Yoko Ono appears to agree with article about Yoko Ono not being responsible for The Beatles’ breakup
Ono retweeted an article about how footage from Get Back refutes the old rumor
TV News Yoko Ono
Though she appears in the majority of the studio footage that makes up Peter Jackson’s three-part Get Back documentary, Yoko Ono doesn’t play a major role in the actual events captured in the series—namely, The Beatles’ breakup. In fact, Ono mostly just sits around sewing, reading Beatles books and newspapers, or, from time to time, joining in on exhausted noise rock jams once work on the songs that will be included on Let It Be and Abbey Road has petered out.
On Saturday—the same date the second episode of Get Back was released—Ono retweeted an article from Uproxx about how many viewers have noticed the same thing.
The article collects tweets and comments remarking on how Ono, long blamed as being responsible for The Beatles’ breakup, is shown to have far less to do with the band dissolving than old rumors suggest. Uproxx collects tweets highlighting how uninvolved she is with the songwriting process and points to an interview with Peter Jackson in which he calls Ono “a very benign presence [who] doesn’t interfere in the slightest.”
Watching Get Back, it becomes pretty clear that much of the supposed animosity the group held toward each other has been exaggerated in hindsight. John and George don’t get into a fistfight. Nobody really yells at one another. Even George’s temporary exit from the sessions goes unnoticed at first.
Instead, The Beatles are shown to be a group of collaborators who are simply growing apart and tired of working with one another while looking forward to pursuing other projects. Ono isn’t shown to involve herself with any of their disagreements.
As Alex McLevy notes in our review, “the sexist narrative of Yoko Ono breaking up the group is quickly dismantled; she’s by Lennon’s side throughout, but it quickly becomes apparent that [The Beatles’] long-simmering fissures have little to do with the fact that, as McCartney spoofs it at one point, ‘Yoko sat on an amp.’”
The Beatles: Get Back is available now on Disney Plus.
190 Comments
Avant-musician-artist and Beatle widow, Yoko Ono, is catching heat from the AV Club for appearing in blackface!
Deep in thought about all of those secret bathroom tapes he was going to make in the 80s.
Yes let’s rehash this story again and see if we can squeeze anymore juice out of it.
It’s in the Top 5 of my list of tedious pop-culture debates that need to just die. Any discussion of King, Kubrick, & The Shining adaptation is up there too.
tedious pop-culture debates that need to just die.
The AV Club
let’s rehash this story againThe AV Club
Not quite pop culture, but can we put Kubrick and the moon landing on that list?
A rat done bit my sister Nell, and Kubrick’s on the moon!
Hey guys, what do you all think of the Star Wars prequels?
can you please put that in slideshow format so I can understand it better?
I’m sure the sexist trolls that frequent these comments will surely learn their lesson and stop shitting on Yoko because four white men should have no reason to not be best buds for life. oh no, too late.
If you scroll up, there’s plenty of idiots wanting to drink those juice dregs.
let’s rehash this band again and see if we can squeeze anymore juice out of it.
By all means, keep giving them clicks and comments to show your displeasure
Eh…Paul says if John had to pick between the Beatles and Yoko, he was choosing Yoko. I believe that to be true. And who sits between John and Paul while they’re creating history and READS A NEWSPAPER?! I don’t understand that.
But what’s been illuminating to me through 1.5 of the episodes so far, is how George was kind of a passive aggressive third wheel. It’s not his fault he had the best pop songwriting duo of all time in his band but c’mon. He was a creative, talented cat but man, he didn’t come off all that well imho. Again, I’m halfway through episode 2, maybe things change. But John seems to be in the middle with Paul being “forced” into the quarterback role with Epstein no longer on the planet. And I’m sure Paul and John didn’t treat George the way he wanted to be/deserved to be but in episode 1, I really felt like Paul was trying to keep George happy and George was having none of it. When Paul McCartney has an idea for a guitar part on one of his songs, you listen to Paul. Paul should be nice about it and in episode 1, I thought he was. He probably wasn’t prior to that which may be where things started to go wrong.
But it’s Paul McCartney. And John Lennon. Ringo understood his place in the band but George didn’t unfortunately.
I haven’t watched this yet, but does anyone else in the band bring someoneelse into the studio? I’ve never bought into the Yoko narrative but if she was the only non Beatle in the room, I’d be a bit pissed too
Linda McCartney was around too and had some cool scenes with Yoko.
She isn’t. The whole room is filled with non-Beatles and Paul brings Linda around (often just as prominently)
Paul brings Linda once or twice and they show Ringo’s girlfriend/wife once (I’m only halfway through) but they don’t insert themselves the way Yoko does/the way John wants her there. Yoko was literally sitting between John and Paul, with John and Paul being about 15 feet away from each other, as they’re writing/practicing. Linda is shown when they’re not playing, almost like she dropped Paul off and was going back out (I made that up, but that’s what it felt like)
I’ve been in a lot of bands and in my experience, everyone brings their girlfriend to a practice at least once. You want to impress them so it’s understandable. But a practice session is work but it’s fun. Recording is a completely different thing because it’s expensive and you’re trying to work fast. It’s not a party where people goof off for hours unless you’ve got a record company with big budgets or you’re the Beatles with no budget!
I had a singer once who brought his girlfriend to practice(s) and she would make suggestions that weren’t asked for and she was immediately given the nickname “Yoko”. The suggestions stopped.
Based on your comments, I’m guessing *you’re* the one that gave her that nickname.
Actually, I didn’t. See what happens when you assume? You make an ass of you, and you alone.
Assyouyou?
Yeah that story does not make you look as cool as you think it does
It was like 30 years ago. It was funny then, now…not so much. Just like I was cool then, now…not so much.
You’re cool, Big Salad. You’re cool.
You weren’t, though
Also, there have been assertions that Yoko was “forced” to be there by John. Which very well may be true and if true, not a good look on John. But I’m just going on what I saw. I didn’t see her giving any Tik Tok hand signals that she was there against her will.And honestly, based on the first episode, it was George that broke up the Beatles as much as anyone else.
They all had…interesting entourage dynamics going on. Paul had Linda and her family eventually start to meddle in their legal/business affairsJohn had a clear codependence on YokoGeorge had hare krishnas just hanging out and staring at everyoneRingo was cool, always on time. Though he clearly was a roadblock to the Libya idea
I would’ve voted for the Libya/torches suggestion for sure!I’ve always loved Ringo and this doc just makes me love him more.
The Libya thing is one of my favorite running threads. The poor guy just wants to go to this cool amphitheatre he found!In a spooky coincidence, that amphitheatre somehow became the lock screen on my work computer.
Weird! Paul must be sending messages from beyond the grave! There’s some serious Office vibes from some of the people in the documentary
You forget that Ringo, the whole time, was just trying to help the trains run on time so that they could indeed finish this project right before he began filming his first starring movie role at Twickenham, in “The Magic Christian” – which was the entire reason for the time crunch in the first place.
