When did John decide to leave The Beatles/what was the "final straw"?

My total BS take. John is a artist, John has insecurities, John loves the security of his gang (The Beatles). "Where are we going lads?... To the toppermost of the poppermost!". And they did. But to the artist in John, it was almost a sell out.

I don't think it was lost to the artist John. That underground favorite Bob Dylan, has hailed as an artist, and he didn't have to share any credit with other band members.
In the late 60''s John is doing a lot of stuff to expand his conscientious. He run's into Yoko. who is an artist. I think that John, rekindled his interest in being John Lennon artist, and not John Lennon Beatle. Add in all the Beatle business woes, the acromnity buidling in the Beatles, his drug use, quest for a simpler life. You have John ready to jettison John Lennon Beatle life for John Lennon Artist life.

Like I said in the beginning, this is my BS take.

 

Great word use there with “perfect storm”.

That term describes their creation, existence and break-up.

If the Beatles never existed, their story would be an incredible piece of fiction labeled as something that never could have happened.

 

I’m sorry, but your comments are severely flawed.

As someone pointed out before - they were not conventional albums.

There were basically no real Beatle solo albums before their demise.

It had zero to do with the fans not wanting solo albums.

 

Exactly. And, in fact, when they did start releasing solo albums (as documented above) they did just fine. Proving the fans did want their albums.

 

Actually Lennon's first singles Cold Turkey & Give Peace A Chance before the Beatles break up or announcement. Were pretty big hits, & remain iconic classics today.

So it could be a lot of people weren't interested in solo records. But obviously many people were & still are. Many Beatles solo albums have sold millions & millions of copies.

 

Just think of what a great album Paul could have made if he had had the confidence and working with George Martin, if it would have been “ok” to make a record as a solo artist. His debut is the result of someone who clearly wasn’t giving his A game because he probably felt he was not deserving of doing great work with all that was happening.

 

As is the case with Beatles product / Apple today, the band had a rule that they wouldn't do anything unless all four agreed to do it.

All four agreed not to make the break-up public.

Paul unilaterally made the break-up public.


I guess Paul didn't literally say he was quitting the band, but the one-page Q&A handout thing that came with (at least the first pressings of) the album (maybe in the U.S. only? it came with mine) included the following:

Q: "Did you miss the other Beatles and George Martin? Was there a moment when you thought, 'I wish Ringo were here for this break?'"

PAUL: "No."

...

Q: "Do you foresee a time when Lennon-McCartney becomes an active songwriting partnership again?"

PAUL: "No."


Sounds pretty much like he's quitting the band to me (and it was certainly taken that way at the time -- media all over was saying "The Beatles Break-Up").

Paul never made any statements down-playing / denying that.

.

 

John retired for five years.

He was planning a tour after the completion of "Milk and Honey"... including, I'm pretty sure, touring England (now that he had the legal status to return to the U.S.)

I was close at that time to the secretary of the President of Geffen Records.

She told me that John was making plans to tour -- but that he wanted to do smaller venues (like 1,500 - 3,000 seat theaters and not basketball arenas [i.e. 15,000 or so seats] that most big-name bands were doing at that time).

I think there are actually photos of John with someone who designed what the stage set-up would be (and drawings of the set-ups).

I was keeping up with the details of it with Geffen because I was hoping to work on it in some manner... any manner.

.

 

I find it preposterous to say John couldn't keep up with McCartney's work and that George's talents were near equal, catching up, thus John had to get out. As if he was no longer a standout leader in the Beatles. The Beatles were as they were, led by John and Paul....the gravy train they created, that the talented George and Ringo rode on, and were in no hurry to get off of... John just wanted to go another direction and was sick of Paul, they all were, the least maybe Ringo. John's solo work as a whole till the day he was killed, though inconsistent, still stacks up favorably with the other ex Beatles, many of us believe(maybe even in majority). John's work on Abbey Road/Let it be are vital to the quality of those albums. Let's not dismiss Lennon.

 

Dude the flugelhorn hook alone in Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey easily puts it on par with all of those songs.

I’ve always thought it is one of the biggest music faux pas of the 20th century that Paul’s Ram was panned, simply because Rolling Stone was looking for a goat, instead of being heralded as the genius master work that it is. It’s well documented that John grudgingly likes the album, or at least his obsession with parodying it would seem to point in that direction.

Oh there’s no ‘probably’ to it. Ringo himself confirms it in the George Harrison: Living In The Material World Documentary. “We have to thank Paul that we made as many records as we did... John and I...because we lived in the same area...we’d be hanging out...and the phone would ring and we’d always know it was him. He wants us to work!”

