The Truth Behind the Beatles’ Split, Revealed for the 100th Time

Who broke up the Beatles?

Was it Yoko Ono, the woman whose relationship with John Lennon has been blamed by fans and the press for decades?

Was it George Harrison and Ringo Starr, who were actually the first ones to (temporarily) quit before the real big split came?

Was it Allen Klein, the band’s new business manager who had a reputation for being unscrupulous and was hated by Paul McCartney?

Was it Paul McCartney, who made it public in 1970 that he was on a break from the band, and who subsequently sued his bandmates to dissolve the Beatles’ contractual partnership?

Well, this may be a surprise to some, but McCartney says McCartney is not to blame. In an upcoming BBC Radio 4 interview, the British Knight Bachelor claims that Lennon was the one responsible for the separation of the biggest band of all time.

“I didn’t instigate the split. That was our Johnny,” McCartney says in the interview, per BBC. “John walked into the room one day and said, ‘I’m leaving the Beatles.’ And he said, ‘It’s quite thrilling. It’s rather like a divorce.’ And then we were left to pick up the pieces.”

Lennon wanted to make a new life with Ono and “lie in bed for a week in Amsterdam for peace,” explains the 79-year-old rocker. According to CNN:

McCartney said Lennon's decision to leave the band was driven by his pursuit of social justice, including movements such as "bagism," where he and his wife, Yoko Ono, wore bags to urge people not to judge others based on their appearance.

And thank Lennon he made the right decision — bagism worked.

This is not the first time McCartney has attempted to correct the public narrative about who broke up the group. Here he is in 2012 saying it was Klein, in 2016 saying it was the business side, in 2018 saying it was Lennon, in 2020 saying he almost blamed himself, and later in 2020 saying it wasn’t him. We get it, Sir Paul. Maybe this time, with a little help from his friends in the media, it will stick.