THE REAL REASON BEATLES BROKE UP!
New book blames Lennon and Yoko
THE Rolling Stones have played together for seven decades, so why did the Beatles — who began about the same time — split up after just seven years, seven months and 24 days?
Now, in a warts-baring book, All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words, former band aide Peter Brown and writer Steven Gaines reveal too-fast fame and bitter bickering destroyed the beloved rock band, ending their spectacular hit-making run on April 10, 1970.
Bandmate George Harrison, who died at 58 in 2001, later admitted their success “became too much to live with. We kept realizing we were getting bigger and bigger until we all realized we couldn’t go anywhere. You couldn’t pick up a paper or turn on a radio or TV without seeing yourself.”
The bandmates later bitterly complained about their former leader John Lennon, who had become henpecked by strong-willed wife Yoko Ono.
Harrison trashed Lennon, calling him a “piece of s**t. He’s so negative about everything. He’s become so nasty.”
Paul McCartney, who’d been boyhood pals with Lennon and co-wrote hits like I Want to Hold Your Hand, Eleanor Rigby and A Day in the Life, resented the bond Lennon had forged with Yoko, the book claims.
Yoko wed John a year before the group’s split and turned him into a demanding diva, says the author.
“The way to get their friendship is to do everything the way they require it,” McCartney complained. “To do anything else is how to not get their friendship.
“I know that if I absolutely lie down on the ground and just do everything like they say and laugh at all their jokes and don’t expect my jokes to ever get laughed at, if I’m willing to do all that, then we can be friends.”
Easygoing drummer Ringo Starr was “pleased” when the group finally called it quits following nasty, exhausting infighting, saying: “It was time. Thi Things only last so long.” ”
In ’69, shortly before the breakup, Lennon appointed Allen Klein as the group’s new manager, unleashing a torrent of bad blood.
Furious McCartney, now 81, called Klein “a devil” and later accused him of stealing millions from the group, says the book.
When the other three approved dh the new manager, McCartney fumed: “Well, this is like bloody Julius Caesar, and I’m being stabbed in the back.”
McCartney also believed Klein got in solid with Lennon, who was assassinated at age 40 by deranged fan Mark David Chapman in 1980, by wooing Yoko.
“Klein saw the Yoko
connection and told Yoko that he would do a lot for her,” McCartney says in the book. “And that was basically what John and Yoko wanted: recognition for Yoko.”
Weird hookups dogged the group’s members even after the breakup.
Harrison, who was married to Pattie Boyd, fell in love with Ringo’s wife, Maureen, and chased after her.
Maureen recalled she and Ringo invited George and
Pattie over for dinner and while “I was cleaning the table, [Harrison] picked up a guitar and started to sing a song … and then he just turned to [Starr] and said, ‘I’m in love with your wife.’ ”
Said Maureen: “I was totally stunned,” adding she thought Harrison was “out of his mind.”
But she was later caught in bed with George by Pattie, who told Ringo, now 83, leading to a divorce, the book dishes.
Cheater George would later learn how it felt when Pattie dumped him for rocker Eric Clapton, who she was later married to for ten years. She inspired Eric’s super-hit Layla about his love for her.