55 years ago, McCartney confirmed the breakup of The Beatles:

Why they were right to dismantle the greatest band in history.

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Paul McCartney cries. One of those cries in which the tears hover at the edges of the eyes for a long moment before timidly falling. As if the crying had been shaped by the age-old idea that “boys don’t cry” and had to be resisted, even though in the end there’s only so much one can do. He cries, looks around, looks nowhere, and says: “Now there are just two of us.” hears him . Ringo Starr, and no other Beatle.

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It’s the morning of the day after George Harrison announced, without losing his cool or hesitating, that he was leaving the greatest band in the history of music. The morning when John Lennon , after that resignation, decides he doesn’t feel like going to the studio where they are composing and recording, against the clock, Let It Be , the last album they would release. The Beatles are broken. They’re going to stick their parts together for a while longer, but the final break floats in the tension in the air they have shared for more than ten years.

Orphaned egos.

McCartney’s crying is one of the most intimate and heartbreaking scenes in Get Back , the three-part, eight-hour documentary put together by filmmaker Peter Jackson from around sixty hours of footage produced in the early days of January 1969. To sustain his commercial commitments—and their living standards in the years when they were no longer touring live—Paul had devised a documentary that would chronicle the process of writing, rehearsing, and recording an album, culminating in a performance before his home crowd after a long time away.

McCartney had become something of a mastermind behind The Beatles brand after the overdose death of Brian Epstein , the band’s longtime manager and, above all, the steward of their egos. Epstein had seen them at The Cavern in 1961 and had earned their trust: he was the true “fifth Beatle .” He was in charge of mediating whenever there were conflicts between them, managing their finances, organizing business dealings around their music and, above all, their live tours. But in 1967, he died from a barbiturate overdose, and The Beatles were left something of an orphan.

In the midst of grief and confusion, Paul took over as frontman for the band. Not only “organizing” their recording commitments and even possible live performances, but also occupying—or at least trying to occupy—more and more space when it came to composing and defining the style of their songs. Added to this was his obsessive nature: watching Get Back is like seeing McCartney’s neurosis in action. It’s beautiful to watch him search for the best version of every chord, every verse, every composition. It’s also suffocating.

You might be interested in: They married poor, had six children, became millionaires, and when they divorced, he kept everything: “He didn’t even give her a credit card.”

It was Paul who proposed—without waiting too long for a consensus with his bandmates—a documentary that would follow them almost like an audiovisual diary, and the show as the icing on the cake. The Beatles speculated about doing this live performance—which they knew would be their last—at the Pyramids of Egypt, on the Acropolis of Athens, or on a large Royal Navy ship.

But it all ended on the terrace of the Apple building , where the company that managed the brand was located. They finished writing ” Let It Be ,” which was going to be called ” Get Back ,” the very day of the concert. Neither the mood nor the money allowed for anything more extraordinary than playing there with the audience watching, or at least listening, from the street.

Chronicle of an inevitable separation

Epstein’s unexpected death threw the band into disarray. It left them orphaned by problems they weren’t used to solving and too exposed to their own personalities. George hadn’t been the first to say “enough.” A year before that goodbye, Ringo Starr had slammed the door during the recording of the epic White Album due to the hostility experienced during the recording sessions.

Epstein’s unexpected death threw the band into disarray. It left them orphaned by problems they weren’t used to solving and too exposed to their own personalities. George hadn’t been the first to say “enough.” A year before that goodbye, Ringo Starr had slammed the door during the recording of the epic White Album due to the hostility experienced during the recording sessions.

That album, a masterpiece, was described by Rolling Stone magazine as “four different albums recorded under one roof.” Those were the days when, while Lennon was recording “Revolution 1” in one room, McCartney was recording “Blackbird” in another, each in their own world and crossing paths as little as possible. Like those couples who start sleeping apart until they finally decide they’ve had enough.

The recording of Let It Be and its video documentation in the early days of 1969 only escalated the tension. Having to record against the clock was nothing The Beatles were unfamiliar with: from the beginning, when studio money was scarce, they had developed the ability to compose and record their new songs under a kind of countdown.

The tension between them wasn’t entirely new, either. Lennon and McCartney had been vying to be the band’s most prominent and talented figure practically from the beginning. But that, with a mediator like Epstein who knew how to manage them and a unique music producer like George Martin , was a force to be reckoned with. Learning together, competing, understanding each other like no one else—all of that made them better.

But McCartney was expanding his territory, and amidst all this, Harrison was increasingly demanding more space as a composer . He had every reason to: he was contributing increasingly better songs. He had just added “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” to the White Album , and during the construction of Let It Be , he was showing them some of the material he’d been working on for the next album, Abbey Road . That “something” was the skeleton of “Something,” one of the best songs not by The Beatles but in the history of popular music. And the one that Frank Sinatra considered “the greatest love ballad ever written.” But McCartney and Lennon felt that Harrison didn’t deserve more space than one or two songs per album. That was the George Harrison who told them “that’s enough for me.” And although he would later return, that unease wouldn’t go away.

