Highlights
- The Beatles became one of the best-selling music acts of all time, but their success didn't last long as they quickly split after John Lennon quit the band.
- Lennon's departure from the band was influenced by money issues, the death of their former manager, and creative issues with his bandmates, particularly due to his relationship with Yoko Ono, which created a rift.
- Paul McCartney chose not to continue with The Beatles after Lennon's departure as the emotional pain and exhaustion from the breakup made it impossible for the band to carry on. McCartney also underestimated the songwriting abilities of George Harrison, who later wrote some of the greatest songs ever.
The Beatles are one of the biggest rock bands of all time. With 12 studio albums, 5 live albums, 51 compilation albums, 36 extended plays (EPs), and 63 singles, many of which became massive hits. In fact, the Beatles are considered the best-selling music act of all time, with estimated sales of over 600 million records across the world. Despite their success, The Beatles didn’t stick together for long.
After John Lennon quit the band, The Beatles quickly separated. All four members of The Beatles went on to have successful careers as solo artists afterward. But did the remaining members of the band ever consider continuing without Lennon? Well, in a recent interview, Paul McCartney revealed why he never attempted to keep The Beatles going after Lennon’s departure.
Why Did John Lennon Split From The Beatles?
John Lennon split from The Beatles in 1969, when the band was still at the peak of their career. However, Lennon’s departure wasn’t made public at the time since the band still had to release their album Abbey Road later that year. Even though it became their highest-grossing album of all time, Lennon maintained his decision and left the band.
At the time, Lennon quoted money issues, their former manager’s death, and creative issues with his bandmates as the cause for his split from the Beatles. However, years later, Paul McCartney revealed that Lennon’s relationship with Yoko Ono played a huge role in the band’s ultimate break up.
“[She was] an interference in the workplace,” Paul revealed on his podcast, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics. “We had a way we worked. The four of us worked with George Martin, an engineer, and that was basically it. And we’d always done it like that.”
McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr believed that Yoko was interfering with their creative process. Ultimately, this created a huge rift between the band members.
A year after Lennon quit the band, McCartney filed for the dissolution of The Beatles’ contractual partnership. However, this decision was met with legal difficulties and internal fights, including McCartney suing his bandmates. Because of this, the band couldn’t dissolve their contract until 1974.
Paul McCartney Was “Hurting Too Much” To Continue With The Beatles After John Lennon Quit
The Beatles disbanded shortly after John Lennon quit the band. Given that they were still fairly popular, it would have made sense for the band to continue on without one of its members. So, why didn’t they do it?
In a recent interview for The Howard Stern Show, Paul McCartney finally revealed why he didn’t try to keep the Beatles going after Lennon’s departure from the band. "The thing is, Howard, that's like a family. When families break up, it's to do with the emotion and the emotional pain," McCartney admitted. "You're hurting too much, and so it wasn't going to happen. We'd been through too much and I think we were just fed up with the whole thing." In fact, Lennon’s exit from the Beatles was so emotionally draining that McCartney considered quitting music altogether after The Beatles split up.
During the interview, McCartney admitted that he didn’t continue with the band partly because he underestimated his remaining bandmates, thinking that they wouldn’t be as successful without Lennon's ability to make music.
"It was easy to underestimate George because me and John, like you said, had always written most of the stuff and it had most of the singles," McCartney explained. "George was a late bloomer, as far as writing was concerned. He wasn't that interested in the beginning. But then he started to get interested — and boy did he bloom. He wrote some of the greatest songs ever."
Did Ringo Starr And George Harrison Agree With Paul McCartney’s Decision Not To Continue With The Beatles?
Paul McCartney made no attempt to continue The Beatles’ legacy after John Lennon quit the band, but what about George Harrison or Ringo Starr? Well, it seems that neither of them wanted to go on with The Beatles, given that both Harrison and Starr had quit the band before Lennon’s ultimate departure.
In Get Back, Disney+’s documentary about how The Beatles’ creative process to create their last album, Let It Be, George Harrison is seeing leaving the recording studio and saying "I'm leaving the band now."
As the guitarist revealed in The Beatles Anthology, a previous documentary about the band, this wasn’t the first instance of a member taking a break from The Beatles. "Everybody had gone through that. Ringo had left at one point. I know John wanted out. It was a very, very difficult, stressful time, and being filmed having a row as well was terrible. I got up and I thought, 'I'm not doing this any more. I'm out of here,'" Harrison explained.
Ringo Starr also opened up about why he temporarily quit the group in 1968 in this documentary. "I left because I felt two things: I felt I wasn't playing great, and I also felt that the other three were really happy and I was an outsider... I went to see John... I said, 'I'm leaving the group because I'm not playing well and I feel unloved and out of it, and you three are really close.'”
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