All good drummers are always on time.
Honestly, I don’t think she was forced to be there by John but also didn’t particularly want to be there. It’s like when I went to Bath and Body Works with my fiance on the weekend. I, by no means, wanted to be there. But I was because she asked me to and wanted to show me what “Winter Snow” smelled like. I identified strongly with Yoko sorting the mail at that moment. We were both bored in places we did not want to be but someone we loved asked us so we indulged them.Besides, even if you’re in the presence of the Beatles as they write and record new music, at a certain point being there every day with nothing to do and not much you can contribute it’s going to be a bit dull. The documentary is fascinating but remember that’s a bunch of highlights whittled down. Imagine being there for 8 hours and just sitting on a chair.
I’ve always wondered why Yoko went along with that. Did she never say “John, I don’t want to hang out with your band. It’s really boring and I don’t think those guys like me! How about you rehearse, I’ll go shopping or work on my weird “art” or something; we’ll hang out later!”
“Yoko was literally sitting between John and Paul”You keep bringing this up as if it means something. It doesn’t.
Linda is there a lot. So is Maureen Starkey (Ringo’s then wife). They are admittedly not sitting in the middle of it, but there are plenty of inserts that show at least once it moved to Apple they were hanging out.At one point, Heather McCartney is running around like crazy and I would have quit the band much faster for that than Yoko lolI’d just argue that John’s the one that allowed that whole thing to be happening.
Wait do you mean Linda? He married Heather years later, and she….couldn’t exactly run…Edit-OH the daughter
Wait do you mean Linda? He married Heather years later, and she….couldn’t exactly run…
The weird thing to me is how Yoko looking bored/reading/sewing almost seems like its own performance. She’s almost TOO still. There are candid moments captures where she’s just chatting amicably with Linda, gesticulating and laughing. It seemed like when she knew she was on camera, she didn’t want to stand out at all, except for the noise freakout jams.
Honestly, she was probably uncomfortable as shit and probably didn’t want to be there except that John wanted her to.
But were you doing it in Dobly?
way to put your feelings in someone else’s mouth and then use a sexist remark to make someone feel bad for trying to help. you seem like a great person to shed insight on this matter.
I had a singer who when he started seeing his girlfriend (now wife) HE called her Yoko. He didn’t bring her to rehearsal, thank goodness.
I think the reasons we care about Yoko more than Linda is the extent of Yoko’s involvement with John’s projects post-Beatles. Linda was also involved with Paul’s projects but not in the avant-garde way or to the extent Yoko was. We resent Yoko for dragging John into nude album covers and primal scream therapy. We resent her for leveraging John’s fame to advance her own artistic ideas. Of course, that’s completely unfair to Yoko because John’s an adult, their post-Beatle projects seem to have come from both of them (and not just Yoko or something) and, of course, Yoko suffered from her association with John in lots of ways. But there’s probably also some sexism and racism added to the mix that makes us put it all on Yoko.
Linda was definitely involved in Paul’s projects to the same extent – she was in Wings and had title credit on Ram. She was a lot less visible, however, and didn’t get the spotlight as much – and while Yoko’s music is gaining appreciation it’s definitely not as mainstream as John’s, so you were going to get a lot of backlash when they’re placed one after the other.
“Here’s a story about me and my buds bullying a woman until she shut up”
You’re wrong. I’m a feminist. I treat women the way I would treat men. She was not a nice person. Her boyfriend/singer got the nickname Rick the Dick. So if you want to call me a bully…please be my guest. But she deserved it and so did he. Sometimes there are consequences to actions.
Maybe add that to your story next time bc it certainly came across as “can you believe this broad had the audacity to speak at our rehearsals?”
Still thinks it’s funny his band called one of their gf’s Yoko thirty years ago and is furious that Yoko Ono read a newspaper for part of the time she was there but you’re totally a feminist!
It can be two things.
…yeah “I applied a sexist stereotype about Yoko to another woman” not really the great argument you think it is. The Beatles broke up because The Beatles wanted to break up. With or without Yoko, the band was done.
I had a singer once who brought his girlfriend to practice(s) and she would make suggestions that weren’t asked for and she was immediately given the nickname “Yoko”. The suggestions stopped.The irony is, Yoko, at least in the 8+ hours of footage presented, never made suggestions that weren’t asked for. Hell, she never disrupted the band, only engaging with folks when the band was taking a break.
Yoko didn’t insert herself into anything. She’s just sitting there.
There are people all over (the nature of the project is they’re writing/recording with the intent of performing live while a documentary crew films, so there’s a lot of buzzing around them in the background), but Yoko is notably part of the circle; while there are often people sitting in with the Fab Four for parts of sessions, Yoko is, like, always right there.Honestly, what I found most annoying was how little Yoko is doing, yet John insists on her being there. They’re sitting there trying to figure out “Don’t Let Me Down,” and she’s shuffling papers, which somehow is worse to me than trying to float ideas. I like Yoko and chafe at the narrative that she inserted herself into the Beatles’ creative dynamic and acted as an emotional wedge between them, but if my coworker/collaborator insisted on having their partner just sitting in on all our meetings, I’d be severely irritated.
She can’t be more than a few feet away from him for very long or the mind control starts wearing off.
Yes, John really had her under his thumb, didn’t he?
That’s because he couldn’t get no satisfaction
Did he try, and try, and try try try try try try?
i was under the impression that lennon was extremely controlling. to the point where she wasn’t allowed to be anywhere by herself (including the bathroom).
That’s my understanding as well. I think Yoko’s asserted that he was not physically abusive with her as he was with other partners, but I think we know there’s a lot that can happen that is still suspicious or even outright abusive without involving a person raising a hand.
I’m kind of annoyed by “how could she possibly have been forced to be there if she’s placidly knitting and fussing with paperwork” when it’s totally possible she has no viable option that she knows of because of the dynamic. Given all we know about Lennon’s personality it’s far more plausible – although not guaranteed – that indeed, she was there because she wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything without his say-so.
It’s been fascinating to watch really hardcore fans who hate Yoko consistently moving goalposts. Years ago it was all about how she interfered with the band and wouldn’t leave them alone and ruined the dynamic. Now it’s “how dare she knit while genius is taking place.”
I concede that it would be wholly annoying to have a coworker/friend’s partner consistently around when we’re working on something, but I feel like Paul really can’t make it clearer that it really wasn’t Yoko.
Yeah, that’s the bigger thing: I have more of a problem with John Lennon using his wife as a totemic work muse (probably in a way that she was mostly tolerating rather than embracing) than with the fact that a performance artist has little to add to a music rehearsal for a band she doesn’t play in.
You know the last time your significant other dragged you to a work party, and you didn’t really feel like talking to any of these weird people they work with, because the only thing you have in common with any of them is merely knowing your significant other? That’s the energy I was getting off Yoko: some big fat “finding something to do with my hands while being bored at my husband’s work” energy.
