What song was number one when The Beatles announced their split?
By the time The Beatles finally came to a close, Liverpool’s finest export left the music world dominated by a landscape entirely of their making.
The 1960s grew up alongside the Fab Four. Just as the Baby Boomers wandered from post-war innocence of the 1950s through countercultural tumult and the eventual stumble into cynicism of the previously held political mores of their youth, The Beatles similarly scored the era’s winding pop soundtrack to such dramatic social shift.
From ‘Love Me Do’s wide-eyed Merseybeat still tethered to the embers of rock and roll, ‘She Loves You’s herald of the new and dizzying youthquake causing ruptures across the UK, Rubber Soul’s maturation in both worldly outlook and songcraft sophistication, the Summer of Love’s countercultural bloom bottled by Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the fractures both within the band and amid the decade’s hippie promise soon spelling both’s symbolic end on their double-LP ‘White Album’.
Once 1969’s Abbey Road was in the can, the Fab Four had all outgrown each other, the old Scouse schoolboys now men ready for the big wide world, as Paul McCartney put it on 1995’s Anthology series.
It’s likely one of the key reasons The Beatles stand with such imposing pop cultural command. Any Boomer will be able to map out their own lives and upbringing parallel to the Fab Four story, as well as spot their creative reach across all corners of the charts around the band’s tapestry, from Liverpool hopefuls to their final bow as the 1960s passed into the new decade.
So, what was number one when The Beatles broke up?
As we all know, The Beatles never announced one clean break-up date.
While the last proper recording session at EMI Studios with all four members was underway for ‘The End’ on August 18th, 1969, old rivals The Rolling Stones were toward the end of their five-week reign at UK number one with the Southern rock stomping ‘Honky Tonk Women’.
Before long, John Lennon’s artistic and avant-garde inclinations with muse Yoko Ono proved too great for The Beatles’ day job. With ‘Give Peace a Chance’ climbing high on British charts and the ‘Cold Turkey’ follow-up in the works, Lennon privately informed the band of his decision to quit the band he founded in all its proto-incarnations as far back as 1956.
Telling McCartney, Ringo Starr and manager Allen Klein at the Apple Records HQ on September 20th, he wanted a “divorce”, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s rootsy ‘Bad Moon Rising’ was in the midst of a three-week stint at the pop top spot.
Such dissolution was kept Apple business strictly until McCartney let slip to the press his “break with the Beatles” during the advance promotion for his 1970 solo debut LP, as Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ was number one. The final contractual endpoint of The Beatles as a legal unit was finally signed into action on December 19th, 1974, after years of litigious wrangling; Lennon adding his name to the document at Disney World as Mud’s ‘Lonely This Christmas’ ruled Top of the Pops’ festivities.
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