Paul McCartney confirms it was John Lennon who broke up The Beatles

The break-up of the legendary band The Beatles remains a hotly contested topic, but Paul McCartney says it is John Lennon who broke up the group.

The Wings frontman confirmed Lennon was the first person to formally leave the group on a permanent basis. Both Ringo Starr and George Harrison had previously left the band, but had returned shortly after announcing their departure. Starr vacated his spot as drummer for a fortnight during the White Album recording, while Harrison left The Beatles for a week during the contestuous early days of the Get Back sessions. It was Lennon, McCartney says, that left the band first and brought an end to The Beatles as a working group.

Speaking on The Howard Stern show, McCartney said he knew who broke The Beatles up. Show host Stern had suggested everyone has a theory on who broke up the band, with McCartney replying: “I know. John. Yeah.” McCartney did, however, dismiss the suggestion the break-up of the band was “pinned on him”. He added: “I don’t think anyone tried to pin it on anybody, it just came out that way.

“That’s a long story. But there was a meeting where John came out and said ‘Hey guys, I’m leaving the group.’ He’d found Yoko Ono and John loved strong women. His woman had been a strong woman, his auntie who brought him up had been a strong woman, and bless her, but his first wife wasn’t. She’d once said to me ‘All I want is a guy who has the pipe and slippers, stay home, do that’.

“And I thought ‘That’s not John,’ and so John had met up with Yoko and even though we thought ‘oh God, a little intrusive’ she used to sit in on the recording sessions and we’d never had anything like that, but looking back on it, the guy was totally in love with her. You’ve just got to respect that. So we did, and I do.”

Stern then suggested Too Many People is one of the best-written McCartney songs, with the Wings frontman confirming he and Lennon had written songs back and forth to one another. Too Many People featured on McCartney’s second solo album, Ram, with Lennon responding with How Do You Sleep?.

Though the back-and-forth ended with Lennon’s Imagine offering, McCartney did reveal he had planned to write one back, Quite Well Thank You. He explained in the Ramming: The Making of Ram documentary: “Too Many People was really a message to John across the airwaves.

“I did feel like he was preaching a little bit about what people should do and how they should live their lives. I felt the song was a bit hypocritical. There was a little spate of song wars that went on, you know, he’d done How Do You Sleep? and I nearly did a song, Quite Well, Thank You.

“It kind of settled down, The Beatles mess got sorted out and we were able to talk to each other like human beings and friends and that was something I was really always very glad on because we’d been through too much to let business arguments blow up our whole relationship.”