Why Did The Beatles Break Up? The True Story Of Who Left The Band First

Paul McCartney was the first to announce the end of The Beatles

With Lennon now doing his own thing with his own project The Plastic Ono Band, McCartney was secretly recording his debut solo album under the pseudonym “Billy Martin”. Meanwhile, John had enlisted producer Phil Spector to do something with the "Get Back" tapes from the previous year - the resulting album offended McCartney by taking his songs and adding what he claimed was a lot of unnecessary orchestration.

With the album and film - now titled Let It Be - completed, it was added to the Apple Records schedule, but McCartney thought his solo album should take precedence. The others disagreed. After a huge argument, John, George and Ringo backed down and McCartney (the album) was finally released on 17th April 1970 - but the damage had already been done.

Rather than conduct interviews for his album, McCartney composed a Q&A press release. “Do you foresee a time when Lennon/McCartney becomes an active songwriting partnership again?” asked one question. Paul replied: “No.”

The Daily Mirror broke the news on the morning of 10 April: “PAUL QUITS THE BEATLES”. Lennon was riled because he'd wanted to announce the band had split over six months earlier.

He had his revenge at the end of the year when he gave a lengthy interview to Rolling Stone magazine, which tore down all the Beatles myths: “You had to be a bastard to make it and The Beatles were the biggest bastards on the earth," he snarled. He also ripped into his bandmates’ attitude towards Yoko: “They all sat there like a f**king jury and judged us… I’ll never forgive them”.

McCartney tried to avoid any public slanging matches, but still wrote to the letters page of the Melody Maker to say: "In order to put out of its misery the limping dog of a news story which has been dragging itself across your pages for the past year, my answer to the question 'Will The Beatles get together again?' …is no.”