John Lennon (right), who once compared The Beatles breaking up to falling in love, plays the rooftop concert with The Beatles in 1969.

Music

John Lennon Compared The Beatles Break-Up to Falling in Love, and He Had a Point

John Lennon once compared The Beatles’ split to falling in love, and he made a great point.

by Jason Rossi

Published on October 5, 2022

3 min read

John Lennon once compared The Beatles’ break-up to falling in love

The final days of The Beatles got a little ugly. Verbal barbs and physical fights — such as a dust-up between John and George Harrison — put the band on edge. George and Ringo Starr walked out on the band during the recording sessions for The White Album. Both returned, but it was clear that the Fab Four were destined to splinter.

The band’s break-up in 1970 left fans devastated as it seemed to happen suddenly. Yet John compared The Beatles’ split to falling in love when he sat down with Dick Cavett in 1971 (via YouTube). Cavett asked John if Yoko Ono’s presence fractured the band, which he quickly shot down:

“She didn’t split The Beatles. How can one girl split The Beatles, or one woman? The Beatles were drifting apart on their own … It’s like saying, ‘Do you remember falling in love?’ Not quite. It just sort of happens.”

The end of one of the 20th century’s most beloved bands is like falling in love? It sounds odd, but John had a point about The Beatles’ break-up.

John made a good point comparing The Beatles’ split to falling in love

It might sound strange to compare a sad moment — the dissolution of an all-time great band — to falling in love, but John made a fair point.

Falling in love doesn’t always happen all at once. It is often a slow build, a collection of small moments accrued over days, weeks, months, or even years. There’s not necessarily a singular moment that defines falling in love. John said the same thing was true of The Beatles’ break-up.

There wasn’t one monumental moment that split the Fab Four, such as Yoko sitting in on recording sessions. As John said, the quartet was already drifting apart by that time.

John and Paul McCartney started as a prolific songwriting duo, but their friendly competition to write better songs than the other took a toll on their relationship. John rarely praised Paul’s work. John would freely call one Paul song a piece of garbage, and later reluctantly admit he liked some of Paul’s work. Meanwhile, George could barely get his songs onto Beatles’ records and had very little support from his bandmates. Love can develop slowly and become messy. For The Beatles, their dissolution came in bits and pieces over several years.

Each member of the Fab Four had their own artistic visions that eventually couldn’t be met in the band, and they realized that well before the break-up. It was a collection of small moments that led to the split. John knew The Beatles would break up years before it actually happened.

John knew the Fab Four would have to end at some point

Years before The Beatles broke up, John knew it would be almost impossible to keep four strong-willed artists together forever. At the very least, he had no interest in finding out if the band could keep it going.

“Everything’s fun off and on,” John told Cavett. “It could have gone on being fun, or it could have got worse, I don’t know … We didn’t want to be dragged on stage playing ‘She Loves You’ when we’ve got asthma and tuberculosis when we’re 50. ‘Here they are again!’ ‘Yesterday, all my troubles…’”

The Beatles found success as a collective, and each band member did the same on their own. John, Paul, George, and Ringo each penned No. 1 hits during their solo careers. Paul and Ringo are still recording more than 60 years after The Beatles formed.

There was a lot to love about the Fab Four’s brilliant but brief run. John Lennon compared The Beatles’ break-up to falling in love — a slow instead of sudden process — and he made a good point.