But to this weariness and tensions must be added something less lacerating and, perhaps, more definitive. By the end of the 1960s, The Beatles were already thinking of themselves separately . They were interested in music from very different perspectives. Lennon had formalized his relationship with Yoko Ono , the avant-garde artist he had met in a gallery and who now sat next to him and the other three members of the band while they composed a new album.

Get Back Jackson’s documentary, , does Ono justice. It wasn’t that she intervened every five minutes, telling him what to do; it was that Lennon didn’t want to be far from her, and above all, he thought of his new creations as more in tune with the musical experimentation he was projecting with Yoko than with his longtime partner in songwriting adventures. The direction of his work was in full swing. This avant-garde movement Ono had introduced him to appealed to him completely, also as a musical artist.

Harrison also wanted something else. Something more reminiscent of the influence of Indian music , which he had experienced firsthand on the band’s trip to that country. Those sounds, those silences, that spirit that George would transform into a philosophy of life. “All Things Must Pass,” a song that neither Lennon nor McCartney agreed to add to the band’s repertoire, was the title track of Harrison’s first solo album after the Beatles officially broke up. That triple album contains everything George wanted to say, but they wouldn’t let him.

McCartney, on the other hand, wanted to continue down a path more closely linked to the world of pop, where the band had managed to lead the greatest revolution of the 20th century and where, he believed, there was still much to do. And Ringo was increasingly gaining contracts as a film actor: for the recording of Let It Be, they had to take into account the filming days for a movie in which he would co-star with Peter Sellers . There was a destiny that Starr enjoyed exploring and that, moreover, was profitable.

An intact Ferrari

On April 10, 1970 , a year and three months after crying because neither Lennon nor Harrison showed up for the planned rehearsals, McCartney issued a press release in which he stated that he no longer planned to be part of The Beatles or to continue composing or recording with John Lennon , his long-time partner. It was the “whitewashing” of a crisis that had been going on for some time: in September of the previous year, John had hinted to the press that the band was splitting up.

Officially, Paul seemed the first to leave, although he may have been the last to turn off the light. Divorce, as happens in families that have to make large and complex divisions of assets, wouldn’t come until the mid-seventies: so much wealth had to be sorted out. But the de facto separation was irreversible.

Get Back shows that tension, that suffocation, that improvement when Billy Preston arrives , the keyboardist they invited to record the album and who served as a release valve. Of fresh air. It shows Harrison’s weariness, McCartney’s hypercontrol, Ringo’s professionalism, Lennon’s ability to disconnect from everything in a second and become the center of attention in the next.

It also shows them laughing together with the complicity that the passage of time builds. Understanding each other “by heart,” with just a glance. Complementing each other to compose with the creativity that made them so great, so similar to nothing that had existed before and so similar to everything that came after. Ready to invent something new in a moment, and that something new is now, more than half a century later, one of the anthems of life for so many millions of people in almost every corner of the world.

The most compelling thing about Get Back is the feeling of spying on them in the midst of their collapse, and also of that alchemy happening right before our eyes. Watching them break down and, despite the girls with the flags who begged them to stay together, knowing it was for the best. That it’s good the end came in time .

Imagine a bad Beatles album: painful, right? Imagine those Beatles who, ever since, but especially since Revolver, hadn’t stopped pushing the boundaries of musical composition. And now imagine that after that comes a long plateau: the formula for success repeating itself for several more years. The Beatles with the rubber band broken . The crashed Ferrari. Horrible, isn’t it?

The Beatles are what they are because of everything they did and also because they didn’t do what they could have done : the plank on Everest they had built between 1960 and 1970, the decade they won. So it’s a good thing they split up in time. From then until today, the myth hasn’t stopped growing. They’re a gold mine where, every now and then, a sound engineer, a documentary filmmaker, one of the two still alive, or an heir finds a film, a recording of a precious rehearsal, some demos that no one knew were there. And there we all go, to spy on that little bit of The Beatles we didn’t yet know about. To hear them be perfect.

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Who were The Beatles? Is there anyone who does not know?

The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the most influential band in Western popular music and were integral to the development of 1960s counterculture and the recognition of popular music as an art form.

Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock ‘n’ roll, their sound incorporated elements of classical music and traditional pop in innovative ways. The band also explored music styles ranging from folk and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock. As pioneers in recording, songwriting and artistic presentation, the Beatles revolutionised many aspects of the music industry and were often publicised as leaders of the era’s youth and sociocultural movements.

Led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the Beatles evolved from Lennon’s previous group, the Quarrymen, and built their reputation by playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, starting in 1960, initially with Stuart Sutcliffe playing bass. The core trio of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, together since 1958, went through a succession of drummers, including Pete Best, before inviting Starr to join them in 1962.