Also: Good lord that “singing” Yoko does. Fucking hell, I can’t believe someone didn’t brain her with one of those hammers laying around.
You’re a gross person
Linda Eastman was there some; though it was in an official capacity as a photographer, it’s pretty obvious she & Paul are a thing.
I heard George brought in two random hare krishna dudes he claimed were “friends” who just sat on the floor and stared the whole time.
Those dudes were WAY more distracting than Yoko could ever have been. They looked totally more capable of pulling off some Manson-like slaughter of the band than Yoko and her knitting needles
She certainly seems to be there the most, but Linda McCartney is there consistently as is her daughter for a pretty long stretch. Maureen Starkey is in and out throughout everything. Paul McCartney’s brother comes by for a while. George Harrison has random Hare Krishna buddies hanging out. There are a lot of people milling around.
Ok, who was the hottest Beatle wife? I gotta go with Pattie Harrison. If it was Beatle girlfriend, it’s Jane Asher.
I’m sure Yoko constantly sitting there for no reason didn’t help matters, even if (as it appears in the footage that was used, anyway) she never said a damn thing to anybody. I’ll bet, though, that she was just a tad bit more of a problem during “Abbey Road,” when John planted her in the studio in a hospital bed after her miscarriage and gave her a microphone! I’m not saying she broke up the Beatles. I’ve never thought that. But I think it’s total bullshit if people say she didn’t help the breakup along. It seems likely that John wanted her sitting there for exactly that reason. He always said he wanted to quit after “Help,” but didn’t have the guts to do it.
You’re blaming her for Lennon’s bullshit, creep
Oh, you caught me! (You having a joyless holiday season?)
‘You’re sure’ about something you had nothing to do with, in any manner. ‘You’ll bet’ about something you have no inkling of estimating.‘You’re not saying’ she broke up the Beatles, ‘but’. Again: supposing stuff you know nothing about.‘It seems likely’, as your uninformed, disingenuous yet opinionated self will confirm? Dear God, you’re an annoying wise-ass.
The band’s begun to fall apart, and Epstein’s on the moon,
John’s on drugs ‘n concept art, and Epstein’s on the moon,
Someone donated a bootleg DVD of Let It Be to the library a couple years back, which I watched. I came to the conclusion that the break up ultimately came down to Paul desperately wanting to go back on stage and George equally strongly wanting not to. I’ve only seen the first part of Get Back, but it didn’t dispel that belief. Whatever else was going on, I don’t think they could have solved that and made both happy.
This is just my observation from years of superfan research but I think George was the most traumatized by the touring and the ‘mania’.
I would agree. I’m not saying he was wrong to be unwilling to budge on not touring. Finding bullet holes in your plane is enough to put most of us off it for life.
“And who sits between John and Paul while they’re creating history and READS A NEWSPAPER?! I don’t understand that.”Some people just wanna eat the sausage and not see how it’s made.
To them it was a job, not world-changing magic. It was a passion of course, but they always considered themselves normal blokes who got caught up in a giant shitstorm of popularity
Ringo understood his place in the band but George didn’t unfortunately.
Some historical context is helpful here: George had been in Woodstock hanging out with Dylan and The Band for several months prior to the Twickenham sessions. In Woodstock he was surrounded by this songwriting collective—everyone writing and jamming together and creating music without worrying about who was bringing the idea to the table (to The Band’s later demise), which must’ve been amazing in the moment. On top of that, everywhere he went back then, George was treated like a BEATLE—except when he was around John and Paul, who treated him like their kid brother.
That said—the very polite argument between George and Paul in Part One is so painful to watch because they’re both right in their opinion but wrong in their approach to one another.
Very well put…“they’re both right in their opinion but wrong in their approach to one another.”
the very polite argument between George and Paul in Part One is so painful to watch because they’re both right in their opinion but wrong in their approach to one another.This sounds like my friends group right now. We’re all right about our frustrations with each other, but good luck getting a bunch of 29 year old’s to approach sensitive topics correctly.
Robbie Robertson wrote all the songs.
Found Robbie Robertson’s account.
George is also a fucking EXCELLENT guitar player. I know McCartney was just trying to communicate what he wanted from the guitar for that song, and he wasn’t being a dick about it or anything like that. but if I put myself in George’s shoes I would have found Paul to be extremely irritating right then.
There’s plenty of slight weirdness about the Yoko-John co-dependency. But blaming that whole situation on just Yoko Ono seems to be more about making John a saint than anything else. He brought her there. He insisted on her being there. It’s a symptom of the bigger problems they already had rather than the cause. McCartney has suggested that his biggest problems with Yoko Ono came after John died and not before. They probably would have kept putting up with her if she was the only issue.
And John is far from a saint, we all know most of what he did to Cynthia and Julian, but even Yoko had to deal with his heroin addiction and “year off” from her with another woman.
She was on the stuff as well; and didn’t Yoko herself not only suggest the separation but also suggest John “spend time” with May Pang? Now, I haven’t read up on this particular bit of Beatle lore in a while.
And John is far from a saint, we all know most of what he did to Cynthia and Julian, but even Yoko had to deal with his heroin addiction and “year off” from her with another woman.By the time they were in the studio for the Get Back sessions, Lennon was already a hardcore junkie, and I’m sure that contributed to the demise of The Beatles (especially given how it had already caused problems during the white album sessions).
yoko hanging around does seem a bit peculiar, but i also was getting the vibe that her presence wasn’t a cause of the breakup, but just another indication of its inevitability.
All 4 of them were beginning families so that would always make things different, their priorities would naturally be stretched thin. Also George fucked Ringo’s wfe eventually.
I think your summation of George and Paul’s relationship is ignoring the context that the film aims to provide, and which I’m not really sure how you missed. Paul isn’t “THE Paul McCartney” to George, he’s his peer and they’ve been friends and bandmates since they were teenagers. George doesn’t have the sort of reverence for Paul that you, I or any other fan would have, nor should he. It’s also pretty clear from George’s reaction to Paul’s direction that they’re relationship is a lot more complex than you’re making it out to be and that it’s a culmination of over a decade of shared experiences as the biggest band in the history of the world. You mention that you’ve played in bands so it’s odd that you don’t seem to recognize the very obvious creative dynamic of this group. The writer of the article actually sums it up pretty succinctly. This was “a group of collaborators who are simply growing apart and tired of working with one another while looking forward to pursuing other projects”. As far as Yoko, it’s likely that she’s gotten a bad wrap in the years following the Beatles’ dissolution, but this film doesn’t really provide any definitive evidence one way or the other. While the film shows her to be a “benign presence” in these interactions, Paul makes it pretty clear that he thinks her constant presence, benign though it may be, is impacting his creative relationship with John. But we’re not getting any insight into what their relationship was like before John met her. Ultimately I think it’s unfortunate that a lot of people seem to be latching onto this film to validate whatever preconceptions they’ve already had about every person involved. What I’ve enjoyed about it is getting an intimate look into the creative process for two of popular music’s most beloved and seminal albums.
