The band that made John Lennon want to leave The Beatles: “Wow! It’s fun with other people”
Even though the divorce papers were officially signed on December 29th, 1974, it had been over for The Beatles a long time before then.
It’s tricky to pinpoint a specific ending as the band’s final years were littered with walk-outs, fights, make-ups and fall-outs. At one point or another, each member seemed to take the lead in spearheading the end, whether it be Paul McCartney releasing an official statement to the press about leaving the group, or George Harrison nonchalantly writing in his diary that he quit.
Similarly to the varying accounts of when the final nail in the coffin was, there were countless fingers being pointed at many outside elements, from the mere existence of Yoko Ono, to Lennon’s increasing drug use, to Harrison’s musical dissatisfaction, and even to Ringo Starr wanting to make more movies and his mates to stop fighting.
When listening to their last releases, though, it’s almost hard to ever believe that the creative side of it came into things. The band’s final albums still hold some of their best and most interesting works, carved out in spite of the difficulties, and yet, behind the scenes, every member was getting antsy about it.
Harrison felt like his ability was being ignored and brushed off in favour of Lennon and McCartney’s own. Starr was beginning to feel like nothing but a backing player. McCartney was coming to feel more and more unsupported by Lennon, and Lennon couldn’t seem to stop throwing insults towards McCartney’s “granny shit” songs.
From Lennon’s corner, he seemed to want to get grittier, write more about politics and lean more into sleazy, noisy, artsy rock rather than any sort of pop. Perhaps in the timeline of unhappiness, that motivation can be easily narrowed down to a milestone marked December 11th, 1968.
On a TV sound stage in Wembley, Lennon performed with a band of musicians who weren’t The Beatles for the first time in a long time. After being in the Fab Four since his teens, it had always been them and mostly them alone. But now, for The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus, Lennon joined in with a new gaggle for one performance, forming The Dirty Mac with Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix’s drummer Mitch Mitchell, violinist Ivry Gitlis and his soon-to-be wife, Yoko Ono.
Roaring through a performance of ‘Yer Blues’ and then jamming on ‘Whole Lotta Yoko’, the energy in the supergroup was palpable, and Lennon was having fun with it. “The first time I performed without The Beatles for years was The Rock And Roll Circus, and it was great to be on stage with Eric and Keith Richards and a different noise coming out behind me,” he reflected later.
The event seemed to refresh him and excite him in ways that The Beatles were ceasing to do. Coming right off dissatisfaction, suddenly Lennon had this experience that made him realise that his four old friends weren’t the only people in the world he could make music with. “Even though I was still singing and playing the same style. I thought: ‘Wow! It’s fun with other people’,” he said as a sign that maybe the end was nigh.
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