The moment John Lennon knew The Beatles were over
There was no chance that The Beatles could go on forever. While fans might like to have their idea of the Fab Four making music together until the end of time, it was only natural for every musician to move away from one another, each of them growing as players and becoming more independent in their songwriting. Then again, most fans didn’t expect things to come to such an abrupt end.
Shortly after the death of manager Brian Epstein, the seeds of the band were already unravelling, with the group unsure of where to go after losing one of the biggest constants in their lives. Although they were growing a lot as people, most of the blame behind The Beatles’ breakup comes from another artist that entered the fold.
Around the same time the band were drifting apart, John Lennon was becoming more infatuated with the concept artist Yoko Ono, often going to her art galleries and developing a romance with her outside of his marriage to his first wife, Cynthia. From there, Lennon started to bring Yoko to the sessions, often hanging in the background as the rest of the group worked and adding minor suggestions.
Though fans have been insistent that Yoko was behind it the whole time, Lennon has endorsed this theory to a certain extent. When talking about Yoko’s involvement in his work, Lennon was certain that the band would fall by the wayside, telling in his final interview: “The old gang of mine was over the moment I met her. I didn’t consciously know it at the time, but that’s what was going on. As soon as I met her, that was the end of the boys, but it so happened that the boys were well-known and weren’t just the local guys at the bar. These were guys everybody else knew.”
Granted, the fanbase’s reaction to Lennon’s marriage was anything but well-received, with some fans disgustingly wishing violence on Ono and making various racial insults geared towards her. The truth is Lennon was desperately in love, and for him, that became his main focus. While fans looked for a scapegoat, the rest of the band didn’t think that much of Yoko’s presence during the sessions.
As evidenced by Paul McCartney in the documentary Get Back, he was completely fine with Ono being at the sessions and even laughed off the idea of her breaking up the band, saying, “It’s just going to be this comical thing in 50 years’ time. You know, ‘they broke up because Yoko sat on an amp.'”
While Lennon and Ono’s wild avant-garde experiments were happening at the same time, the legal disputes between The Beatles began getting heated as well, with their Apple label starting to fold and every band member starting to crack under pressure.
Through the insistence of their new manager Allen Klein, the band split up acrimoniously, with Lennon and McCartney eventually writing attacks towards each other in their solo work like ‘How Do You Sleep?’. Yoko might not have been responsible for The Beatles’ relationships fracturing, but her involvement came at a time when the Fab Four were about to enter their darkest days.
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