I think you underestimate how boring it is to be forced to watch your boyfriend’s band rehearse.
In the bands that I’ve been in, I never understood why people would just sit there during our practices. So I’m right there with ya.
And who sits between John and Paul while they’re creating history and READS A NEWSPAPER?! I don’t understand that.Anyone who has ever been subjected to 4 dudes jamming knows exactly how she feels.
These comments have just solidified that there was literally nothing Yoko could do without eventually pissing off some Beatles fans.
She just sits there and reads a newspaper? How dare she!
But also a commenter’s friends girlfriend who came to sessions and tried to contribute was nicknamed “Yoko”, so she’d better not do that either.
Paul definitely seemed the most interested in keeping the Beatles together (as did Ringo, but Paul had more to lose). He knew John would choose Yoko, but that really wasn’t such a shocking thing to say. Surely he would’ve picked Linda too, over the Beatles?
That candid, flower-pot mic convo was great and the kind of thing I am so glad was captured, where Paul and John are basically agreeing that they treated George poorly, and how they both sort of resent each other’s roles in the band. That part where John tells Paul that he’s basically scared to disagree with him and uses George as kind of a shield/trojan horse to deliver his disagreements was kind of stunning.
Another thing to remember is that George Harrison is 25 years old at this point in 1969. Anyone who’s been in a band has probably quit a band before they were 25. John and Paul both being older, they probably saw him more as a little brother both personally and musically, so it’s not surprising that they’d minimize him, hurtfully at times, without really realizing it.
The parts of this doc (i’ve also only watched 1.5 eps) that I like the most so far is just when John and Paul are just fully engaged and grooving and not clashing egos. It was sort of surprising to me at one point when John said he didn’t want to sing or really do anything but play guitar along with Paul’s song. Just seeing what a goofball John was a lot of the time reminds me that he wasn’t always the kind of serious, dour guy he kind of gained a reputation for later/post-Beatles years.
I think Yoko was the artistic direction John was headed in too so saying he’d choose her over his band doesn’t seem surprising. He produced a lot of good and interesting work in his solo stuff with her
That was my biggest takeaway is how much more I liked John Lennon (as a person) than I ever thought I would. He was such a goofball.
Something I hadn’t considered while watching, but have since read/heard about that sort of colors my viewing now is the fact that at least parts of his goofball-ness can probably be attributed to his getting into heroin around that time.
Oh. That kind of bums me out but at least I don’t have to feel as weird about being charmed by a violent, abusive pos
And who sits between John and Paul while they’re creating history and READS A NEWSPAPER?!Me, if John Lennon or Paul McCartney was my boyfriend.That people think this is weird is depressing. I’ve always worked from home, but over the pandemic my wife started working from home, too, and it’s been fantastic to be in the same room together, even if we were doing/focused on different things.Anyone who thinks it’s weird for someone to want to be around their true love if their situation allows is insane. It’s also quite sexist, as if “John from the Beatles” was the real John Lennon and how dare any part of his homelife even interact with it.
Paul says if John had to pick between the Beatles and Yoko
Why should he have to pick? That always seemed like more of a Paul problem than a John problem to me.
I agree – I understand George’s frustration at not getting more songs in, but I think he could have understood and been happy with his established role, as lead guitarist and *occassional* singer/ songwriter, in the most successful band around. It just would have been unreasonable and unrealistic for him to expect to suddenly get half the album or more. It just wasn’t what the group was, or what the public would have wanted. Musicians have different roles in different projects, and as he brings up himself, solo albums would have (and soon were) been the place to put more of his songs out with more of his own choices in arrangemnt and recording.Paul, I’ve come to think, was in a really tough place, in between his love of the group and not wanting it to end, and on the other hand, given his development and stature as a hit songwriter, his very reasonably wanting to have final say on the arrangements of his own songs (and which of them to record, and how many rehearsals or takes were needed to get them the way he wanted them) without having to tiptoe around anybody else’s ego or listen to their complaints. We know Paul was very distraught when the group ended and went through a period of skein and alcohol abuse, but in the end, they did him a favor by freeing him to work the way he now wanted to…. and always has since then (for better or worse) – as an artist and leader employing sidemen to help realize his musical visions (and ongoing desire to perform live, which J&G were also standing in the way of)
Paul, I’ve come to think, was in a really tough place, in between his love of the group and not wanting it to end, and on the other hand, given his development and stature as a hit songwriter, his very reasonably wanting to have final say on the arrangements of his own songs (and which of them to record, and how many rehearsals or takes were needed to get them the way he wanted them) without having to tiptoe around anybody else’s ego or listen to their complaints. The thing is- if you’re in a band, you need to compromise. The moment you bring a song into the band, it stops being only ‘yours’ and becomes the bands song. It’s meant to be a collaboration where the other members get their input in the arrangements.
If you don’t want that type of input and don’t want to work on group consensus, that’s when you go for solo projects and bring in session musicians. If Paul didn’t want the others input on a song, he should’ve saved that song for a solo project.
I think George could’ve broken off to do a solo career in addition to the Beatles if they weren’t in such high demand and taking up all his time. The Beatles did Yellow Submarine (also a movie), Let it Be and Abbey Road all in 1 year, preceded by a double album in 1968, preceded by an ambitious Sgt. Peppers and an album/movie for magical mystery tour in 1967. Not sure if hiatus was a word used back then, but they needed a 2 year break to do their own things.
Paul says if John had to pick between the Beatles and Yoko, he was choosing Yoko. I believe that to be true.Then John broke up the Beatles.
And who sits between John and Paul while they’re creating history and READS A NEWSPAPER?!Maybe one of the world’s most well-regarded conceptual artists, hanging out with her boyfriend who’s in a pop band? But what’s been illuminating to me through 1.5 of the episodes so far, is how George was kind of a passive aggressive third wheel. It’s not his fault he had the best pop songwriting duo of all time in his band but c’mon.He’d been in the band for 11 years by this point, and had been allowed to contribute, on average, fewer than two songs per album up to that point. By 1969, he was writing songs that would end up on All Things Must Pass, arguably the best solo record ever released by any member of the beatles.
John seems to be in the middle with Paul being “forced” into the quarterback role with Epstein no longer on the planet.I definitely feel for John on this point, having been on both sides of this dynamic in multiple bands, but I’d describe John in Get Back as less “in the middle” than “passively ragdolling, hoping that someone else says what he can’t be bothered to say.”
