The Inside Story of the
Beatles’ Messy Breakup
Smithsonian Magazine,
by
Tim Riley
Original Article
Posted By: StormCnter,
4/14/2020 11:42:06 AM
Fifty years ago, when Paul McCartney announced he had left the Beatles, the news dashed the hopes of millions of fans, while fueling false reunion rumors that persisted well into the new decade.
In a press release, on April 10, 1970, for his first solo album, “McCartney,” he leaked his intention to leave. In doing so, he shocked his three bandmates.
The Beatles had symbolized the great communal spirit of the era. How could they possibly come apart?
Few at the time were aware of the underlying fissures. The power struggles in the group had been mounting at least since their manager, Brian Epstein, died in August of 1967.
‘Paul Quits the Beatles’
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Troutgreen 4/14/2020 12:07:25 PM (No. 379283)
Dems harp about diversity and equality and inclusion and tolerance. Then they watch 2 old rich white guys fight it out for their top spot on the ballot. Beatles lived on yellow submarines, imagined, came together, and let it be. Then they let a crazy, no - talent moonbeam of a woman weaken the group while a couple of their bandmates chased fame and fortune individually. Not sure about the lessons of this story, or even if there any. Still miss George, though.
23 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
BeatleJeff 4/14/2020 12:26:46 PM (No. 379311)
I'll disagree with that last sentence about living in a world without Beatles. Lennon himself said they were just a rock and roll band, but if you want to reminisce, you've still got the songs, 50 years on, I defy you to go through a day without hearing a Beatles song somewhere. And Paul and Ringo are still on the touring circuit playing the Beatles catalogue. It's still a Beatles world.
13 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
NorthernDog 4/14/2020 12:27:21 PM (No. 379314)
Yoko didn't help. But like the article says, the seeds of a breakup were planted years earlier.
8 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
DaddyO 4/14/2020 12:30:09 PM (No. 379319)
Actually a fight over who would control the band's financial interests.
This set off the conflagration that killed the Beatles. McCartney still tried to advance Lee and John Eastman to represent the group’s interests, and arranged a meeting for all the central players. But Allen Klein turned the encounter into a trap, baiting Lee Eastman, accusing him essentially of being a secretive Jew (Eastman had abandoned the family surname Epstein years before), and Lennon joined in. finally, Eastman exploded in fury, calling Klein “a rodent.” then he and McCartney left the meeting. The worse Klein behaved and the more that Eastman impugned his character, the more Lennon and Ono championed him as the Beatles’ rescuer, and Harrison and Starr soon agreed. “Because we were all from Liverpool,” Harrison said in the mid-1990s, “we favored people who were street people. Lee Eastman was more of a class-conscious type of person. As John was going with Klein, it was much easier if we went with him too.” Though Mick Jagger, who no longer trusted Klein at all, tried to dissuade the Beatles – “Don’t go near him,” he wrote in a note to McCartney – it was no use.
"Why the Beatles Broke Up", Rolling Stone, September 2009
4 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Clinger 4/14/2020 12:36:28 PM (No. 379330)
I remember exactly where I was when I first head of the break up, seared in the brain like the Kennedy assassination and 911.
3 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Strike3 4/14/2020 12:45:58 PM (No. 379351)
We are really reaching for topics to offset the 24/7 Bat Flu news now. The Beatles were okay before individual big egos drove them to split off on their own but still remained okay. Many performers successfully copied the works of Buddy Holley, the Fab 4 just had better promotion and marketing.
14 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Terry_tr6 4/14/2020 12:50:14 PM (No. 379355)
To get a feel for what the Smithsonian mag publishes, a recent issue had a huge article on Che's son but the majority of it was showcasing what a wonderful complex and thoughtful person his father Che was and time lined his travels around the world. But not ONE WORD about the killing and terrorism he was doing those travels. You'd think he was a tourist doing an eco tour from the way he was portrayed. No mention of joyfully executing people.
17 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
walcb 4/14/2020 12:52:57 PM (No. 379361)
Who was it that said in a hundred years they would be better known than Jesus Christ?
4 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Luandir 4/14/2020 12:58:10 PM (No. 379373)
It was fifty years ago today...
7 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Highlander 4/14/2020 1:04:05 PM (No. 379381)
Fifty years ago; this Beatles thing sure has legs.
