They can’t work it out: It was Friday, April 10, 1970 and Paul McCartney was about to blow up The Beatles
50 years after The Beatles split, experts hail the enduring legacy of the Fab Four while fans remember how mop tops conquered Scotland and then the world
It was the one-word, two-letter answer heard around the world.
“No”, replied Paul McCartney, after being asked if he would ever write songs with John Lennon again.
The question and his terse, incendiary reply, included in a press statement issued 50 years ago, would spell the end of the Fab Four, the biggest band in the world. As fans lamented, The Beatles split.
But, if half a century ago, on April 10, 1970, the band ended, their influence and legacy was only just beginning.
“Their enduring popularity is almost mystifying,” said Beatles expert Ken McNab. “They are one of those bands who cross all generational barriers. They still have millions of downloads and streams every year and the biggest selling vinyl album in 2019 was Abbey Road, which was incredible.
“For cultural influence and longevity of song, they are out on their own. They changed the world for the better, a world where the Second World War was still on people’s minds.
“They transformed the ’60s from monochrome to colour, making the world a happier place for everyone.”
It was while promoting his solo album that Paul McCartney revealed he was no longer working with the group.
In reality, the Fab Four had fractured some months earlier, after recording the Abbey Road album, when John Lennon said he was out but there had been no definitive, irrevocable announcement.
With hindsight, the interview issued by McCartney in a press release was not absolutely, conclusively ruling out a reformation, but that is how it was reported.
The band who hurtled out of Liverpool via Hamburg to conquer the world, had taken Scotland early in their career. For The Beatles, especially Lennon and McCartney, the 1960s began here and ended here.
“The band toured here in 1960 and it was the first time they had been away from Liverpool,” explained Ken, who has written two bestselling books, And In The End, about the group’s final year, and The Beatles In Scotland.
“They toured with Johnny Gentle, essentially as his backing band, playing places like Alloa, Keith and Forres. It gave them a taste for being on the road and being asked for autographs for the first time. Gentle saw their potential.
“They mingled with locals and people have never forgotten meeting them, even it was a couple of years before they knew who they were. They played about 30 concerts in Scotland between 1960 and 1965.”
Lennon, raised in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool, by his maternal aunt Mimi Smith, was no stranger to the Highlands. Every summer as a child, he had holidayed in Durness with his cousin Stan Parkes and his family.
“He loved it, because Liverpool was a grimy, post-war industrial city at the time and here he had unending views of fields and mountains,” said Ken. “It helped fire his imagination and he often spoke war about it. He and Yoko had a holiday h in 1969. He wanted to show her all h old haunts but he was a horrendous driver and ended up in Lawson Memorial Hospital in Golspie, after crashing his car near Tongue.
“Stan and John were very close, like brothers, and Stan was under strict instruction to send John certa Scottish things after he’d moved to New York, including The Broons annuals. He loved their surreal hum
“Paul, of course, bought a farm on the Mull of Kintyre and relocating th
saved him from a nervous breakdown when The Beatles ended.”
Ken doesn’t apportion blame to anyone in particular for the band’s demise which so devastated fans.
“They had been mushroom-grown in a hothouse for 10 years and, by 1969, still in their 20s, they had gone through all of this change,” he continued.
“It’s natural that people’s lives change. Trying to survive and endure the maelstrom would have been difficult for all of them. They had business difficulties with their company, Apple, and had already lost their manager,Brian Epstein, so from a business and management sense, they were a rudderless ship.
“Lennon wanted Allen Klein, who was a fearsome individual in rock and roll circles, as manager, while McCartney favoured his father-in-law Lee Eastman, an entertainment lawyer, to represent them. Over the months, the breach became a chasm and allayed to this, their personal lives were becoming estranged, too.
“The wheels were coming off and the Let It Be recording in January, 1969, was a miserable experience. Amazingly, they regrouped to record Abbey Road, a last love letter to the world and a brilliant swansong, especially considering what was happening on the sidelines. But by the time it was completed, Lennon had had enough.”
Five decades after John, Paul, George and Ringo went their separate ways, Ken expects music lovers’ fascination with the Fab Four to last long into this century. He said: “I think it’s more than possible we will still be talking about The Beatles in another 50 years, and how many other bands can you say that about?”