Breaking Up The Beatles
It was April 10, 1970 — 55 years ago Thursday — that Paul McCartney, preparing for the release of his first solo album the next week, told reporters he was splitting from the rest of the Beatles.
The weird part? The Beatles had been moving in different creative directions for years and had already split up: John Lennon told his bandmates the year before he had intended to quit the Beatles. The world just didn’t know it yet.
A Messy Breakup
The Beatles were ultra-successful, but in just a half-decade or so of collaboration, relationships between the four band members were growing tense.
They had difficulty agreeing whose songs would be featured on albums and singles. George Harrison’s growth as a songwriter made that problem even tougher. John Lennon grew addicted to heroin, which affected how he dealt with his bandmates and other disagreements. The 1967 death of their manager didn’t help.
The four then disagreed strongly on hiring a new manager. Lennon, Harrison and Ringo Star wanted to hire the manager of the Rolling Stones. Paul McCartney wanted to hire his wife’s father.
It was in a group meeting on Sept. 20, 1969, that Lennon informed his colleagues he was quitting the band. The new manager was trying to put together a deal to reacquire the Beatles’ publishing rights, so he asked Lennon to please keep that quiet.
He did. But Lennon was caught off guard when McCartney told the music press on April 10, 1970, that he had personal, business and musical differences from the rest of the band, was taking a break, and didn’t foresee a time when he would again write songs with Lennon.
It was front-page news in both the Beatles’ native U.K. and in the U.S. When a reporter called Lennon for a comment, Lennon retorted angrily: “Paul hasn’t left. I sacked him!”
The very next day, the Beatles’ latest single, “Let It Be,” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
By the end of that year, Paul had filed a suit to formally break up the Beatles’ legal partnership. The band did break up. And the four members went on to make more music.
Some of that music went on to be enormously successful: Over the next 20 years, ex-Beatles would score 42 Top-10 hits and 16 No. 1 hits.
The Beatles' Post Breakup Singles Chart History
