For decades, fans of The Beatles have blamed Yoko Ono for driving a wedge between John Lennon and the rest of the band. In a recent interview, Paul McCartney revealed that Ono was a disruptive force within the band. This was especially true when she attended studio sessions for The White Album.
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In the most recent episode of his iHeartPodcast, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics, the former Beatle discussed Ono’s impact on the band with Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon. During the chat, he noted that she spent time in the studio with the band. That, he said, was “disturbing” and interfered with their work. However, no one spoke up.
When The Beatles went into the studio to record their 1968 self-titled release commonly called The White Album, the band was already on the rocks. Having Ono in the studio didn’t help. “John and Ono had got together and that was bound to have an effect on the group,” McCartney explained.
“Things like Yoko being literally in the middle of the recording session were something you had to deal with,” McCartney added. “The idea was that if John wanted this to happen, then it should happen. There’s no reason why not.”
About her presence in the studio, McCartney said, “I don’t think any of us particularly liked it. It was an interference in the workplace. We had a way we worked. The four of us worked with George Martin. That was basically it.”
McCartney continued, saying, “We’d always done it like that. So not being very confrontational, I think we just bottled it up and got on with it.”
The Beatles split officially split in 1974. However, the downfall of the band began four years earlier. The Independent reports that McCartney spoke about the moment that signaled the end of the group in a 2021 interview. “I’m not the person who instigated the split. Oh no, no, no. John walked into a room one day and said, ‘I am leaving The Beatles.’ Is that instigating the split or not?”
“The point of it really was that John was making a new life with Yoko,” McCartney explained. He added that Lennon’s Aunt Mimi raised him in a “quite repressive” household. As a result, he always wanted to “break loose” from society. Ono helped him do that.
Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
