Break-up of the Beatles

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 20th of August 1969, all four Beatles gathered at EMI Studios to record the closing track of Abbey Road. The session that produced "The End" was unremarkable by any outward measure, but it turned out to be the last time John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded in a room together. Within eight months, the most celebrated band in popular music history had formally shattered in a London courtroom. The dissolution of the Beatles was not a single dramatic rupture. It was a slow accumulation of artistic tensions, personal grievances, business disasters and managerial chaos that built across the latter half of the 1960s. How did four men who had transformed popular culture lose the ability to be in the same room? What role did the death of one man play, and what role did a single manager play on the other side? And how did a band that publicly denied breaking up manage to break up so loudly?

• 2. After Epstein

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  Brian Epstein died of a drug overdose on the 27th of August 1967. His death left the Beatles, in the words of their own later reflections, disoriented and fearful. Epstein's management style had been to let the band pursue their musical ideas while quietly mediating conflicts behind the scenes. That role had already begun to shrink after the band stopped touring in 1966, but his sudden absence exposed just how much the group had relied on him.

  Mid-1967 had also seen Epstein oversee the creation of Apple Corps, a corporation designed as a tax shelter and revenue vehicle for the band. Without his steadying hand, what was meant to be a structured business arrangement became an unexpectedly chaotic venture. McCartney later reflected that the four members' evolution from musicians into businessmen was central to the band's eventual disintegration.

  McCartney responded to Epstein's death by pushing new projects on the group, including the Magical Mystery Tour film and eventually the Get Back sessions. His bandmates grew perturbed by what they saw as his growing domination of both musical and non-musical decisions. Lennon later acknowledged that McCartney's efforts had been important for the band's survival, but he also believed that McCartney's drive came partly from his own fear of going solo. The Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn placed the group's last truly unified effort at the completion of Sgt. Pepper in April 1967, with cohesion deteriorating immediately after and disappearing entirely by 1968.

• 3. The White Album Fractures

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  In May 1968, the band gathered at Harrison's home in Esher to demo songs for what would become their November release The Beatles, known to history as the White Album. The sessions that followed at EMI Studios produced a double album that Rolling Stone would later describe as "four solo albums under one roof." McCartney called the recording a turning point, saying "there was a lot of friction during that album. We were just about to break up, and that was tense in itself." Lennon was more blunt: "the break-up of the Beatles can be heard on that album."

  Yoko Ono attended those sessions, accompanying Lennon to work on "Revolution 1" at EMI Studios. Her presence was, by the band's own later accounts, highly unorthodox. Prior to that point, wives and girlfriends had been kept away from recording sessions. Harrison took particular offence. Since 1965, he and Lennon had bonded over their shared experimentation with LSD and Indian spirituality, and Ono's arrival signalled a shift in Lennon's allegiances that Harrison experienced as an estrangement.

  Harrison's frustrations had other sources. Many of his song ideas were rejected by Lennon and McCartney, particularly from 1968 onward. He would later recall that he had grown to resent their domination only when he was offering songs "that were better than some of theirs and we'd have to record maybe eight of theirs before they'd get to mine." Harrison had already become the first Beatle to release a solo album, with Wonderwall Music, much of which was recorded in Bombay in January 1968.

  Ringo Starr's unhappiness was quieter but no less acute. Author Mark Hertsgaard noted that Starr had grown dissatisfied with the standard of his own drumming, a feeling that McCartney in particular had "done much to encourage." In late August, Starr left the band for several weeks, holidaying with his family in Sardinia. He returned to find his drum kit decorated with flowers, a gift from Harrison.

• 4. Get Back Falls Apart

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  On the 10th of January 1969, eight days after filmed rehearsals began at Twickenham Film Studios for the project that would become Let It Be, Harrison told his bandmates he was leaving. The project had been McCartney's idea: a series of rehearsals culminating in a live concert, meant to reconnect the band with its performing roots. The plan was undermined from the start. Lennon had descended into heroin addiction, leaving him alternately uncommunicative and sharply critical. Harrison had enjoyed rewarding outside collaborations during 1968, working with Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and the Band, and he was finding the Beatles' environment stifling.