And I’m sure Paul and John didn’t treat George the way he wanted to be/deserved to be but in episode 1, I really felt like Paul was trying to keep George happy and George was having none of it.As Ringo, Paul, and probably others say in the show we’re talking about, the previous 18 (really only 15) months since Epstein’s death, the band dynamic had been off. Ringo says “grumpy,” and Paul says “negative,” but you’re not seeing a sudden switch in George’s dynamic here. He’s been chaffing under the creative limitations of the Lennon/McCartney juggernaut for at least 5 of the previous 11 years, with tensions escalating as his ambitions grew and Paul found himself stepping into a leadership role within the band. This is just their breaking point.
When Paul McCartney has an idea for a guitar part on one of his songs, you listen to Paul. Paul should be nice about it and in episode 1, I thought he was. He probably wasn’t prior to that which may be where things started to go wrong.Absolutely fuck this take. He wasn’t in Paul’s band, they were in the Beatles, together. George Harrison is as accomplished a songwriter and instrumentalist as Paul McCartney, and being forced to defer to Paul’s creative whims time after time must have been infuriating.
But it’s Paul McCartney. And John Lennon. Ringo understood his place in the band but George didn’t unfortunately.“Ringo understood his place in the band” is a funny way of saying “Ringo was obviously profoundly depressed.” He was the most seasoned live musician at the beginning of the band, and for the previous three years, he’d found himself was stuck in a studio-only, where his contributions were essentially “play drums (sometimes) and fuck off otherwise.” He was in a band with his four best friends where he was constantly outmatched creatively, where he was forced to watch the excruciating dissolution of what he had to know was the best thing he’d ever have in his life.
And, again, if you think that George should have “understood his place,” I’d encourage you to give All Things Must Pass a listen, and maybe consider that he was the first AND last solo Beatle to have a number 1 hit. The failure here was that Lennon and McCartney didn’t realize what his place could have been instead of what it was. That they rejected songs like “Something” and “All Things Must Pass” in favor of trying to return to old chestnuts they’d written before he joined the band must’ve been fucking infuriating.
I didn’t say he was in Paul’s band…it’s Paul’s song. And he knows what he wants because he’s a musical genius. And no, as talented as George Harrison was…he was not as accomplished a songwriter and instrumentalist as Paul McCartney. C’mon.And I love Ringo precisely because he knew his place. Everyone in a band/sports team/creative venture needs to know their role. Not everyone can be the star. He had his moment to shine just as much as any of the other 3 and because of that, he seems to be the most genuinely happy of all 4.
It’s Paul’s song, but George is the lead guitar player, and the bass player dictating parts to the guitar player all the time fucking sucks. There’s a time and a place for it, and sometimes it works out, but man, for someone who advocated working songs out in their simplest form first, then adorning them with musical flourishes, Paul sure was just constantly shitting his ideas all over everyone else’s songs. as talented as George Harrison was…he was not as accomplished a songwriter and instrumentalist as Paul McCartney. C’mon.Don’t get me wrong, I’m a “Paul guy,” but no, in 1969, George was as good as anyone in the game. Compare McCartney (or even Ram) to All Things Must Pass. No contest.
the bass player dictating parts to the guitar player all the time fucking sucks. Are you David Gilmour?
Nah, just a guy that’s been playing bass in bands with guitar players for 28 years
Let us not forget why Paul was the bass player….
Ram is better than All Things Must Pass
I agree with you there. Creep.
You can say that you prefer Ram to All Things Must Pass, but the latter was more successful both critically and commercially. In as much as any work of art can be “better” than any other, All Things Must Pass is objectively better than Ram.
It always blows me away when grown adults haven’t grasped the basics of objectivity vs subjectivity. Marvel movies are more commercially and critically successful than most or all of David Lynch’s work. So Marvel movies must be objectively better since everyone knows there’s a direct correlation between popularity and quality
And it always blows my mind when grown adults haven’t quite grasped the idea that the things they like aren’t necessarily the best. Of course, commercial success alone isn’t an indicator of quality. If one album outsells another sixfold, though, and receives nearly-universal critical acclaim, it might be an indicator.
To your “proof,” setting aside the demonstrably false assertion that Marvel movies, as a whole, are more critically acclaimed than the films of David Lynch, it’s still an apples and oranges comparison. I’m not comparing All Things Must Pass to, like, Journey in Satchidananda or Tago Mago.
Except, I’m not saying Ram is objectively better. I like it better but know full well my opinion isn’t objective fact. You’re using an album’s popularity to say your opinion is objectively true. No matter how many people agree with you, it isn’t
While certainly not the sole–or even best–metric to measure a work’s merit, popularity does have it’s place. But, again, that’s not the only metric I’m using, and 50 years of critical consensus must have some meaning.
That said, of course you’re ultimately correct. Art always comes down to the subjective taste of the beholder. Like I said before, I’m a Paul guy. I think he was the most important songwriter in the Beatles (both in terms of his own compositions, and what he contributed to the others’ songs) and I think he has the best post-Beatles discography. But All Things Must Pass is a singular, unprecedented work of unmitigated genius by every conceivable measure, personal taste notwithstanding.
I guess I’ll just say, if you’re not into objective comparisons between works of art, you could steer clear of statements like “Ram is better than All Things Must Pass,” and maybe say “I prefer Ram.” One statement’s debatable, the other isn’t.
All Things Must Pass is very good, and it makes me wonder why they passed on some of those songs, but decided to keep the songs of his that actually appeared on Let It Be.
To be honest Something was a better fit for Abbey Road anyway and it’s probably a good thing they pushed it from those sessions. All time classic, but if they were trying for a throwback to the beginning of their career with a live on the floor sound, it wouldn’t be my first choice.Throwing it to Phil Spector also wouldn’t have been my choice, of course.
if they were trying for a throwback to the beginning of their career with a live on the floor sound, it wouldn’t be my first choice.Sure, and if you forget that “Across the Universe,” “Let It Be,” and “The Long and Winding Road” are on the record, that argument makes sense.
Jesus, Kinja made a mess of that. Should have said . . .
“if they were trying for a throwback to the beginning of their career with a live on the floor sound, it wouldn’t be my first choice.”Sure, and if you forget that “Across the Universe,” “Let It Be,” and “The Long and Winding Road” are on the record, that argument makes sense.
I actually don’t think that at least two of those belong on the album. Across the Universe is great – and I can’t figure out why they kept getting the arrangement wrong – but it would have been better on Abbey Road as well. The Long and Winding Road was another that would have been a lot better in different sessions – though the problem there was it getting Phil Spectored to oblivion on the actual released album.Let it Be works as a breather and isn’t too out of place but the other two don’t fit the concept and were undermined by being on Let It Be itself.
‘Paul says if John had to pick between the Beatles and Yoko, he was choosing Yoko. I believe that to be true.’Um… She was his wife. I think most people, if “asked to choose” between their job and their wife would choose similarly.
