The Beatles were this huge entity so it was hard to get anything "you" wanted to do through. They had to live up to what people thought the Beatles were, take any of their first and early solo work and there is no way you could get this into a Beatle record for the most part, and that is what they had been doing just operating seperately and putting what they wanted to do in, case in point "The White Album" where everyone got their way and their songs on the album. In bands where you have most members are head strong and really could do their own albums, there is always going to be fighitng the problem was back then there was no outlet, like today a band does a record then someone goes off does a solo one then one is part of another group and then they come back and do a record, the beatles were doing multiple records a year, todays artists are lucky if they can get part 2 or 3 in a 10 year span.

Twenty-years ago, on the forum of Acoustic Guitar Magazine there was a furious debate on why the Beatles went their separate ways; the debate got so contentious, AG had to shut-down the thread. I'll say what I said then.

I think breaking up...breaking up this band wasn't an easy thing to do. I suspect all of the Beatles knew, as a band of musicians they had said and made the music they wanted to... as artist their collaboration had ran its course. Yet walking away from their shared history probably a scary. Maybe it was easier, convenient to blame different political viewpoints, supposedly conflicts between spouses, between John, George, or Paul. Its possible the member's of the Beatles found it very difficult to be straight-up and say, "Look man I'm done, I want to do other things, I want to go my own way."

Hence the dramtic, messy break-up

TD3 said:

Twenty-years ago, on the forum of Acoustic Guitar Magazine there was a furious debate on why the Beatles went their separate ways; the debate got so contentious, AG had to shut-down the thread. I'll say what I said then.

I think breaking up...breaking up this band wasn't an easy thing to do. I suspect all of the Beatles knew, as a band of musicians they had said and made the music they wanted to... as artist their collaboration had ran its course. Yet walking away from their shared history probably a scary. Maybe it was easier, convenient to blame different political viewpoints, supposedly conflicts between spouses, between John, George, or Paul. Its possible the member's of the Beatles found it very difficult to be straight-up and say, "Look man I'm done, I want to do other things, I want to go my own way."

Hence the dramtic, messy break-up

I agree with this post.

If you know anything about human behavior and human psychology, you should know that the Beatles
breaking up was not going to be a smooth operation with no hard feelings exchanged between parties.

A band I tried so hard to get in to but never could

This remains the sole Beatles track I ever liked. I think this is a Harrison track?

^

Yes, it is a Harrison track with Eric Clapton on lead guitar.

And, I feel you on not being able to get into the Beatles; their hype can be too much to overcome
sometimes. I didn't start appreciating them until I was in my late 20s.

MickyDolenz said:

Bla bla bla. Who said Martin was a member of the Beatles? Last December got what I was talking about.

[Edited 11/26/17 14:55pm]

Holy moley, a MickeyDolenz post in the default font. Surely one sign of the upcoming apocalypse!

RodeoSchro said:

MickyDolenz said:

Bla bla bla. Who said Martin was a member of the Beatles? Last December got what I was talking about.

[Edited 11/26/17 14:55pm]

Holy moley, a MickeyDolenz post in the default font. Surely one sign of the upcoming apocalypse!

. . . and it didn't list 40 songs by 40 artists without any one mentioning of the 238,6969 random
factoids Micky has stored in his/her brain concerning the history of 843,082,127 recording artists

s/he knows!

A group of young, talented human beings became richer and more famous than anyone at that time not named Elvis Presley could fathom.

When viewed in that context, the numerous accounts of the breakup each seem plausible.

Accomplishing what they did and being together since kids, they just grew apart. Throw in fame, money, drugs, and woman...forget about it.

John Lennon is singing background on "My Sweet Lord", and I know Ringo played drums and George the guitar on a track or two from the Imagne album. That tells me all I need to know about Paul McCartney. Just my not-so-Beatles-educated opinion....

UncleJam said:

John Lennon is singing background on "My Sweet Lord", and I know Ringo played drums and George the guitar on a track or two from the Imagne album. That tells me all I need to know about Paul McCartney. Just my not-so-Beatles-educated opinion....

An excerpt from the article:


So the Beatles ended, never to gather again in the lifetimes of these men. Lennon, Harrison and Starr
played together in various configurations over the years, though only rarely did they record with
McCartney; once, when Eric Clapton married Harrison's former wife, Pattie Boyd, Paul, George and
Ringo played live for a few impromptu minutes. Also, once, John and Paul played music together at
somebody's Los Angeles studio in 1974, and Paul took a significant role in reuniting John and Yoko
when they were separated during that same period. Lennon and McCartney, the most important
songwriting team in history, repaired their friendship somewhat over the years, though they stayed
distant and circumspect, and never wrote together again.

