Paul McCartney
John Lennon broke up the Beatles
Paul McCartney (left) and John Lennon towards the end of the Beatles’ era.
© imago / ZUMA Press
Paul McCartney has been the face of the Beatles’ breakup since 1970 – because he announced it. He now wants to correct this.
The Beatles split up over 50 years ago. Since Paul McCartney (79) made the end of the band public in an interview on April 10, 1970, he is considered the scapegoat for the breakup. The bassist of what is probably the greatest band of all time doesn’t want to let that sit on him any longer. As reported by various media, McCartney is said to name John Lennon (1940-1980) as the initiator of the separation in an interview to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on October 24th.
“I did not initiate the separation. That was our Johnny,” McCartney is said to say in the interview. “John came in one day and said, ‘I’m leaving the Beatles’. Does that sound like a breakup trigger or not?”
According to other sources Lennon announced his resignation internally as early as 1969. According to McCartney, their manager Allen Klein urged the Beatles to keep the band’s breakup to themselves. But McCartney was tired of it and dropped the bomb when he presented his solo album “McCartney”.
Did John Lennon run out of time?
In the interview with the BBC, Paul McCartney also blames John Lennon’s tendency to keep getting further and further away from the band, responsible for the end. “The real point was that John started a new life with Yoko”. With his wife Yoko Ono (88), Lennon launched several protests against the war, for example the famous bed-ins. “John wanted to lie in bed in a sack in Amsterdam for a week,” says McCartney. In terms of time, this was no longer compatible with working in a band.
Paul McCartney indirectly warms up the old cliché that Yoko Ono was mainly responsible for the end of the Beatles. Many fans accused the artist of pulling Lennon out of the band. This in turn made McCartney and his alleged despotism as the leader of the group the main culprit.
Incidentally, McCartney’s current statement to the BBC is not entirely new. Lennon himself had already insisted that he had broken up the Beatles: “I founded the group and I dissolved it again. It was that simple,” he once said.