George kept showing up for years with good, solid material. And Lennon/McCartney shoved him aside. Yes, it was the L/M songwriting duo, but surely they could’ve given him more than two songs per album. That’s the reason why “All Things Must Pass” is a massive two disc affair…it was a creative backlog.Yoko didn’t break up the Beatles, though. She’s a handy excuse, but John was tired of the commitments, tired of the hassles, tired of the spotlight, and tired of just about everything. By this time Paul was pretty much running the show. You can *feel* John’s disinterest in the footage.Quite frankly, they were all tired of each other, and fame is a mindfuck, particularly at the “Beatles” level. There really was no person who could relate to that level of fame other than Elvis. It was a huge world of sycophants, accountants, lawyers, press, directors, hangers-on that they had to navigate themselves…without Epstein to shield them. The fact that they ended on the highest of high notes with Abbey Road is a testament to the raw talent they all possessed.
I found her presence (albeit silent) in the musicians’ circle pretty strange as well…until someone pointed out that a) this was shortly after she suffered a miscarriage, in part due to b) her and John’s active heroin addiction at the time (which also explains why John seems barely present at times, and why Paul had to take an active hand in leading the sessions. It seems a little strange for the filmmakers to omit those contextual details for the sake of maintaining tension in the eyes of the viewer.
Eh…Paul
says if John had to pick between the Beatles and Yoko, he was choosing Yoko. I
believe that to be true.And you say that like it’s a bad thing. A normal person would
always choose a loved one over a job. And it was just a job. You’re deifying
them as though they were doing something monumental. They were a good band,
that’s it.And who sits between John and Paul while they’re creating
history and READS A NEWSPAPER?! I don’t understand that.Creating history? Get a grip, man. That’s just the boredom of having to sit there during your significant other’s friggin’ band rehearsals. Given the various biographies over the years, Ono didn’t even want to be there every moment. Lennon was a pretty controlling prick in past relationships and that reportedly extended to Ono. The Beatles dissolution was that of many hyper-successful bands: disagreements over credit and artistic direction, an overabundance of self-importance, and their personal lives drawing them down different paths.
I’m not a Beatles superfan so all of this is new to me, but I agree – halfway through Part I it seems clear that George is the guy who is most ready to bolt from the Beatles based on what he does and says. John seems high most of the time and Paul is definitely a control freak, but I kinda sympathize with McCartney a bit because he seems to be the only guy trying to get the guys motivated to do something competent together.
We’ll probably get yelled at for talking about George in a Yoko thread, but…SPOILER ALERT:I just finished the whole doc. George and John have a conversation about George doing a solo album. He says he’s has enough songs written for the next 10 Beatles albums (assuming he gets 2 per). He’s a songwriter, not a session musician. His bank account was surely big enough that he didn’t need a steady stream of income and being around John and his chemical/Yoko dependency was undoubtedly a slog. You see how the team basically steamroll Ringo about not traveling. I’m sure they’d been streamrolling both of them for years.That said, I’ve come to the realization that I have been criminally underappreciating Paul’s talent.
Ha, I’ve always been a Paul “fan” but came to like John more than I had because of this doc. It’s funny to me that my younger self (and it seems everyone’s younger self) felt like I had to pick a side…Paul or John, Beatles or the Stones, Blur or Oasis etc. You can like both.
“If John had to pick between the Beatles and Yoko, he was choosing Yoko.” I don’t see why that means she broke up the band, did it come down to a choice of the band or her? I know that’s the narrative people like to say, but it sure doesn’t look like that’s how things ended at all. Like if I told my best friend that if I had to choose between saving him or my girlfriend, that’s I’d save my girlfriend, and then later we aren’t friends, it seems like a rather large leap in logic to say, well that friendship ended because if he had to choose, he’d save his girlfriend over his best friend.
I think if you asked most people to choose between their job and their significant other, they would choose their significant other. And when Paul was saying that, I interpreted it the unspoken second part of the statement to be “and that’s why we should never make John choose between us and Yoko”. It was weird that she was always there, but it didn’t seem to annoy them that much. She just kinda knit quietly off to the side.
Really, what I took from the doc is that the Beatles either needed to become something way more egalitarian or die. Two songs per album wasn’t cutting it for George, especially when Paul was so overbearing on the songs he wrote, and that’s a fundamental (and fair!) disagreement. I have a feeling that if the business stuff hadn’t really pissed everyone with Allen Klein’s involvement, they probably would have come out on the side of a compromise where they put out way more material (they could have done a new album every six months if they got like 5% less obsessive!), divided in a more equal way, and All Things Must Pass would’ve been absorbed into that. But alas.
Eh…Paul says if John had to pick between the Beatles and Yoko, he was choosing Yoko.
That’s … how love and marriage are supposed to work?
“Paul says if John had to pick between the Beatles and Yoko, he was choosing Yoko” sounds a heck of a lot like a John issue to me.
Her direct actions may not have broken the band up, but her and John’s love caused him to desire more independence and John’s desire to collaborate with her instead of Paul. Not to mention the heroin use, divorce and estrangement from ex-wife and son, etc.It’s not a bad thing that John fell in love and thus desired to break apart from the band. It doesn’t make Yoko a villain, it just makes her a contributing cause of the Beatles breakup even if it was not intentional or malicious. Either way, I’ll take Alan Klein over Yoko any day in terms of reasons the band broke up. As you can see in the documentary, the Beatles were surviving John’s infatuation with Yoko. They could not survive John’s infatuation with Klein (or Paul’s lack of infatuation). That is really what accelerated the breakup. We see John talking about his first meeting with Klein in Part 3. Well less than 8 months after this is recorded, all 4 Beatles will never be in the same room at the same time again.
Not to mention that Lennon is an admitted, and well documented, violent an emotional serial abuser, who while singing about “love” knew nothing about it. Yet he is somehow still deified and the problem was, yeah… definetely… Ono.
a retweet is news now?
There is a narrative in which Yoko aggressively pursues John, emotionally vulnerable acid casualty, introduces him to heroin, and then the two feed unhealthily off each other’s narcissism in subsequent years. In this narrative, Yoko is controlling of John, probably not without justification, and has a hand in preventing might-have-been Beatles reunions. I’m not standing on this narrative, particularly as it reinforces some of the uglier threads of the broke-up-the-Beatles story, but I guess it’s a thing.
maybe john was just kind of a dick and a relationship didn’t make him who he was?
maybe if they had recorded in Dubly
Here is your Crab face
I think it’s pretty clear that John and Paul were never able to have a conversation alone other than the one that was secretly recorded through the flowerpot. And then despite everybody saying Yoko doesn’t say anything, it sounds like she was a large part of the reason why the first meeting to get George back didn’t go well. Remember she and John have an accident and during the Abbey Road sessions John has her made a bed in the studio. Linda Eastman is there, and the cute kid is everywhere during one session, but that’s not the same as Yoko being literally in between John and Paul all of the time, keeping them from getting back to the same place with one another. I mean, you just look at the circle of them working on something and she is sitting in the circle doing nothing, it isn’t “them trying to make sure they stay together” it is co-dependent and deeply weird, and he also called her “mother” right?I disagree that Paul wasn’t disrespecting George when he was saying “play this play it this way”…playing the lead guitar is George’s job. Paul does not play guitar well. Telling George how to play it (usually so that it sounds like a basic piano tune) is not Paul’s job if the band is a band. Apparently Paul became so controlling during the Abbey Road sessions for Maxwell’s Silver Hammer that everybody wanted to kill him. Although they are on good behavior for the cameras, it is pretty easy to see how this goes from where we are to John writing “How Do You Sleep?” which is the original “Ether.”