Manager Brian Epstein moulded them into a professional act, and producer George Martin developed their recordings, greatly expanding their domestic success after they signed with EMI and achieved their first hit, “Love Me Do”, in late 1962. As their popularity grew into the intense fan frenzy dubbed “Beatlemania”, the band acquired the nickname “the Fab Four”. Epstein, Martin or other members of the band’s entourage were sometimes informally referred to as a “fifth Beatle”.

By early 1964, the Beatles were international stars and had achieved unprecedented levels of critical and commercial success. They became a leading force in Britain’s cultural resurgence, ushering in the British Invasion of the United States pop market. They soon made their film debut with A Hard Day’s Night (1964). A growing desire to refine their studio efforts, coupled with the challenging nature of their concert tours, led to the band’s retirement from live performances in 1966. During this time, they produced albums of greater sophistication, including Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).

They enjoyed further commercial success with The Beatles (also known as “the White Album”, 1968) and Abbey Road (1969). The success of these records heralded the album era, increased public interest in psychedelic drugs and Eastern spirituality, and furthered advancements in electronic music, album art and music videos. In 1968, they founded Apple Corps, a multi-armed multimedia corporation that continues to oversee projects related to the band’s legacy. After the group’s break-up in 1970, all principal former members enjoyed success as solo artists, and some partial reunions occurred. Lennon was murdered in 1980, and Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001. McCartney and Starr remain musically active.

The Beatles are the best-selling music act of all time, with estimated sales of 600 million units worldwide. They are the most successful act in the history of the US Billboard charts, with the most number-one hits on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart , and they hold the record for most number-one albums on the UK Albums Chart and most singles sold in the UK (21.9 million).

The band received many accolades, including eight Grammy Awards, four Brit Awards, an Academy Award (for Best Original Song Score for the 1970 documentary film Let It Be) and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility, 1988, and each principal member was individually inducted between 1994 and 2015. In 2004 and 2011, the group topped Rolling Stone’s lists of the greatest artists in history. Time magazine named them among the 20th century’s 100 most important people.

Gallery of The Beatles’s songbooks (some of them…)

Discography

Main articles on the WIKIPEDIA: The Beatles albums discography, The Beatles singles discography, and List of songs recorded by the Beatles

The Beatles’ core catalogue consists of thirteen studio albums and one compilation album which collects all the UK non-album singles and EP tracks:

• Please Please Me (1963)
• With the Beatles (1963)
• A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
• Beatles for Sale (1964)
• Help! (1965)
• Rubber Soul (1965)
• Revolver (1966)
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
• Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
• The Beatles (“The White Album”) (1968)
• Yellow Submarine (1969)
• Abbey Road (1969)
• Let It Be (1970)
• Past Masters (1988, compilation)

Selected filmography

Main article: The Beatles in film

Fictionalised

• A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
• Help! (1965)
• Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
• Yellow Submarine (1968) (brief cameo)

Documentaries and filmed performances

• The Beatles at Shea Stadium (1966)
• Let It Be (1970)
• The Compleat Beatles (1982)
• It Was Twenty Years Ago Today (1987) (about Sgt. Pepper)
• The Beatles Anthology (1995)
• The Beatles: 1+ (2015) (collection of digitally restored music videos)
• The Beatles: Eight Days a Week (2016) (about Beatlemania and touring years)
• The Beatles: Get Back (2021)
• Now and Then: The Last Beatles Song (2023) (short film about the creation of “Now and Then“)

The Beatles – Help!

The Beatles – Hey Jude

The Beatles performing “Hey Jude.” Hey Jude topped the charts in Britain for two weeks and for 9 weeks in America, where it became The Beatles longest-running No.1 in the US singles chart as well as the single with the longest running time. The Beatles did not record their promotional film until Hey Jude had been on sale in America for a week.

They returned to Twickenham Film Studio, using director Michael Lindsay-Hogg who had worked with them on Paperback Writer and Rain. Earlier still, Lindsay-Hogg had directed episodes of Ready Steady Go! And a few months after the film for Hey Jude he made The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus TV special that featured John and Yoko but wouldn’t be shown until 1996 To help with the filming an audience of around 300 local people, as well as some of the fans that gathered regularly outside Abbey Road Studios were brought in for the song’s finale.

Their presence had an unlikely upside for The Beatles in their long-running saga with the Musicians’ Union in that the MU were fooled into believing the band were playing live, when in fact they were miming for the vast majority of the song. Paul, however, sang live throughout the song.

The video was first broadcast on David Frost’s Frost On Sunday show, four days after it was filmed. At that point transmission was in black and white although the promo was originally shot in colour. It was first aired in America a month later on 6 October 1968, on The Smotheres Brothers Comedy Hour.