm. I think a lot of people here — someone correct me if I am wrong — can agree on a few things:
— The Beatles had been together in each others’ hair for 15 years. They were working a LOT. They were doping a bit more than an album a year, which is just a staggering output. Plus tours, at least until what, 1967? Any one of them by that point should have been near collapse, and it kind of amazes me to this day that any of them managed to walk from their beds to the door every morning by the time of Let It Be, or that none of them dropped dead of a stroke. I’d want to get out too — or at least get a break — in that situation.
— There’s some videos showing George, Paul and John getting irritated with each other during the Let It Be (I think? Might have been Abbey Road) sessions. That’s more evidence, IMO, that everyone wanted out, or at least was getting tired of things.
— Most people in creative work – musicians, artists, whatever — don’t want to do the same thing forever. I could see any of the Beatles wanting to do something else just out of boredom. They were all pretty young guys, after all. Ringo and George probably wanted to expand their musical repertoires, at the very least. And McCartney, I think it was, famously said that your music is going to change as you age (I believe he said that you aren’t going to sing teen songs at past twenty because you aren’t a teen anymore, or something like it).
— In some respects, breaking up the Beatles was the best thing for Paul, for sure, and even George. Maybe especially George.
— John had a ton of stuff going on and he and Paul have rather different visions for what they wanted to make. That’s normal — and they couldn’t work it out. We haven’t even touched yet the various personality problems they both had, and the personal problems, and trying to figure out how to collaborate with these two very dissimilar sets of ideas.
I mean, this seems to be about the size of it, judging from what we know now, history-wise, and what Paul has said over the years.
I thought everyone knew this, or at least every Beatle fan. Hardly news. It’s been well documented for years that Lennon walked into Apple in September 1969 and said “I want a divorce” to the band. The only reason it was kept quite at the time was because of all the business negotiations going on at the time with Klein, such as the attempted acquisition of NEMS, the attempt to buy Northern Songs and a new improved contract with EMI, which would have been scuppered if EMI were to realize the band were over.
He’s been saying this for years.
Did you guys know Billie Jean wasn’t about one specific woman?
To me, the really amazing thing is that after all this time and all of these replies, no one has yet pointed out that Let It Be was not the Beatles’ final album. The “Get Back” sessions, music from which was eventually released as Let It Be, took place in January and February 1969 with some work in April on the songs that would be released as singles. The sessions that led to the Abbey Road took place in February, April, July, and August 1969, i.e. the Beatles’ final album was in fact Abbey Road. In fact, in The Beatles Anthology documentary, Ringo Starr mentions in an interview that they got together to make Abbey Road with the realization that this would be their last album together.
Eh, I think most of us know that. What seems to be important for this article is the timing of their last released album, Let It Be, with regards to when McCartney announced his split from the band.
Abbey Road serves as a much better finale to the Beatles, that whole ending medley and a song literally called The End where they all do solos (I think the only time Ringo got a drum solo too)
I have no idea why news outlets are reporting this. John Lennon told this story in 1971. Paul and Alan Klein talked him out of announcing it because they were in the midst of renegotiating various deals and didn’t want to screw it up. Fast forward to when Paul released an album and announced he was leaving as a way to gin up publicity.
But John left first and this is has been known for 50 years.