Huh? Paul was easily the best guitar player in the Beatles.
I think the only question which really can’t be addressed is exactly who made which stipulations. The popular narrative is that Yoko insisted on being there and she insisted on talking for John. It’s just as possible that John insisted on those things. They have a weird co-dependent relationship without a doubt and all of the Beatles at the time seem to think they individually deserve more credit (this certainly comes up with George). Historians just seem to act as though John had no agency in the situation. And the lack of resolution let’s that perpetuate – If John was still alive, it’s possible everything that happened since 1980 on might be different. It’s easy to assume that John wouldn’t sue over the Lennon-McCartney credit, for example, but maybe he would. It’s very easy when someone is dead to say “Oh he wouldn’t do that.” Yoko wasn’t involved in the Anthology project creatively and George pretty much said never again after that because he thought it was a miserable experience.
All I know is if John Lennon was alive in 2021 he would be torn down daily around here for his ceaseless hot takes on cancel culture.
Also wife beating.
What about those goofy albums Sean made?
I mean…you invite one of your four closest friends to a wedding…instead of telling you why he is or isn’t coming he has his girlfriend speak for him. Whoever made the decision, it happened. The idea that Yoko Ono still lives in a world where apparently that is not weird is really weird. It’s like the overused phrase “gaslighting”…like she’s telling us everybody drinks hot dog water. This situation of her sitting a foot away from somebody like the Kazans did with Marilyn Monroe and Tom Cruise’s and John Travolta’s scientology handlers do…we’ve seen that show before. “We need to stay together so John can’t speak to you without me present.” Give me a break. I mean instead of trying to understand it and permitting it and being charitable about it…the Beatles should have said no.
I agree and as I said, I think they were extremely co-dependent on one another. But it’s also hard to truly get a 2021 perspective on it because of John’s death. I just find a lot of people are quick to call her all sorts of names and not consider the possibility that John might have been equally responsible for the situation.
The whole thing is nutty, I definitely blame him as well…as well as the other Beatles for being so indulgent instead of just saying no. It is something new to watch how weird it is in semi-real time.
I suspect the others were going along with it because they wanted the group to continue and knew that a hard “no” about Yoko hanging around could have ended it.
I agree, but “Hanging Around” is different from “sitting in between you and me so we can never have a conversation where you can’t hear every word and be in our line of sight.” Specifically with “Let It Be” they INTENDED to have people drifting in and out and watching their process because it was being filmed for a documentary; I don’t know to what extent that continued for Abbey Road for anybody other than Yoko but even in the context of “Linda sits across the room”…”Yoko sits between John and Paul at all times” is inarguably weird and it’s weird that more people aren’t pointing that outHowever: I think if you look at this kind of weird indulgent behavior, it often arises in the context of trying to keep a band together or not trying to alienate a crazy hollywood star who believes in crazy aliens eating our thoughts. In other areas of business unless it’s the boss’s son you can often be like “no fuck off” (unless you’re in an “I think you should leave” sketch) to the point where they’ll say “no fuck off” if you don’t get the right haircut and root for the Yankees. In bands you get drug addicts and sid/nancy ozzy/sharon and deep dives into stupid cults and all sort of things that knuckleheads get up to when they have too much money and power (“I will only answer to the name ___”)
The Atlantic had an interesting take on it all basically highlighting that it’s basically 6 divorces happening all at once and yeah, you have the John and Yoko stuff, but you also have the George stuff, the Paul stuff and the Ringo stuff. But agree, a lot of nuttiness.
I entirely agree. I have no idea how Yoko came to be sitting on that stool. I concede it was “weird” but they were both “weird” as we know from their later content. And we know John had some big, big, big issues. Why does Yoko have to be the weirdo here? They both had crazy hair. They both did primal scream bullshit. They were both naked on the cover of Two Virgins. They both did heroin. Fine, whatever. But was it really Yoko dragging him along/riding on his coattails? She suffered through infidelity and physical abuse for her troubles…
Yoko Ono also had some measure of success before meeting him. Would she be as wealthy and prolific as she is without him? Probably not. But he hardly picked her up out of absolutely nowhere. She was running in influential circles. And, frankly, how high John is during all of this probably can’t be ignored – “Yoko spoke for John the whole time” can be both factually correct and not just be because she was abrasive. He was also very likely strung out.
Good songs, but it’s definitely weird to dub over some unreleased John tracks and call it the Beatles without his input. Definitely inspired some future zombie recordings of dead artists.
Don’t disagree with that, but I also believe George Harrison was just over having to deal with Paul on that project too so I think there’s plenty of personality conflicts beyond just Yoko.
Paul seems really image-conscious and kind of insecure, even now he’s really trying to nail the point that he didn’t break up the Beatles. There are other stories of him finally making amends with Pete Best, but according to Pete, Paul had a publicist do it for him. And honestly at this point it’s clear Paul needed the band to feel confident in himself, when John and George were much more individualistic and it kind of makes Paul look bad that he tried so hard to save/cling to the band after Epstein died. I think there was a balance between the two “halves” of the band (Ringo also clearly wanted to keep going) where they could’ve gotten back together for at least some reunions, but sadly that got cut short by John’s murder.
McCartney plays lead guitar on “Back in the U.S.S.R.”, “Taxman”, “Good Morning, Good Morning” and the first (and best) lead part on “The End”.
Linda Eastman is there, and the cute kid is everywhere during one session, but that’s not the same as Yoko being literally in between John and Paul all of the time, keeping them from getting back to the same place with one another. I mean, you just look at the circle of them working on something and she is sitting in the circle doing nothing, it isn’t “them trying to make sure they stay together” it is co-dependent and deeply weird, and he also called her “mother” right?Lennon: “I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically… any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself, and I hit.” Legal documents submitted by his housekeeper said he’d beat Cynthia and their son. Lennon was a manipulative, violent and controlling asshole. To think that all went away with Ono, that he suddenly became a saint, and that her always being there was her choice, is naive. No matter how co-dependent their relationship may have been it boggles my mind that the admitted serial abuser is seen as some kind of victim.
she and John have an accident and during the Abbey Road sessions John has her made a bed in the studio She had a miscarriage, and they were both trying to kick a shared heroin addiction. If you could have your spouse as close as possible under those circumstances, wouldn’t you?
Holy shit, the amount of people in this comment section finding a way to connect Ono to the Beatles breaking up no matter how petty, is insane.