Maybe, but I think they were all tired in their own ways, and it was almost inevitable. John initiated it and Paul finished it. All Paul wanted was a commitment that the band was going to remain a band, and that Klein would not manage him, yet even those things would not be guaranteed. Everything was up in the air, and no one likes to remain uncertain for long. When the man who champions the Beatles is forced to give up, that’s when you know the situation is cracked beyond repair.

 

Say what you will about Paul timing his announcement of quitting The Beatles with the release of McCartney, but I always thought his idea of putting his little "self interview" in with the promo copies of the LP was brilliant.

"It'll be funny if fifty years from now people will be saying, 'Why did The Beatles break up? Because Yoko sat on an amp...'" - Paul McCartney, January 13 1969

Gotta admit, though, with putting out an album like Some Time In New York City Lennon came dangerously close to committing total artistic suicide...his career never really recovered from that one. I think people sort of expected George and Ringo to put out some mediocre solo material on occasion- I reckon people expected more from Lennon. STINYC certainly wasn't it...

 

Perhaps your observations are colored just slightly, with the bias of a dedicated McCartney fan.

We're all entitled to our opinions & passion. But maybe you're offering some personal opinions as if they were factual rather than personal.

Biggest musical faux pas of the 20th century !!!

So you like the vocal harmonies on Long Haired Lady, The depth of Monkberry Moon Delight & the lyrical brilliance of Three Legs & the dirty feet line in Smile Away ?

I love Ram personally, like millions of other people. It's great to see passionate posts from fans speaking their hearts & minds. But I detect a wee bit of fanboy bias there imo. Pizzas here gotta run

 

Well said.

But how many live shows or tours did he play BEFORE HE RETIRED FOR FIVE YEARS?

Didn't he once in the early 70''s have a plan for some sort of tour with a ocean liner?

 

Five, I believe- the John Sinclair and Attica benefit concerts in '71, the Madison Square Garden "One To One" shows (afternoon/evening performances) in '72 and his walk on with Elton John in '74.

Something like that, read it in one Lennonbook or another (as I recall he was pitching the idea to Eric Clapton). Of course, Lennon was also planning on touring the States in '72 before Nixon and his homeboys put the kibosh on those plans.

 

Harrison and Lennon's albums from 1970 were released too late in the year to make a 'top selling albums of the year' list. Harrison's album was #1 in a dozen countries reached #18 for 1971 best sellers, was nominated for 2 1972 Grammys and has sold at least 6 million. Yet he nor Lennon who had "Instant Karma" as a major hit and 2 top 40's in "Give Peace a Chance" and "Cold Turkey" ever felt the need to use a fake press release to mention the Beatles at all.

Ringo had 2 solo albums and didn't feel the need to use the Beatles name for promotion.

I still think McCartney did it on purpose hinting it was over enough so the press would jump on it because he was upset that John had George on "Instant Karma!" The timeline indicates it's not a coincidence that as "Instant Karma!" just hit the airwaves and hit #3 US that Paul all of a sudden had to have his solo album out with a fake press release and promo video released. He also was aware like on Abbey Road that a name need not be on an album cover for it to sell-he knew people would know it was Paul's album-also since its named McCartney.

A fake interview that doesn't quite indicate a break up the band was just enough for the media and the fans-every saw it as done on purpose to break up the band and the fans and critics all blamed Paul. He was the bad guy hence going into another depression during 1970 and once the court stuff started. He has said himself that he was considered the bad guy in interviews. As time went on, the blame went to Yoko and people still blame her too.

Still, maybe it was the right time to be over.

 

Yeah. The closest Paul could come was a bowl of cherries.

 

i agree but as i said earlier it was a non quit quit so he could argue he wasn't breaking any promise, however - and here is the rub - the others were hurt by him by doing what he did without telling them

 

Months before Paul's solo album came out, John unilaterally told journalist Ray Connelly the Beatles were over, in hopes that Ray would publish it. And months before Paul's solo album came out, in that famous interview he gave to Life Magazine after it tracked him down in Scotland, Paul said "the Beatles thing is over." That news got buried in the "Paul is Alive" silliness. But the fact is: Both of them had already revealed the news to journalists well before Paul's album Q&A came out.

And yes, the band's rule was that they wouldn't do anything unless all four agreed to it. But John was the first to break that rule by signing unilaterally with Klein. Plenty of unilateral action was going on at this time among all of them. To suggest that it was all on Paul's side is nonsense.

