Emerson Phillips
The Beatles’ breakup wasn’t as contentious as some might have believed, according to the recent documentary, Get Back. But in a recent Howard Stern interview, Paul McCartney made it clear who he felt was responsible for the iconic band’s breakup.
“I know who broke up The Beatles,” McCartney declared. “John did. There was a meeting when John came in and said, ‘hey guys, I’m leaving the group,’ he had found Yoko.”
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[MORE: All The Beatles News, Notes, Lyrical Breakdowns you could ever want, is here.]
Lennon himself, however, put it a different way just after the breakup. [Yoko] didn’t split The Beatles. The Beatles were drifting apart on their own,” he said. He later added: “A long time ago I said that I don’t want to be singing ‘She Loves You’ when I was 30, I said that when I was about 25.”
At the time of their breakup in 1970, John Lennon and Ringo Starr were both 29. Paul McCartney and George Harrison were just 27.
In hindsight, the Beatles’ breakup may have started to look inevitable beginning in August 1966 when they stopped doing live shows. In November 1966, Lennon decided to shoot a film in Spain. “I was always waiting for a reason to get out of The Beatles from the day I made How I Won the War,” he later said.
Private personal issues between the band’s members came to a boil in 1969. By then Ono had Lennon’s time and attention, perhaps more than the band did. “She’s not a Beatle, she never will be.” Starr said.
“That old gang of mine, that’s all over,” Lennon said. “When I met Yoko is when you meet your first woman and you leave the guys at the bar and you don’t go play football anymore and you don’t go play snooker and billiards.”
From 1960 to 1970, the Beatles sold an estimated 500-600 million albums, to this day the most ever by a recording artist or group. There is a great, expandable, interactive timeline for diehard fans of The Beatles that you can check out here.
