History of The Beatles: Encyclopedia II - History of The Beatles - Breakup

History of The Beatles - Breakup

On April 10, 1970, McCartney announced that the band had officially broken up. The cause of the breakup has been debated by fans and historians ever since that day, and ultimately they came up with several factors that could have easily contributed to the breakup. It is likely that the world will never know what caused the break-up, following are some theories.

History of The Beatles - The end of touring

On August 29, 1966, the Beatles played their final live concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. It was the concluding concert in a series of short tours in the summer of 1966 that had several unhappy incidents. Viewed in hindsight, the occurrences were perhaps not as grave as they seemed at the time, but for a band that had toured almost without negative incident throughout 1964 and 1965, the existence of troubles during their tours was a straw that broke the camel's back. Performing live was becoming a stressful chore rather than the satisfying experience it had been in their earlier days.

The problems started during their tour of Japan, where they were scheduled to play at the famous Budokan Hall, despite the large protests against it. The performance was in front of a very quiet audience. This was a change from the band's usual audience of screaming girls. (Ironically, the Beatles later complained that it was frustrating for them in their 1965 and 1966 tours to be perfoming their newer more sophisticated material in front of screaming fans that couldn't hear the music.) Due to the sudden ability to hear the band, it seemed that their ability to perform had degraded; a majority of the fans who have the bootleg of the show agree with this.

Only days later, the band went on tour in the Philippines. Problems started with the band being denied permission to leave the hotel by the police. Then, shortly after their concert, the First Lady Imelda Marcos 'invited' them to a social event for her family and friends; however, neither the band nor manager Brian Epstein had been informed of this invitation in advance, and Epstein sent away the guards sent to escort the band to the First Lady. This was perceived as a snub by Marcos.

The next morning the local newspaper headlines proclaimed that the Beatles had stood up the First Lady. Angry riots broke out as the band tried to escape the country, and drummer Ringo Starr received rib injuries trying to reach their airplane. Numerous other Beatles touring crew members were also injured. Their instruments were lost, they were 'taxed' all the money they were due to have received from their concert, and several members of the touring party were left behind in the airport scuffles.

After the band's summer tour of the US ended, George Harrison by some accounts informed Epstein that he was quitting the band. If this conversation did occur, his decision was obviously rescinded. The thought behind it may be attributed to the growing discontent arising from the conflict between the desire to create music and the technical limitations of playing music live in the mid-1960s owing to the primitive amplification equipment of the era. The Beatles decided to make a wholesale change in their lives.

Instead of continuing the standard pattern of an endless succession of recording and touring, they decided to give up live performance in favor of focusing on recording and other projects. Given the growing sophistication in their composing and recording, as evidenced by the albums "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver", they regarded this as a step forwards - an opportunity to devote whatever time was needed to creating music in the studio, without the usual pressures to record swiftly in order to meet commercial deadlines, or to have 'product' ready to promote on tour. The first results of this new philosophy were the single "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane" and their 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". The new music resulting from this commitment to spend unlimited time on creating music in the studio was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful.

The decision to give up live performance was quite a revolutionary step for successful musical performers in the 1960s, and was probably alarming to those who had a traditional view of how entertainers should conduct their careers. However the Beatles were clearly forging a new path as creative artists in which fulfilling their artistic urges was more important than toiling unhappily just because it was expected of them, or simply to make money. This approach was followed by many musical artists in the late 1960s and thereafter.

Eventually, the lack of live performance did lead to strains within the band. Paul McCartney in particular started to miss the positive aspects of playing live. This lead to conflicts, especially with George Harrison, who came to believe that the Beatles iconic status with pop fans was incompatible with the band being able to play live as serious musicians in the same way as some of the newer progressive rock bands. Harrison wanted the Beatles to be appreciated for their newer music. He felt that live performances would be marred by fans screaming for their 'moptop' era pop songs. McCartney, however, felt that the essence of the band lay in live performance. Lennon and Starr oscillated between support of McCartney's and Harrison's viewpoints. After the issue of a possible return to live performance first surfaced, in late 1968, there was never a time that all four Beatles were in agreement on the topic. This factor probably contributed to their eventual break-up.

History of The Beatles - Brian Epstein's death

On August 27, 1967, the group's longtime manager Brian Epstein died of an overdose of Carbitol, a sleeping pill.

