AboutMelissa Davis Expertise I feel extremely comfortable with my ability to answer questions regarding The Beatles personally - backgrounds, family, education, and the genesis of the group from inception to the end. I do not feel that I have the expertise to answer extremely technical questions regarding equipment, other than to refer the questioner to other sources.
Experience Besides having been the right age at the right time to live through and enjoy The Beatles, I have continued my interest in them, in their music, and their influence on 20th century - in everything from the obvious, music, to fashion, humor, film, politics, and the music industry. As a dedicated Anglophile, I have studied at the University of London as an undergraduate and traveled in the UK extensively - yes, walked across Abbey Road, visited Savile Row - all of it. Beyond that, I am a teacher and a writer with excellent writing, editing, and research skills.
Publications The Copy Workshop advertising series
Colorado Law Journal
Various magazines
Education/Credentials B.A. History & Political Science, M.A. English History, J.D.
Awards and Honors Teacher of the Year, Archdiocese of Dallas (2000)
Expert: Melissa Davis Date: 7/1/2008 Subject: falling out between john & paul
Question What was the cause of the falling out between john and paul?
Answer
The answer to your question has more than one, single dimension. Depending on what you have read and heard, their ‘falling out’ has been characterized as everything from a business disagreement to artistic differences with the area in the middle comprising a simple need for more space for the next stage of their personal and professional lives. And of course, there’s more than just the natural tension that would have come about with two geniuses of that level working so closely together for so long.
If you look at their background, John was 16 and Paul was 15 when they met in 1957. They were both still in school and no matter what they were dreaming of for their futures, they still went to school every day and lived at home. They quickly discovered that they loved the same music and started playing hooky, ditching school and going over to Paul’s house to listen to music and play the guitars. Paul’s mother was dead and with his father at work during the day, they had a lot of time to practice before he got home at 6:00.
In the first few months, they also went to John’s mother’s place because she allowed them to play rock and roll and encouraged John’s music, which his aunt and guardian did not. After her death in the summer of 1958, they spent most of their time at Paul’s, although George’s mother also welcomed them at her home and fed them tea and toast and gave them lots of encouragement, as well.
You can see during these early years they saw each other through all the usual adolescent ups and downs and the three of them – John, Paul, and George (who began playing with them in the spring of 1958) – became good friends. The death of John’s mother created a stronger bond between John and Paul because it was something they each suffered in their teenage years. Because John and Paul wrote so easily together (George also wrote at this point, two of their very earliest recordings, In Spite of All the Danger and Cry For a Shadow, were Harrison compositions), this also brought them closer together.
Their ‘overnight’ success in 1962 in Britain and 1964 in the United States and the rest of the world was anything but overnight. You can see that they spent 5 hard years before they even got a recording contract. These were years when they entered talent contests – and lost, played at family weddings and parties, played at church fairs and union halls for very little money, sometimes food or beer or just the chance to play.
The time they spent in Hamburg when they were 17, 18, and 19 made them a very tight unit. Ringo Starr said one of the reasons he wanted to join them was that they were ‘like family’ whereas everyone else was just in a group. Years of touring – traveling, working, and living in close quarters while experiencing a level of fame and success they had never dreamed of (and which no one else experienced) solidified their bond and by the time they reached stardom, people like Mick Jagger remarked that they were like their own club with their own code.
They stopped touring in 1966, but John, George, and Ringo all married and lived within walking distance of each other just outside London; Paul lived in the city, but they vacationed together and, of course, worked on their most important albums during this period. They traveled to Greece and India together – as a group and made decisions as a group. The policy they had adopted as teenagers still held: all decisions were unanimous, never majority rule. If one disagreed on any decision – whether it was what to name an album or where to go to dinner, that was sufficient to end the discussion. Obviously, this worked well for them personally and professionally for many years.
Brian Epstein served as their manager from 1962 to his death in August of 1967 and this was a cohesive for them, as well. Many business decisions were made for them (something that turned out not have been beneficial to them), but saved their energy for their creative work. After Epstein’s death, they made the decision to manage themselves and not replace him – although none of them had any business training or ability whatsoever. They trusted Epstein (perhaps more than they should have done) and didn’t want to replace him with someone who had not known them before they were rich and famous. In most all of their business dealings, they relied on people they had known from Liverpool – Neil Aspinall and Malcolm Evans, their personal assistant and sole roadie among them.
They set up Apple as a sort of umbrella company that would handle all their creative ventures – music – their own and new artists, film, a retail fashion boutique because their wives were interested in it, electronics, and even explored the idea of a school with another friend from Liverpool, Ivan Vaughn who had become a teacher. Ivan had been a classmate of Paul and George’s in secondary school and had known John from their neighborhood, and it was he would first introduced John and Paul in July 1957.
Within months, people were practically lining up to either be a part of Apple or take advantage of it. They lost huge sums of money – just how much is anyone’s guess. They did produce great music on their own during this time and also managed to ‘discover’ and produce music by Badfinger, James Taylor, Mary Hopkins (whose single outsold Hey Jude that year), Jackie Lomax, and several other artists.
