It was a shocking day in April, 1970. A member of the Beatles, Paul McCartney announced his departure from the band with the announcement of his solo album. The dream that was built by the band was breaking up. Fans were shocked, sad, and even outraged, wondering how this happened. Why this happened in the first place, what caused Paul to leave? There were many complex factors to the breakup of the Beatles making it hard to answer it simply. These factors varied from financial problems, lack of motivation, interests in solo works, Yoko Ono, and many more. However there was a clear start to the breakup, it was the death of their manager: Brian Epstein, that started the journey to their …show more content…
His death was caused from accidental drug overdose. The sudden death of his friend scared John, he thought that, that was it for the band. Brian had always been their guardian and protector, with him gone someone else had to take leadership of the group (Gilmore). The band was in a mess and without any chosen heir by Brian, the position of chairman was given to his brother, Clive Epstein, who had no experience in the field of music entrepreneuring (Spitz 719). Seeing the mess the death of their manager brought, Paul decided to take leadership of the band to himself. He convinced the others to try working on a film for Magical Mystery Tour. It failed and was bashed by the critics (Gilmore). With this failure of a project, Paul’s leadership only irritated the rest of the Beatles; without the leadership like Brian’s, the band started to separate themselves from one another. While all these events were going on several companies assembled to get the chance of controlling the Beatles (Spitz 719). Tensions in the band built, arguments happened more frequently, and all things seemed horrible. John was not wrong about Brian’s death being the end for the Beatles, it was only the beginning of the …show more content…
Yoko played a big role on John’s life and the band as a whole, she was often blamed for taking John away from the band and breaking apart the Beatles. During and after Sgt. Pepper’s John struggled with his depression and misery, feeling empty and loveless John Lennon left Cynthia; his former wife, and bonded deeper with Yoko Ono. John and Yoko did several artistic collaborations and created experimental recordings such as Two Virgins. Having Yoko as a collaborator, John rarely worked with Paul anymore, slowly separating the himself from the band. It was during a recording of new album when John brought Yoko to the studio and stayed, this created tension between Lennon and the other members, especially Paul. Yoko Ono pushed John into new territories musically and artistically, which actually encouraged him, even bringing John into using heroin with her which utterly shocked the band (Gilmore). A lot of people saw Yoko Ono as the reason behind the breakup of The Beatles, but to this John responded, how can one girl split The Beatles apart, instead saying that it was just them drifting away from each other (Siller). In some ways John is right about the Beatles drifting away, after Brian’s death, the leadership that held the Beatles together was gone. Although Yoko did not break up the Beatles, but played a big role in spliting the Beatles apart. She distracted John