6 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Newtsche 4/14/2020 1:06:47 PM (No. 379386)
A rather odd article, thin and somewhat disinterested.
16 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
droopydog 4/14/2020 1:12:16 PM (No. 379396)
They shined brightly for a time. Their peak popularity was post Kennedy assassination and they progressed and grew as the 60s changed rapidly. I think their demise was inevitable and appropriate...another sign of times. No Altamonts for them, thank God.
3 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
Mushroom 4/14/2020 2:08:26 PM (No. 379468)
Remember as a kid/young adult one of the basic questions to ask another in sizing them up was "Beatles or Stones" :)
6 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
kono 4/14/2020 2:19:24 PM (No. 379483)
Come on, we all know it had to be 50-year retroactive karma from the covid. Maybe if "Come Together" had been "Social Spacing", instead?
A dose of shelter-in-place silliness for the midday...
2 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
zephyrgirl 4/14/2020 2:58:57 PM (No. 379515)
I was a rabid Beatle fan from their first appearance on Ed Sullivan. I lost interest in them after Rubber Soul, although I did see "Yellow Submarine" and thought it was cute. By the time they broke up, I had other interests and had moved on.
7 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
NYbob 4/14/2020 3:38:36 PM (No. 379529)
It's only Rock and Roll. Lennon was not a nice person and he was the most middle class of the group. Certainly more so than Paul, but who cares really? Paul ends up being a billionaire. They all lived any lifestyle they wanted and the creepy Klien went back to NY. Lennon's punishment was to live with Yoko, so it all worked out in the end.
11 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
humboldt 4/14/2020 3:40:21 PM (No. 379531)
The saying "the day the music died" refers to the accident killing Holly, Valens et. al. Terrible as it was, and as a former west Texan I am especially fond of Buddy Holly and to a lessor extent the Big Bopper, great pop music truly died with the breakup of the Beatles. Still hurts 50 years later.
7 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
harleynyc 4/14/2020 4:42:56 PM (No. 379572)
Here's an excerpt from a George Martin interview: They (Paul, George and Ringo) tolerated her (Yoko) presence for a long time to keep the peace. One day in 1969 John told Paul, George and Ringo that he was leaving the band, and it was not officially made public until 1970.
George Harrison was not prepared to wait around for the announcement, he left the band in January, 1970.
Did George regret leaving the Beatles? I think he felt compelled to as it was a lost cause with John devoting more time to Yoko and less time to co-writing with Paul and recording.
2 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
red1066 4/14/2020 7:58:45 PM (No. 379714)
As a third grader in 1963, I waited to see the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, and then had my mother go out the next day to buy their record. After that, that pretty much ended my Beatles love affair. I still listened to the Beatles on occasion, but their songs just didn't interest me that much. Add in the seemly endless promotion of everything Beatles. The movie, is Paul dead or alive, the whole sitar India thing just seemed uninteresting to me. I moved on to other music and groups and I don't really remember or even cared that they broke up.
2 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Geoman 4/14/2020 8:00:14 PM (No. 379718)
Back in the late 70's I picked up a second hand black oyster Ludwig drum kit with vintage Zildjian symbols; I tried to give them to my nephews in the early 90s but my sister wasn't having it. After the internet became a thing, I looked up the badge numbers on the drums and found that they were manufactured in 1964 and were identical to Ringo's kit that he used during the Beatle's US "invasion," including the Zildjians. I was never a big fan of Ringo, preferring the style of Ginger Baker, but Ringo was a legitimately acknowledged human metronome. I've since been offered $10K for the kit and $2.5K for the snare alone but decided to hang on to them in case one of the grandkids develops the urge to keep the beat.
5 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
doctorfixit 4/14/2020 8:26:40 PM (No. 379749)
A sad time, and it fits with my low opinion of McCartney. I remember reading in interview with Lennon in which he described how his own last straw with McCartney was that McCartney secretly had bought a more than 50% interest in Apple, which he had agreed with Lennon they would never do. Paul had done so at the behest of his father in law Eastman.
1 person likes this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
Faithfully 4/15/2020 2:17:50 AM (No. 379976)
They were post Kennedy assassination shock for sure. The Beatles normalized drugs. I can never get over that.
1 person likes this.
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