There seems to be a lot of anti-Paul sentiments in this thread but if you read the article, it was mostly
Lennon's hang-ups with being unable to reconcile his gifts with McCartney's which lead to the break
up while McCartney was the one who was trying to keep the band together.

There are no bad guys here; each Beatle is an equally sympathetic whilst being condemnable figure
in their combined narrative.

Dasein said:

UncleJam said:

John Lennon is singing background on "My Sweet Lord", and I know Ringo played drums and George the guitar on a track or two from the Imagne album. That tells me all I need to know about Paul McCartney. Just my not-so-Beatles-educated opinion....

An excerpt from the article:


So the Beatles ended, never to gather again in the lifetimes of these men. Lennon, Harrison and Starr
played together in various configurations over the years, though only rarely did they record with
McCartney; once, when Eric Clapton married Harrison's former wife, Pattie Boyd, Paul, George and
Ringo played live for a few impromptu minutes. Also, once, John and Paul played music together at
somebody's Los Angeles studio in 1974, and Paul took a significant role in reuniting John and Yoko
when they were separated during that same period. Lennon and McCartney, the most important
songwriting team in history, repaired their friendship somewhat over the years, though they stayed
distant and circumspect, and never wrote together again.

There seems to be a lot of anti-Paul sentiments in this thread but if you read the article, it was mostly
Lennon's hang-ups with being unable to reconcile his gifts with McCartney's which lead to the break
up while McCartney was the one who was trying to keep the band together.

There are no bad guys here; each Beatle is an equally sympathetic whilst being condemnable figure
in their combined narrative.

[Edited 11/29/17 8:06am]

The Beatles broke up? When? I thought they were lovers, not fighters.

nonesuch said:

The Beatles broke up? When? I thought they were lovers, not fighters.

Those were Michael and Paul, it didn't last though.

MickyDolenz said:

I've read a lot of Beatles books and I've understood that the group pretty much broke up when Brian Epstein died. Just a slow demise. I think Allen Kline was more a factor in the breakup than Yoko. The others also got fed up with Paul's bossiness. I think that's probably why Wings never had a steady lineup.

i could see that, i watched a vid of paul doing a recording with Elvis' early sidemen, scotty moore and DJ Fontana, he was being pretty overbearing. It pissed me off, if he was talking to some run of the mill musician i could get it but he's talking to men who laid groundwork for his stupid ass. overall a good man but like a lot of good men, his ego is out of fucking control.

DaveT said:

I've heard stories that Lennon was a bit of an a*sehole off stage.

Decent song writer but never understood all the fuss about him. Imagine no possessions ... yeah, from behind the seat of your massive piano in your massive mansion. Probably not the easiest bloke to be in a band with.

he was definitely abrasive, especially when he was imbibed with drug or drink. George Martin once mentioned how he hadn't ever forgiven John for some of the things he'd said in an interview, when you consider how much of a gentleman Martin was, that tells you what an asshole John could be.

at any rate, i look at bands like that and just tell people "i don't want a band" when they want to work with me. They never work, i don't even understand why completely. You don't like someone? well, hell, people work with people they hate all the goddamned time for a lot less money and glory than these bands make. But I don't like other musicians, just too many headaches. Springsteen broke up his legendary band for a good 10 years just because he was tired of all the headaches.

TrivialPursuit said:

DaveT said:

I've heard stories that Lennon was a bit of an a*sehole off stage.

Decent song writer but never understood all the fuss about him. Imagine no possessions ... yeah, from behind the seat of your massive piano in your massive mansion. Probably not the easiest bloke to be in a band with.

Careful - that's a bit of the attitude Mark David Chapman had about Lennon. And we see how that ended. MDC saw Lennon as blasphemous when it came to religion. He was a new born-again Christian and became infuriated about Lennon saying The Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ, and saw Lennon as a hypocrite. Not saying you're like MDC. Just making a conversation note. Anyhoo...

Music is meant to provoke and inspire the listener. Lennon had ideas about his own utopic vision of the world, but no logical person would expect him to be poor and living in a van down by the river to be the visual aid. But it doesn't mean he was a hypocrite either.

The fuss about Lennon was his alternative view of the world. You have to remember that by the time Th Beatles broke up and Lennon was doing bed-ins or whatever, the U.S. had come out of two very harsh wars (Vietnam ending in 1975), a Cuban missile crisis, and the Cold War was still going strong. Children were still learning emergency routines in school should the bomb hit U.S. soil. Lennon's idea of peace was radical but well received by the hippies and draft-dodgers of the 60s and 70s. Lennon, like others who did not have a voice and platform, saw the ridiculousness battles and conflicts based on land, religion, or whatever. He wanted people to at least consider peace rather than war.