At this time, their private relationships were changing, as well. John met Yoko Ono and divorced Cynthia, his wife since 1962. Yoko was a strong woman who inserted herself, with John’s approval, into the creative process of the Beatles’ work that had been private for so many years. Very few people ever attended Beatles’ recording sessions – wives very, very rarely if ever. Brian Epstein did not even attend them. Yoko’s constant presence (and I mean constant) in the recording studio and her ‘suggestions’ were offensive and hurtful to the rest of the group.
Paul had broken off a long-time engagement to Jane Asher and married Linda Eastman the same month John and Yoko were married – March 1969. Linda had a 6 year-old daughter Paul adopted and had a baby, Mary, in August of 1969. John and Yoko were also hoping to start a family and each had a child from a previous marriage. Clearly, at the ages of 28 and 27 it was time for some space and independence from the group.
Ringo and George had each ‘left’ the group for a very, very short period – George for a few days, Ringo for two weeks, when tensions in the studio were just too much for them to take, but returned and no one, outside their very immediate circle, ever knew about these rows. They very likely had no idea how to officially break up the group with the entire world watching and hoping it would never happen. More likely, they wanted more freedom to explore their own projects, then come together to record on a less regular basis.
In any event, what happened was that the financial burden became enormous. EMI, the company that held their recording contract, and their music publisher were involved in public stock tradings that affected the Beatles and, not having any business savvy, most of these decisions were beyond them. Paul turned to his father-in-law, John Eastman, a New York entertainment lawyer for advice. John, in turn, sought advice from the British businessman who had helped the British railway system through some difficult financial times, then asked the former manager of the Rolling Stones, Allen Klein, to manage the Beatles.
The Rolling Stones had been rumored to have received a million pound signing bonus on their new contract with Decca Records through the help of Klein, which impressed John quite a bit, all the more because the Beatles were still receiving a very, very low royalty on their own work. Had they discussed their decision with the Rolling Stones, they would have learned that the figure of a million pounds was grossly exaggerated and that the Stones were in the process of suing Klein for mismanagement.
John, George, and Ringo felt that using Paul’s father-in-law as a manager or business adviser was not a good idea because he was family so they hired Klein; Paul refused to agree to this arrangement and for the first time, they tried to advance a policy of majority rules.
At this point, they set aside the rancor of the Let It Be sessions and got back together for one last album – Abbey Road, recorded during the spring and summer of 1969 and released that fall. Let It Be would be released in 1970 by which time, John had told the group he ‘wanted a divorce, just like I got from Cynthia.’
Paul was devastated; George was probably relieved but anxious to resolve the business differences first, and Ringo unsure of what his next career move would be. At first very, very depressed, Paul began to work on an album on his home recording system and chose to release McCartney in May 1970 with a press release that implied he was the one who was ending the Beatles. This naturally infuriated John, who felt that he was the one ending the group. You can see it is a little bit like people breaking up trying to be the person doing the ‘dumping,’ rather than the one ‘being dumped.’
John compound the problem in the early 1970s by granting a great many interviews where he took every opportunity to insult and degrade Paul (both personally and professionally) and George’s music (not personal attacks). He never attacked Ringo, but he did make outrageous and scathing comments about the Beatles as a group and George Martin, their long-time producer and friend.
These were very public insults that included the very mean-spirited lyrics to How Do You Sleep on an album and vicious criticisms in Rolling Stone magazine.
Later, by way of apology to George Martin, John said, “You didn’t believe any of that rubbish, did you? You know I say anything in interviews just to be shocking sometimes. I was probably stoned when I said all that, anyway.” It wasn’t until just before he died that John went about clearing up some of the damage he created at that time in the name of ‘truth.’
The business mess was not even marginally straightened out for years afterward – final legal papers dissolving their business ties were signed in late 1974 with John, ironically, being the last one to sign.
Ironically, they seemed to really not harbor any bad blood personally throughout most of this period. They were together in LA in 1974 and John had planned to surprise Paul onstage at an upcoming Wings concert in New Orleans. Paul and Linda visited John and his girl-friend, May Pang, at Christmastime, yet Paul was instrumental in helping John and Yoko reconcile after their 18 month separation. John and Paul were in touch about things like the births of their children, the deaths of their fathers (just two weeks apart in 1976), and even thought about appearing together on Saturday Night Live.
Paul has said that his ‘only consolation’ is that the last few conversations they had were good ones about their kids and pets and family life, although they had some problems connecting by phone in the last months of John’s life, possibly due to interference from Yoko, which has been suggested by John’s half-sister, Cynthia Lennon, and a close cousin of John’s in Scotland. That’s something we will never really know.
So, long answer made short is that the split was probably inevitable, although the business dealings made it more difficult and nasty than it probably would have been if their finances and management had been in order before Brian Epstein’s death. After 13 years of such close work and friendship, a little distance was only natural, but as in most cases where emotions run strong, feelings are hurt, pride is damaged, and egos take a beating. If you put all that on a world stage, with every action being reported in the press and noted with concern and alarm and judgment around the world from millions of intensely interested people, the pressure must have been enormous.
Of course, the most tragic aspect is that they probably all thought they had years to undo the damage done, when of course, we never know what little time is left and the friends who sang, “Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting my friend… We can work it out” – were unable to do just that.
I hope that answers your question. Please write with a follow-up if you have any other question.