  Negotiations eventually brought Harrison back, but on his terms. McCartney's concert plan was dropped. The project moved from Twickenham to the band's own Apple Studio in Savile Row, scaled back to the goal of simply completing an album from the rehearsed songs. The Beatles gave what proved to be their final public performance on the rooftop of Apple's Savile Row headquarters on the 30th of January 1969.

  The business side of the band was in equal disarray. Apple Corps was losing money through mismanagement. On the 26th of January, Lennon and Ono met with Allen Klein, the founder of ABKCO Records. Lennon pushed for Klein to represent the band. McCartney had his own candidate: Lee and John Eastman, the father and brother of his girlfriend Linda Eastman, whom McCartney married on the 12th of March. After a series of contentious meetings, Klein was appointed as business manager, with Harrison and Starr siding against McCartney. Rob Sheffield later wrote that Klein was arguably "the one who played the biggest role in their demise."

  The maneuvering over music publishing compounded the damage. Dick James, the managing director of Northern Songs, which published the Lennon-McCartney catalogue, quietly sold his 32% stake to the British conglomerate Associated Television without informing Lennon or McCartney. Their bid to buy a controlling interest in the company failed. The opportunity to reclaim their own publishing was lost.

• 5. Lennon's Private Exit

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  On the 13th of September 1969, the Plastic Ono Band performed at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival. Lennon had assembled the group partly because the Beatles had rejected his song "Cold Turkey" as a single. The reception at Toronto, he later said, crystallised his decision to leave the Beatles. He made the decision on the flight back to London.

  On the 20th of September, during a meeting at Apple attended by McCartney, Starr and Klein but not Harrison, Lennon announced he wanted a "divorce." That same day, the band signed a renegotiated recording contract with Capitol Records at a higher royalty rate. The sensitivity of that negotiation led Klein and McCartney to urge Lennon to keep quiet about his departure, and he agreed.

  For several months, the remaining three Beatles were left in an uneasy limbo. McCartney later recalled that he, Harrison and Starr would call each other asking, "Well, is this it, then?" They suspected it might be, as McCartney put it, "one of John's little flings." An NME article in November carried Lennon's remarks suggesting he went "off and on" the idea of the group recording again. In early January 1970, Lennon told a journalist in Denmark that the band was not breaking up, just breaking its image, and added that none of the Beatles were millionaires, which was why they would before long record another album. The public was given no reliable picture of what was actually happening.

• 6. The Announcement

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  On the 9th of April 1970, McCartney distributed a press release to select UK journalists alongside advance copies of his solo album McCartney. Written as a self-interview, the document discussed his "break with the Beatles" and stated he had no plans to work with the band or write with Lennon again. He did not explicitly declare the group disbanded. Apple's press officer Derek Taylor later said that the questions concerning the Beatles were added by McCartney himself.

  The following day, Don Short of The Daily Mirror ran the story under the front-page headline "Paul Quits The Beatles." His bandmates viewed the announcement as a betrayal, partly because it was used to promote McCartney's own album. Lennon reacted with public mockery, saying: "It was nice to find that he was still alive. Anyway, you can say I said jokingly, 'He didn't quit, I sacked him!'" A CBS News team reported from outside Apple's headquarters at 3 Savile Row that "historians may, one day, view it as a landmark in the decline of the British Empire."

  The timing of the announcement was entangled with a specific grievance. McCartney had conceived of "The Long and Winding Road" as a simple piano ballad. Producer Phil Spector, brought in by Klein to work on the Get Back tapes, had overdubbed orchestral accompaniment and a female choir. On the 14th of April, McCartney sent Klein a letter demanding the instrumentation be reduced, the harp removed, and adding: "Don't ever do it again." Klein did not comply, and McCartney resolved to sever his connection with Apple and the Beatles entirely as the only way to escape Klein's management.

