Get back! sez Paul – John broke up Beatles!
He may have sung “Come Together,” but it was John Lennon who broke up the Beatles, according to Paul McCartney.
“I didn’t instigate the split. That was our Johnny,” McCartney said on an upcoming episode of “This Cultural Life” on BBC Radio 4.
The Beatles released 21 studio albums between 1962 and 1970, with their final album, “Let It Be,” arriving after the band had already busted up. Lennon was fatally shot outside his Upper West Side apartment building by deranged fan Mark Chapman on Dec. 8, 1980.
Speculation has long swirled around the nature of the band’s split, with McCartney revealing the Beatles’ manager at the time, Allen Klein, asked the group not to talk publicly about it while he had deals in the works.
“Stop right there,” McCartney said during the new radio interview. “I am not the person who instigated the split. Oh no, no, no. John walked into a room one day and said, ‘I am leaving The Beatles.’ Is that instigating the split, or not?”
McCartney, Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded more than 200 songs together and are regarded by many as the greatest band of all time.
The four musicians each had successful music careers after the Beatles broke up, with McCartney releasing hits like “Maybe I’m Amazed” and “Another Day” as a solo artist, and “Live and Let Die” and “Band on the Run” with his band Wings.
McCartney, 79, told BBC Radio 4 the Beatles were still releasing “pretty good stuff” when the band split.
“This was my band, this was my job, this was my life,” McCartney said. “So I wanted it to continue.”
McCartney released his 18th solo album, “McCartney III,” last December.
His interview with BBC Radio 4 is set to air Oct. 23.