This marked the end of an era for the band; he had kept them together through the years of touring, and kept them doing something. From the time of his death onwards, the band was mostly aimless and drifted apart as a power vacuum was left open for who decided what the Beatles did, and when. This resulted in a struggle between Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Lennon himself stated that this was a major factor in the breakup of the band in a series of interviews for Rolling Stone magazine (1970):

"We got fed up with being side men for Paul, after Brian died that's what began to happen to us you know ... after Brian died we collapsed. Paul took over and supposedly led us, but what is leading us when we went around in circles. We broke up then"

History of The Beatles - Apple Corps

The Beatles started their own company to handle their finances, Apple Corps, namely its record division Apple Records.

Shortly after its founding, due to the band's lack of experience at business matters, John Lennon announced it would go broke in six months. The level of work required to run the company resulted in a lot of stress, frustration, and fracturing of their friendships as the company wasted money almost nonstop.

When they decided to find someone experienced enough to run Apple, the band was divided. Paul McCartney wanted to hire Lee Eastman, but the other three wanted to hire The Rolling Stones' manager, the notorious Allen Klein. Klein won, but it was evidently too little and too late as the company stopped releasing records in 1975. Aside from the release of a few Beatles disks in the 1990s, the company remained unproductive.

History of The Beatles - The Get Back Sessions

In January of 1969, Paul McCartney came up with the idea for the band to spend hours in Twickenham Studios being filmed rehearsing material for what would become the Let It Be album. They originally planned a TV special, a live performance, and other things but these were never realized and after a month of work the original project ended in failure. The band was forced to work together as relationships strained to the breaking point, George Harrison's songs were thoroughly ignored, and at one point he stormed out of the sessions claiming he was quitting.

History of The Beatles - Neglect of George Harrison's songs

Often cited as a large factor of the breakup is when Lennon and McCartney limited Harrison's song contributions to one or two tracks per album. By 1967, Harrison was writing songs of finer quality than his earlier 1963-5 efforts. However Lennon and McCartney had been established as the group's primary songwriters since its earliest days - and they were astonishingly prolific. Though they acknowledged the considerable growth in the quality of Harrison's songwriting they continued to allocate him just a token presence on most Beatles records. The three tracks he was accorded on the 1966 album Revolver was an improvement on his average one-song per album.

An example of this is when Harrison contributed songs like "Hear Me Lord" and "Let It Down" during the 1969 Get Back sessions. The bootlegs show that he ran through the songs on a guitar a few times and then it was dropped when band members decided to do something else. A similar thing happened to "All Things Must Pass" when they performed it several times during the sessions and then completely dropped it.

Though he was only a very occasional composer - Ringo Starr was treated in a similar way, and he was given only rare opportunities to have any of his songs included. According to him, he had written "Don't Pass Me By" as shown by the Top Gear program on the BBC promoting A Hard Day's Night. The chatter introduction to "And I Love Her" includes an exchange between McCartney and Starr in which McCartney sings an early and unmistakable rendition of the song, as well as Starr chiding McCartney for promising to record it. He asked the band to record it every time a new album was recorded. It wasn't recorded until the White Album. Study of the Get Back session bootlegs reveals that the band expressed scant interest in another Starr song, "Octopus's Garden" finally recorded for Abbey Road.

Starr did not regard himself as a songwriter so the neglect of his occasional compositions was not a major issue to him. But Harrison, who had growing pride in his development as a songwriter became frustrated that Lennon and McCartney tended to still treat him as the 'baby' of the band and were not giving him the respect he believed he deserved as a songwriter.

History of The Beatles - Yoko Ono

Main article: Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono was Lennon's second wife, whom he had met at an art opening at the Indica Gallery in 1966. Her involvement in the breakup is extremely debatable. The only contact she had with the band was when Lennon took her into the band's recording sessions, when she calmly sat out of everyone's way. She would whisper criticisms of John's involvement in the group into his ear, encouraging his solo career. It is reported that Paul glared at her while recording the line, "Get Back" in the song "Get Back."

Some say her role in the breakup was how she "distracted" Lennon from being a Beatle when he fell in love with her. However, she is mentioned in the group's song "The Ballad of John and Yoko".

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Breakup", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki