While rumours of a reunion circled for years after The Beatles disbanded, such a show would never come together. Every band member at one point or another had a reason not to reform and for John Lennon, it seemed he was sick of the sight of Beatlemania decades on from its occurrence.
In one of his final interviews, Lennon would reject the notion of a Fab Four reunion and suggested he would rather not be “crucified again”. Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison had been tempted by reunion shows in the past and the four very nearly came together again for a performance which would have seen a daredevil open for the band. But the lucrative offer was turned down, as was an offer from Lorne Michaels, the Saturday Night Live showrunner.
But of a general reunion that would have seen The Beatles back on stage as a four-piece, Lennon had no interest at the turn of the 1980s. He said: “If they didn’t understand the Beatles and the Sixties then, what the fuck could we do for them now? Do we have to divide the fish and the loaves for the multitudes again? Do we have to get crucified again?
“Do we have to do the walking on water again because a whole pile of dummies didn’t see it the first time, or didn’t believe it when they saw it? You know, that’s what they’re asking: ‘Get off the cross. I didn’t understand the first bit yet. Can you do that again?’ No way. You can never go home. It doesn’t exist.”
Despite the clear distaste for a Beatles reunion, Lennon had at one point been game for a collaboration with his former bandmates. Both McCartney and Starr had wanted The Beatles to get back together at some point before Lennon’s death in December 1980.
Starr said: “I mean, I would dig that. But until the four of us… I’ve talked to John about it and we’ve gone through it, and if there was a set-up on the lawn outside here and we just happened to be around, we could play, you know. Then I’d love it. I’d love it, it doesn’t matter where it was. But I mean, that would be easy. But to set up this thing takes a lot of craziness.”
Separately, McCartney said he had wanted The Beatles to get back on the road around the time of recording Abbey Road to heal the rifts left by in-studio tensions. He said: “I certainly wasn’t responsible for splitting up the Beatles, as some people think — in fact, I was the last one to come to that view. I’d wanted us to tour, to bring us closer together again.
“It all gets absorbed into the myth, your image builds up, it gets into plays and books, and it becomes the truth. Except that it wasn’t. There’s a story that I used to straighten John’s tie before we went on stage. That seems to have become a symbol of what my attitude was supposed to have been. I’ve never straightened anyone’s tie in my life, except perhaps affectionately.”
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