 

Probably when Yoko told him to.

 

As I've noted in the previous post: John did NOT hold to that agreement. In the months before Paul's solo debut, Lennon told journalist Ray Connelly the band was over. Connelly tells the famous story about how -- after the press made a huge deal about Paul's Q&A comments -- Lennon called to give Ray **** about why he hadn't published the story about the Beatles breaking up when Lennon had told him the news. So clearly John wanted to break the agreement sneakily by using the press.

He absolutely was ambivalent or he would have filed suit to dissolve the band himself. After all, John had no problem at all deciding to sign with Klein unilaterally. But John stopped short of ending things when he had months to do so.

 

How did they end? Well. I mean, there are a lot of, um, facets to this, a lot of interested parties.

In other words, it was a combination of a number of factors. To be sure it was not any one thing, and how those factors looked to say Paul were not the same as they looked to say George, and same for John.

Ftr I am a Lennon fan most of all. But and despite my agreement that he most likely was not clear in wanting to end the band, he did several things that would lead a reasonable person to question whether he did, and whether it was realistic to think it could and would go on in a way that would work. These included bringing Yoko in and insisting that be accepted, which clearly was changing the terms of the partnership. The heroin, which can't be underestimated - it affected both Lennon's behavior and perception but also the perception of the others, especially McCartney, of him. Lennon's interest in again touring also was a point of friction with Harrison. And there were creative differences, such as was notoriously in evidence with a piece like Revolution #9.

I think it all goes back to the decision not to tour anymore, which over time the Beatles individually felt differently about, and then Brian Epstein's death. His death shook them, and on a certain level showed them and meant that they were subject to major disruption, and in turn this led to the (again cannot be underestimated) fights over Allan Klein and the Eastmans. It also was related to the whole Apple thing, which was their group decision, venturing into the business side, as well as the boutique, and these were not unqualified successes to say the least.

I personally don't like the effect Yoko had on John. But one has to remember that Paul's personal life was also in flux leading into this period, ending his relationship with Jane Asher, to whom he had been engaged, and then starting up with Linda Eastman. George's personal life was hardly a model of consistency, either.

On the other hand I DON"T think such factors as George's increasing facility writing songs, or the timing of Paul's release of his solo album, were all that significant as factors. On the former I highly doubt that John felt threatened by George's songs. I mean really? Paul's timing I tend to be generous about, since while he may have been wrong to think so, it was certainly reasonable for him to think that John was not going to stay in the group, and that the financial and management angles were not going to be worked out.

 

I find it vaguely amusing the way STINYC so closely resembles the word 'stink'

 

Actually the Get Back project was to rehearse songs for a concert that would then have become the next album.

There was no Get Back film involved, just a TV documentary about the rehearsals.

This of course doesn't invalidate the point you were making that Paul wanted to play.

George was the one who no longer wanted to play in public, not Paul.

 

Brian had the ability to insulate the group for the business aspects of things. Suddenly, with him not there anymore, the band had to deal with the "business" of the Beatles in addition to the creative side. This created pressures on the band that had never existed within the band before. Financial concerns, interacting with record labels, hiring and firing staff were things that the band never had responsibility for and now they had to take on for the sake of their survival. Add to those things, the personal relationships [both within the band and significant others] changing, John's heroin addiction, John's lack of interest in the group, and George's wanting to get more of his songs out... It's a great recipe for implosion of the partnership.

It's no wonder Paul wanted to turn to someone "in the family" because without Brian, it made sense to him to get someone they could trust in the position to handle the business/management. John & George were apparently persuaded to go with Klein because of his work with the Stones, and how he increased their royalty rates. I believe Ringo went with the [John & George] majority. [I think he expressed somewhere that he didn't have a strong opinion about it, but I could be wrong.]

In terms of business management [post-breakup going forward], I think Paul turned out to be the most naturally astute at this in the long run. George seemed to do alright also, aside from issues with film production partners. John leaned heavily on Yoko to manage the business of his solo years. But being thrust into the business/management world in the midst of being in "the biggest band in the world" must have been an amazing pressure cooker..! Is it any wonder the band cracked under the pressure?

Amazingly, throughout all this [with the possible exception of Let It Be] the music never suffered!

 

I agree with this except for the last part. To be clear I have no firm conclusion on whether it was related to their coming demise, or something else. But the run from the beginning of the White Album to the end had several problematic elements that do in fact at least raise the question whether friction in the band was affecting their music.