Is it insane? I bet if you dropped into any local record store in the 70s or 80s on a given day you’d hear someone having this stupid discussion. I’m surprised it’s still going on I guess, I doubt later generations are going to continue it.
Not the discussion itself, but the lengths people are going to to connect her to the breakup, like where she was sitting. It’s fucking stupid and not a little bit sexist.
“Ive been in bands that have also had girlfriends and we never even got a record deal, so it was clearly ono’s fault like I always knew”sexist trash all up in here all day every day, at least the racists mostly focus on the root.
Yes! Don’t say what you think! Yoko is a woman!
It’s depressing how many people still unquestioningly buy into the old misogynistic, witch-hunting narrative about Yoko breaking up the Beatles, while ignoring numerous accounts that John Lennon was an abusive prick to his first wife and his son and the possibility he might’ve been able to make his own decisions in life.
I said it on the other thread but I’ll say it again; Brian Epstein’s death and that fact that they are four extremely talented and creative people is the biggest, simplest explanation here. We as fans like to put rock stars up on a pedestal and imagine that they’re not susceptible to the same every day workplace difficulties that we are. Its really tempting to say “but they were the best band in the world and they made all this amazing music, surely they could have found a way to work it out, if only X person / event hadn’t screwed it all up!” But sometimes people just get sick of each other’s shit and start looking at other options. And honestly I can’t blame them for going their own way and having successful solo careers.
“Being in a band” is a young person’s game. Nobody knew, at that time, how to transition “being in a band” to “the Beatles Inc.” or “U2 Inc.” or “the Flaming Lips Inc.” or whatever. Youthful passion and ardor and hedonism and adventurousness wanes and what’s left is four dudes who want adult lives. Adult lives aren’t really compatible with subordinating long term personal needs (family, life-partner, health, stable sexuality) with short-term collective goals (sex, drugs, rock and roll) in particular as those personal needs grow and grow or involve other intimate relationships. Paul was trying to get them to make that leap but it didn’t work out. They were still thinking of themselves as do-or-die, joined-at-the-hip bandmates in solidarity and not dispassionate business partners.
Particularly when we get an 8-hour documentary that provides a better look at the overall group dynamic that shows the various frustrations of the band members and virtually none of it having anything to do with Yoko. I mean, they were still making great music despite this, but the issues seemed to be fairly obvious and straightforward—band growing apart artistically and emotionally.
Misogyny is a hell of drug. I remember being called the worst names for daring to suggest that The Beatles were grown men and could break themselves up.
Now let’s talk about Courtney Love! Did you know she couldn’t possibly have created her own music without Kurt’s help and was also responsible for his death?
These are grown ass men and she’s literally just sitting there silently. But sure, it’s all on her.
I think Jackson/Yoko were careful to not portray her in a way that implies she was much of a factor at all. I’m sure she caused more friction than the documentary implies, but less than the often sexist/racist narrative that’s existed over the decades. The band was simply burned out and they needed time away from each other to explore rapidly diverging creative interests. There was no way George was sticking around, he was constantly being overlooked. You can see the connection and bond between John and Paul, even when they disagreed on things, but they both treat George like the little brother and he outgrew the band.
Watching the entire 3 parts, I didn’t see any malice from Yoko, but she was like a cat in how a cat will be not in your face but always in the middle of the floor taking its space.
Duh. She broke up the B Sharps.
My theory is John wanted out, and he could easily use his devotion to Ono as an excuse. And it worked. He was painted as a devoted man who chose love over the “best band in the world ever.” She was treated as the poison who denied the public further artistic genius from that band. And why would he care if she were stepped on along the way by the public? He hasn’t been terribly concerned with well-being of his partners, as the record shows (not just from his family but literally songs he wrote about that side of him).
She was treated as the poison who denied the public further artistic genius from that band.There was a LOT of toxic fan entitlement in the perception that Yoko Ono broke up the Beatles; if you compare it to how fans treat TV shows and movies these days it looks very familiar.
Yeah, history rhymes.
And it’s not even like the four of them didn’t put out anymore music. They did, with varying degrees of success and frequency. But that era was over.
This sexist trope will never die. The comments here are depressingly predictable.
Watch the second episode and you will change your mind. Even the almost mute Ringo said that Yoko even speaks for John in their reunions. And Paul mentions that if John has to chose between the group or Yoko, he’ll chose Yoko.
Do you really think John Lennon would let anyone speak for him if he didn’t approve? And John choosing Yoko over the band is 100% on him.
Glad to see McLevy calling out the “Yoko broke up the band” argument as a sexist relic (it’s racist too). The Beatles broke up primarily because John was over it and wanted to move onto other things. His relationship with Yoko was a result of that, not the cause. It’s time to retire this tired refrain.
Sexist and racist. Got it.
I don’t know. I haven’t run into anyone who is both a serious fan of the Beatles AND believes that Ono was responsible for breaking the band apart in any serious or real sense.Been doing the band thing for decades. Sometimes it gets tense. Sometimes it gets close to the breaking point, be it for one person or the entire band.If it goes well? The issues get moved past or worked on, things resume equilibrium, and the moment is Not Spoken Of Again. If it doesn’t? It wasn’t the one final straw that did it. Jeff may have left because Stewie rerecorded his drum track without asking, but the years of being disrespected before it were the real cause.Yoko Ono didn’t break up the Beatles. The Beatles broke up The Beatles.
Lennon was a violent and emotionally abusive person, not just by the reports of those around him, but by his own admission two days before died: “I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically… any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself, and I hit.” Legal documents submitted by his housekeeper at the time reported physical and emotional abuse of Cynthia and Julian. He was absent father to Julian: “Mum was more about love than Dad. He sang about it, he spoke about, but he never really gave it, at least not to me as his son,” and went on to say in the same interview that Julian was a mistake, “born out of a bottle of whiskey.” He goes on to say how he’s been all about “love” for years at that point and not the violent, abusive or emotionally absent guy he “used to be,” despite the acknowledged facts.It boggles my mind that people still think Ono was the nefarious influence that broke up the Beatles and give a well documented physically and emotionally abusive man a pass.
For all of Lennon’s failings as a husband and father, though, that toxic behavior doesn’t seem to have transferred to his relationships with the other band members, unless there’s a whole other layer of Beatles lore I’m unfamiliar with. Was he a saintly older brother figure to the other Beatles? Obviously not, but he doesn’t appear to have been an abusive bully either.No, Yoko didn’t break the Beatles up, but John being an ass in his family life probably didn’t have much influence either.
Kids, Yoko was once the most hated woman in New York, roughly from 1970-1995. She was even more hated than Leona Helmsley. But then we learned the error of our misogyny. And then we were introduced to Melania.
I love Yoko. She’s punk. She doesn’t give a fuck. And she’s going to outlive Ringo and Paul.
“Ironically, I was trying to break them up, they just managed to do it by themselves anyway.”