We often think about the Beatles’ infamous breakup within the context of the music and cultural movements they were promoting throughout the 1960s, but the ramifications of that split went far beyond the music charts or trends of the day and deep into the center of the lives of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. These men weren’t just losing bandmates. They were growing apart from the friends they had since they were in their formative late teens and early 20s.
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During a 2016 special edition of BBC Radio 4 Mastertapes, McCartney talked about the emotional impact of splitting up the Fab Four—an experience he likened to a popular barbershop song from 1929.
Paul McCartney Compared The Beatles’ Breakup To A Barbershop Tune
By the time the Beatles officially split up, tensions were so high that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume they couldn’t wait to get as far away from each other as possible. But as every ex-Beatle attested after the split, the business dealings and creative disagreements became too much for the band to bear. After less than a decade together, the Liverpudlian quartet broke up and began going their separate ways personally and musically.
Paul McCartney had no qualms about admitting that the entire experience left him “depressed.” “You would be,” he insisted, before busting out into a quick snippet of Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party.” (You would cry, too, if it happened to you.) “It was very depressing,” McCartney continued, switching back to his normal speaking voice. “You were breaking from your lifelong friends. We used to liken it to the army, where you’d been army buddies for a few years, and now, you weren’t going to see them again.”
The “Yesterday” songwriter compared the Beatles’ breakup to the 1929 barbershop song, “Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine.” The early 20th-century song describes childhood friendships fading away to make room for adult relationships, like marriages. This certainly spoke to the growing distance between the Beatles, especially with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
The Musician Wasn’t Sure If The Fab Four Was His Last Stop
Paul McCartney had spent his entire adult life with his fellow Beatles by the time the band split up in the late 1960s. The shock of the disbandment and the corresponding anxiety that came with it were not only devastating on a personal level. As McCartney explained on BBC’s Mastertapes, he wasn’t even sure if he would continue to pursue music. The idea of creating a new band for live performances and trying to get out from under the shadow of his former group seemed too daunting, too impossible, too hard.
McCartney began to look to alcohol for a form of escapism. “It was Linda [McCartney, Paul’s first wife] who said, ‘You’ve got to get it together,’ and that led to Wings,” McCartney recalled, per the BBC. “I liked the idea of a band. I wanted to go back to square one. We were terrible. We weren’t a good group. People said, ‘Linda can’t play keyboards,’ and it was true. But John couldn’t play guitar when we started [the Beatles].”
Photo by Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images
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