In terms of when they announced it to the world, The Beatles officially broke up in April 1970. That was a bit of a feint, as John Lennon had announced he was leaving the group at a band meeting in late 1969. Even before that, occasional blowups led to temporary departures by members of the group. One of them even happened while the cameras were rolling. In 1969, a fed-up George Harrison split after an in-studio dust-up with Paul McCartney.
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Mounting Problems
Paul McCartney dreamed up the project that resulted in the album Let It Be (along with the film of the same name) as a way of bringing The Beatles back together. Tensions during the making of The White Album in 1968 often led to individual members recording songs on their own with little input from the others.
By forcing the band to all be in the same room together, rehearsing and recording songs from scratch, McCartney hoped that the band might somehow recapture their lost camaraderie. But the pressure of performing while constantly being filmed only ended up exacerbating tensions.
John Lennon put on a good face for the cameras. But he was already thinking of a life away from The Beatles with Yoko Ono. Meanwhile, George Harrison was feeling frustrated about not getting many songwriting opportunities within the group. And his patience with Paul McCartney’s overbearing ways was starting to wear thin.
Out to Lunch
On January 10, 1969, with the sessions only about a week old, The Beatles were working on a song when McCartney began to make suggestions to George Harrison about his guitar-playing. With the new album’s setup, Harrison hoped that he’d have more freedom to play what he wanted. That wasn’t the case. He began to go back and forth with McCartney as the cameras rolled, saying that he need not play at all if that’s what was decided.
Harrison didn’t get up and bolt out the door at that moment. But when the band took their lunch break, he quietly snuck out with hardly a word to his bandmates. When he went home, Harrison wrote the cathartic song “Wah-Wah”, which would eventually end up on his 1970 solo album All Things Must Pass.
The three remaining Beatles went back to work in the afternoon, mostly playing loud, crashing blues. Yoko Ono even sang impromptu wailing vocals during the sessions. John Lennon suggested that The Beatles hire Eric Clapton to take Harrison’s place.
George Harrison’s Return
After the fact, George Harrison compared the icy atmosphere among The Beatles to what he’d recently experienced visiting The Band in Woodstock. The give-and-take among The Band was a far cry from what he was experiencing with The Fab Four. Nonetheless, he was convinced to return for a band meeting.
At that meeting, it was decided that the band would move the rehearsals out of the film studios and into a proper recording studio. The Beatles continued the Let It Be project, although they’d largely abandon it after recording was complete. Tapes of the sessions languished for almost a year before the album was released.
By that time, the band had officially called it quits. When fans witnessed the Let It Be film and saw Harrison and McCartney sniping with guitars in their hands, they had a pretty good indication of why it had ended.
Photo by John Downing/Getty Images
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