I believe that, had he lived, he would have shifted to either local government or been a civil rights leader or some sort of activist to an even greater extent in the U.S. Bono sort of took that mantle on his own eventually, but I think Lennon would have been a greater influence.

Lennon & McCartney were alphas and no doubt butted heads.

people are just people, none of us live up to our own ideals all the time. I think chapman shot him because he was psychotic wasn't he? He was a fan after all and had gotten his autograph earlier, ironically because John had enough humanity not to live in fear, a scene in his docu illustrates this where he invites some wackjob in for dinner. Not too many men in his shoes would do that, Prince sure never would.

fucking yoko may have been only one factor but she was a rather dislikable one for sure. However, i think the fans hating her just hate anyone or anything coming between they and their hero. same thing with Prince and mayte/manuela/larry graham. fans are just that, fanatics, they want an artist all to themselves.

lastdecember said:

Dasein said:

Yes, LD, "still this debate" (even though I don't really see any debating going on). It is a topic - how
the Beatles broke up - that will never die as long as the Beatles remain the most influential recording
band of all time. We all know that the Lennon/McCartney songwriting tandem was mostly just a
naming convention rather than an accurate description of the songwriting process, but the article goes
a long way to establish that yes, it was more than just Lennon's jealousy, the band's chafing at
McCartney's aspirations to be "band leader", the problems the band had with managing their money
and business interests, and how Starr left first, to return, with Harrison leaving and returning, then
Lennon bailing out to McCartney finally bowing out as well and refusing to consider reuniting while the
other three held out hopes for it.

While reading it, I felt myself becoming incensed with Yoko Ono and John Lennon meaning this nar-
rative still resonates with me . . . and I was born in 1978!

So it may still not be a debate so to speak though it always seems to revert back to Yoko Ono broke them up when I think this band was ready to end it in 67,68. I would say around the time of SGT PEPPER when you had one member saying this album is not my cup of tea and another saying it was genius and anoter not really caring and another just putting what he wanted on it. They were growing tired of it, they showed this when they stopped touring that they did not want to deal with the screaming girls and crap like that, they may have respected Elvis and that era but they did not think he was a great artist at all. We can watch the Let It Be film and see a band that really does not want to be there, members fighting, one giving orders and one saying "whatever you want I'll di it" in fact Harrison calling going into the studio with them "the winter of discontent" and very unpleasant. So I cant pin this on ONE guy one gig one fight it was a collective ending, they were lucky and smart not to ever reform because closing the book with Abbey Road was a genius move that they probably did not plan but it worked.

paul still is jealous of john, and he's still does things to show that he's not a man moved easily by sentiment. he didn't show at the rock and roll hall of fame induction because of some stupid shit which I never could find out what it was. these guys, millions of dollars, fame, power and still bitching about shit, something is wrong with that picture. anyway, paul is an egoist, didn't he fight to get lennon mcartney reversed to mccartney lennon? just 50 years of petty shit. i like the guy but that side of him i don't. the only one i can say i really love without any of those things is Ringo, nothing objectionable about Ringo, just a nice wonderful guy.

Dasein said:

UncleJam said:

John Lennon is singing background on "My Sweet Lord", and I know Ringo played drums and George the guitar on a track or two from the Imagne album. That tells me all I need to know about Paul McCartney. Just my not-so-Beatles-educated opinion....

An excerpt from the article:


So the Beatles ended, never to gather again in the lifetimes of these men. Lennon, Harrison and Starr
played together in various configurations over the years, though only rarely did they record with
McCartney; once, when Eric Clapton married Harrison's former wife, Pattie Boyd, Paul, George and
Ringo played live for a few impromptu minutes. Also, once, John and Paul played music together at
somebody's Los Angeles studio in 1974, and Paul took a significant role in reuniting John and Yoko
when they were separated during that same period. Lennon and McCartney, the most important
songwriting team in history, repaired their friendship somewhat over the years, though they stayed
distant and circumspect, and never wrote together again.

There seems to be a lot of anti-Paul sentiments in this thread but if you read the article, it was mostly
Lennon's hang-ups with being unable to reconcile his gifts with McCartney's which lead to the break
up while McCartney was the one who was trying to keep the band together.

There are no bad guys here; each Beatle is an equally sympathetic whilst being condemnable figure
in their combined narrative.