April 10, 1970, is one of the most memorable days in music history. It is the day the world lost the greatest band of all time, The Beatles. The Beatles’ breakup came in the form of a press release announced by Paul McCartney. To this day, the breakup seemingly makes many skip a heartbeat and lose a breath or two. It was just that culturally severe to the world. Though it wasn’t unexpected, as The Beatles’ breakup was years in the making, and their growing divide was rather common knowledge.
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The most common timeline of The Beatles’ demise more or less starts in 1968 with the recording of the White Album and ends in 1970 with McCartney’s announcement. That is the arc the majority of fans refer to and have accepted. However, a source close to The Beatles once said that their demise started years before their end. Specifically, after The Beatles quit touring.
That source is Hunter Davies, the author of the only authorized biography of The Beatles. According to Davies, The Beatles’ decline started before the White Album, and in total, lasted roughly around four years.
The Beatles’ Long Walk to the End Started in 1966
In 1966, the Fab Four divulged some bombshell news to the public. That news was that they were to stop touring. This decision came as a result of many things, including their safety, which was seemingly put in danger after John Lennon made comments about their popularity surpassing the popularity of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, according to Davies, this was the moment that started The Beatles’ decline.
In his book, The Beatles, Davies wrote, “The Beatles started to break up as Beatles as far back as 1966 when they gave up touring and stopped living communal lives.” “With living apart so much, the Lennon-McCartney numbers, however successful, became something of a fraud. They were no longer joint numbers in the way they’d been in the old days, knocked out together in the back of a van.”
Davies added, “Working in the new way was fine, as long as they were still mates and nobody was getting fed up or wanting to move off in a completely different direction, but petty rows did begin, based on boredom as much as anything else.”
Years after that decision, well, you know what happened. Davies’ perspective differs greatly from the general public’s. Most people associate The Beatles’ breakup with Yoko Ono and the death of Brian Epstein in 1967. While both those reasons were certainly part of their decision, it seemingly isn’t so black and white, nor is it easily tracked by specific time stamps.
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