Paul McCartney: Yoko Ono Didn’t Break Up The Beatles

In a new interivew with British TV personality David Frost, Paul McCartney says that Yoko Ono, the second wife of Beatles’ co-leader John Lennon, was not responsible for the band’s demise, even if that’s the popular public assumption.

“She certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up,” the 70-year old rock legend says, according to The Guardian. “When Yoko came along, part of her attraction was her avant garde side, her view of things, so she showed him another way to be, which was very attractive to him. So it was time for John to leave, he was definitely going to leave [one way or another].”

Indeed, Ono came at a pivotal time for The Beatles; their manager, Brian Epstein, who had brought them to world fame from humble beginnings in Liverpool, had died, and the members’ interests were divergent. Lennon resented McCartney’s seeming control of the band, and as McCartney points out in the interview, they all fought over who would be their next manager: Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison prefered Allen Klein, while McCartney wanted the brother of his first wife, Linda Eastman, to take charge.

Ono did cause interruption within the band; Lennon insisted that she sit in on — and sometimes contribute to — recording sessions, which the other members resented, and Lennon took a greater interest in activism upon their marriage.

Lennon and McCartney feuded for years after the breakup, trading bitter words and lyrics in their solo albums, though they would eventually bury the hatchet. Still, their relationship was never the same.

In the ensuing years since Lennon’s death in 1980, McCartney and Ono have traded both barbs and compliments; in recent years, Ono has appeared at McCartney concerts.

Source: Hollywood Reporter