The Beatles’ breakup was never going to be blamed on one specific member of the band.
They had already been drifting apart for years, and it only took John Lennon to call out their situation and start moving on to bigger and better things. But while every member of the Fab Four had their own reasons for why things went wrong, Paul McCartney had a good idea of why the band officially fractured as the 1970s unfolded.
And first of all, it’s about time we get one thing straight: THIS WAS NOT YOKO’S FAULT. Yoko Ono has received blame for murdering The Beatles so often that she’s unintentionally cast as the villain in their story half the time, but looking through the Get Back documentary, she was never actively trying to be a nuisance by any stretch. She was simply in love with Lennon, and even if she was there in the middle of things, it’s not like she’s actively trying to step on his bandmates’ toes.
If anything, the making of Let It Be was marred by a lot of middlemen coming in half the time. Abbey Road was the happy end result of them coming back together for one more masterpiece, but considering how many hangers-on were coming and going during the sessions, it felt like the band had turned their sessions into more of a hangout spot than a place to actually get work done.
But can you really blame them? They were losing money with all of the business dealings with Apple, and even if they had the potential to make music together, their moments during Let It Be were the few times that they could have a laugh as musical brothers. What they needed was a manager that could help deal with all of the paperwork for them, but in the context of history, Allen Klein was the kind of sleazy businessman that seems ripped directly out of some bad soap opera.
Klein was already known to be actively vicious towards any artist that he came across, and even if he said all the right words, nothing was going to dissuade him from pitting the band against each other. He knew that Macca didn’t agree with his practises, so even whilst the group was breaking up, Klein found his way into Lennon’s inner circle, to the point where he was suggesting lines to him to lambast his old writing partner when he wrote ‘How Do You Sleep’ a few years later.
McCartney never intended to lose his best friends, but as soon as Klein came into the picture, he had had enough, saying, “We made Let It Be but, because of all the fraught personal relationships, the final straw was Allen Klein coming in. It was his decision that Let It Be wasn’t good enough and that it needed strings, needed tarting up.” And given how McCartney felt about ‘The Long and Winding Road’ being tampered with, Klein unintentionally got the first ball rolling that turned into a musical landslide.
The band could have easily overcome one bad record, but by the time that it was out, enough damage had been done. McCartney was the first one to release a press statement saying that the group was over, and even if they had found a way to make up and keep the band going, it would have been impossible if Klein kept insisting that they go in another direction or make sleazy business deals.
So when Lennon does eventually bring up Klein’s name in Get Back and talks about how much he admires his approach as a manager, it’s not exactly the most thrilling announcement. If anything, it’s a warning of the malicious beast that was more concerned about the money going into his pocket than preserving one of the greatest bands on Earth.
