The biggest myth cleared about The Beatles's break up
A year into John and Yoko's marriage, the Beatles shocked the world when they went their separate ways in 1970. The public was quick to blame Yoko for the group’s disbandment, but the Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, passed away the same year, causing grief for the whole band. They were drifting apart as tensions grew, and Yoko inspired John to find himself, away from the pressure of being in the most popular rock band of all time.
“She didn’t split the Beatles. Because how could one girl split the Beatles, or one woman? The Beatles were drifting apart on their own.”- John Lennon in The Dick Cavett show, 1971
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The world owes Yoko Ono an apology
Yoko didn’t break up the Beatles. Blaming it on her constant presence was always an absurd, lazy accusation grounded in misogyny and racism (seeing Paul, Ringo and George’s partners and various guests wander in and out of the studio really hammers home those double standards), but hopefully we can once and for all put to bed any nonsense about how she brought about the band’s decline. Yes, there were tensions – complicated, deep-seated and long-running – but, as McCartney says in part two, Yoko’s presence was only an obstacle if the rest of the band allowed it to be. “It really isn’t that bad. They just want to stay together,” he says of her and Lennon. “She’s great, she really is all right.”