  Behind the scenes, the three remaining Beatles had gathered at EMI Studios on the 3rd and the 4th of January to record Harrison's "I Me Mine" and complete work on McCartney's "Let It Be", both needed for the Let It Be album. The threat of legal action by American film company United Artists had forced the decision to finally prepare the Get Back footage for release. McCartney was not present for those January sessions.

• 7. Courts and Feuds

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  On the 31st of December 1970, McCartney filed a lawsuit in London's High Court of Justice seeking dissolution of the Beatles' contractual partnership. Time magazine dubbed the confrontation "Beatledämmerung", borrowing from Wagner's opera about a war among the gods.

  The case opened in the Chancery Division on the 19th of January 1971. McCartney's counsel, David Hirst, told the court that the Beatles' finances were in a "grave state." The claim rested on three pillars: the group had ceased working together; appointing Klein as exclusive business manager had breached the partnership deed; and McCartney had never received audited accounts of the partnership across its four years of existence. On the 12th of March, High Court judge Blanshard Stamp found in McCartney's favour and a receiver was appointed.

  The legal victory did not end the hostilities. McCartney's second album, Ram, included a song called "Too Many People," which he told Playboy in 1984 was aimed at Lennon's "preaching." Lennon responded with "How Do You Sleep?", recorded with Harrison and Starr and released on his Imagine album in September. The two men continued their feud through the letters page of Melody Maker until the magazine's editor was forced to censor some of Lennon's correspondence.

  Settlement took years to achieve. Lennon, Harrison and Starr formally dropped Klein in March 1973 and in November sued him for misrepresentation and breach of fiduciary duty. Klein countersued Apple for $19 million in unpaid fees. The cases were settled out of court in January 1977, with Apple paying Klein $5,009,200. Klein credited the "tireless efforts and Kissinger-like negotiating brilliance of Yoko Ono Lennon" in achieving a settlement to his satisfaction. With Klein gone, the four former bandmates were able to work toward a final agreement, known as "the Beatles Agreement", which all four signed in December 1974. The formal dissolution of the partnership took place in London on the 9th of January 1975.

• 8. After the Split

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  Reunion efforts persisted throughout the 1970s, though no gathering ever included all four simultaneously. In August 1971, Harrison invited his former bandmates to the Concert for Bangladesh. Starr attended; Lennon agreed on condition that Ono could also perform, but Harrison refused to extend that invitation. McCartney declined because he feared Klein might take credit for arranging a Beatles reunion.

  In March 1973, Harrison joined Lennon and Starr in the studio for the recording of "I'm the Greatest", released on Starr's album Ringo. McCartney also appears on that album, for the song "Six O'Clock", making it the only post-breakup album to include all four former Beatles, on separate tracks. Several promoters made large public offers for a reunion concert across the decade; in January 1976, promoter Bill Sargent raised his standing offer to $30 million. During a broadcast of Saturday Night Live on the 24th of April 1976, producer Lorne Michaels offered the Beatles $3,000 to reunite on the show. Lennon and McCartney were watching from Lennon's apartment at the Dakota, within walking distance of the NBC studio, and briefly entertained the idea before deciding they were too tired.

  After Lennon's murder in 1980, Harrison tailored the lyrics of "All Those Years Ago" as a tribute to him. McCartney, Linda McCartney and Denny Laine overdubbed backing vocals, making it one of only two post-breakup tracks featuring three ex-Beatles, the other being Starr's "I'm the Greatest" from 1973. In 1994, the three survivors reunited for the Anthology project, completing two unfinished Lennon demos, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love", as new Beatles recordings. A third demo, "Now and Then", was attempted during those sessions but remained unfinished until McCartney and Starr completed and released it in 2023, more than twenty years after Harrison's death in 2001.