Bibek Acharya
The Beatles played their first concert on a warm August evening at Liverpool’s Jacaranda Club in 1960. They officially broke up just under ten years later when, on April 10th, 1970, Paul McCartney announced the split in a press release. Within that time, they released 12 albums, 22 singles, and five films. They rode the unprecedented high of Beatlemania, embraced a slew of ‘bigger than Jesus’ controversies, grieved the death of their manager, took a notable trip to India, changed the world irrevocably, and when they formally called it a day, Ringo Starr, their oldest member, was only 29.
It’s an output that makes ‘calling it a day’ seem like a misnomer—they actually had a full career condensed into a single manic decade. As little more than kids, they were thrust towards a level of fame hitherto unknown in human history, and they embraced that along with the weight of a revolution in a manner that seems almost miraculous. In actual fact, the headline should perhaps be ‘how on Earth did The Beatles survive so long?’
Did Ringo Starr ever quit The Beatles?
While Ringo Starr’s role in the eventual demise might be muted—playing into the narrative that he was so easy-going, he just went along for the ride—his conduct prior to that is rather more illuminating. It began during the White Album sessions when McCartney began playing all the instruments on some of the tracks himself. When he got behind the drum kit, Ringo naturally saw this as a slight.
With that, his confidence began to wilt. “I felt I wasn’t playing great,” he recalled, “and I also felt that the other three were really happy and I was an outsider.” So, he walked out. And he did walk back in for around a month. It took a scheduled TV performance to bring him back. While playing ‘Hey Jude’ live might have gone off without a hitch, things still seemed unsettled. But despite being upbeat, they seem to know their days are numbered. When Ringo was later asked whether he thought The Beatles were basically done by this stage, he simply responded, “Oh yeah.” That was in September 1968.
Was Paul McCartney to blame after all?
A few years prior to Ringo’s brief exit, Epstein and the group’s PR man, Tony Barrow, were discussing who the most difficult Beatle was to manage. Epstein surprisingly said it was McCartney. Barrow said, according to Newsweek: “John may have been the loudest Beatle, but Paul was the shrewdest.”That headstrong nature had already caused plenty of issues with his bandmates growing tired of McCartney railroading recording sessions. This was exacerbated even further by the fact that he was pushing in what Lennon would cruelly call a “granny shit music” direction, while Lennon, thanks to the influence of Yoko Ono, was angling towards something a little more avant-garde, and Harrison was just trying to let his spiritualism be heard.The tragic death of Brian Epstein
But how did McCartney strongarm himself into this dictatorial position? Well, in many ways, it tragically occurred through grief. Epstein had not only been the band’s manager, fixer, financier, confidant, friend, biggest fan, and everything in between, he had also sheltered them from the most cutting claws of the world. When he died in 1967, they were not only devastated, but without any real guidance, so McCartney stepped into those shoes almost out of necessity.
“After Brian died, we collapsed. Paul took over and supposedly lead us. But what is leading us when we went round in circles? We broke up then. That was the disintegration,” Lennon said.
He added, “The Beatles broke up after Brian died after we made the double album. Like I’ve said many times; it’s me and a backing group, Paul and a backing group.”
In a strange way, Lennon hadn’t minded the situation at that point, but the odd predicament turned ugly when the band’s finances fell into a dire mess with Apple failing to steer them in the right direction. Almost instinctively, a shoddy businessman and ex-Stones manager, Allen Klein, could smell blood and had been eyeing the Fab Four as a business venture for a long time.Was Allen Klein to blame for the breakup of The Beatles?
When Lennon made a hyperbolic statement in a daily paper about where Apple was headed and that The Beatles would “be broke in six months,” Klein jumped on the opportunity. He was able to seduce Lennon and Ono, and through them, he got to Harrison and Starr.
Klein’s proposal to Lennon was to cut the dead weight of Apple and to start making the company money again. “People were robbing us and living on us,” Lennon said about some of the staff of Apple, according to The Wall Street Journal, adding, “All just living and drinking and eating like fuckin’ Rome.”
McCartney was the only guy who didn’t fall prey to Klein’s street-like and seemingly down-to-earth demeanour. The cat wasn’t completely out of the bag about Klein just yet – he was, however, under investigation in the United States. He was known for his aggressive tactics and was able to get the Rolling Stones the greatest recording contract with Decca at the time during the ’60s.
McCartney was very mistrustful of Klein, just as Bill Wyman, bass player of the Stones, had been very mistrustful of him a few years prior. This created an awkward situation whereby the figure that the band were painting as straddling a high horse was now the same person coming between them and what seemed like a lucrative pay day. This tortuous status quo pretty much derailed all their negotiations and discussions.
Meanwhile, McCartney was trying to hire his in-laws (Linda McCartney’s father and brother) as the accountants for the group, and this was seen as plain nepotism. Perhaps if he hadn’t previously railroaded the recording sessions, then they might have looked at his posturing a little more favourably, but the cards had already been marked.Multiple meetings at Apple Headquarters would take place between both parties: Lennon and Klein on one side, and McCartney and Lee Eastman (Linda’s father, an attorney) on the other. The future of Apple and, by extension, the band and ultimately the relationship between Lennon and McCartney, hung in the balance. These meetings went nowhere, with both sides accusing the other of name-calling and foul play.
“The only way for me to save The Beatles and Apple was to sue the band,” McCartney told British GQ. “If I hadn’t done that, it would have all belonged to Allen Klein. The only way I was given to get us out of that was to do what I did.” With that, McCartney was effectively suing The Beatles, and that was that.
One of Klein’s alleged business ventures as way of ‘repairing’ Apple’s infrastructure was by giving his own company, ABKCO, the rights to press Beatles CDs in the States. This also effected McCartney’s first solo album which was released through Apple Records. This is what prompted McCartney to sue Allen Klein, which he couldn’t do without suing the band.
Andrew Loog Oldham, who had initially brought on Allen Klein to work with him for the Stones, once wrote: “Allen comes in when your harvest is not as plentiful as your expectations on the sow. And part of the price is that he gets the farm,” which sums up Klein’s tactics fairly well.
Did The Beatles’ drug use play a part?
Despite all these factors, the one question that remains is how four firm friends were able to achieve their wildest dreams, and see it all go awry so sourly. Obviously, there are myriad factors, but bands have survived overbearing partners, bad business dealings, creative rifts, lifestyle changes, and internal tiffs in the past, but no band has ever successfully skirted the maudlin impact of heroin.
When Lennon ventured down this darkened and oft-underreported route in response to “real pain”, the end was inevitable for a group who once rose to prominence as Britain’s most wholesome bunch. “We were disappointed that he was getting into heroin because we didn’t really see how we could help him,” McCartney would later reflect. “We just hoped it would not go too far.”
But for a group renowned for their unrivalled work ethic, who were all settling down with families in the meantime, it had already gone too far. With Lennon’s attitude to the band becoming increasingly lacklustre, the increasing drug use shrouded all the other hardships that they faced in a veil of terminal finality that implied it was time to move on from their issues before they got wors,e rather than trying to resolve them once again.
