5 of The Beatles’ Most Explosive Fights and Which Beatle Was in the Middle of Most of Them
The Beatles worked together to make some of the most enduring music of the twentieth century, but they didn’t do that without some fights along the way. The band met as young teenagers and spent most of their time together; arguments were bound to happen. There is, of course, the long-running feud between Paul McCartney and John Lennon and the court case after the band broke up. Some of their lesser-known fights were just as explosive, though. Somewhat surprisingly, George Harrison was at the center of many of them.
When Paul McCartney and Stuart Sutcliffe came to blows onstage
Before The Beatles were famous, they played in German nightclubs and had five members. Their one-time guitarist Stuart Sutcliffe was often the butt of the band’s jokes, and he frequently clashed with McCartney. During a concert, something McCartney said about Sutcliffe’s girlfriend led to a fistfight.
“Paul was saying something about Stu’s girl — he was jealous because she was a great girl, and Stu hit him, onstage,” Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “And Stu wasn’t a violent guy at all.”
McCartney thought he’d have no problem winning the fight, but Sutcliffe’s anger gave him strength.
“Stuart and I once actually had a fight on stage,” McCartney said. “I thought I’d beat him hands down because he was littler than me. But he was strong and we got locked in a sort of death-grip, on stage during the set. It was terrible. We must have called each other something one too many times: ‘Oh, you …’ — ‘You calling me that?’ Then we were locked and neither of us wanted to go any further and all the others were shouting, ‘Stop it, you two!’ — ‘I’ll stop it if he will.'”
When George Harrison and John Lennon got into a fistfight
Both Ringo Starr and Harrison temporarily quit The Beatles in the late 1960s. Harrison’s exit from the band had to do with years of being overlooked by his bandmates but also with increasing interpersonal tensions. Harrison did not like Yoko Ono, who was always in the studio with Lennon. Lennon didn’t like Harrison’s attitude toward Ono.
“George, s***, insulted her right to her face in the Apple office at the beginning, just being ‘straight-forward,’ you know that game of ‘I’m going to be up front,’ because this is what we’ve heard and Dylan and a few people said she’d got a lousy name in New York, and you give off bad vibes,” he told Rolling Stone in 1971. “That’s what George said to her! And we both sat through it. I didn’t hit him, I don’t know why.”
According to longtime Beatles producer George Martin, the two bandmates did come to blows, though the fight “had been completely hushed up at the time” (via The Guardian). Harrison walked out on the band shortly after, though he ultimately returned to the group.
When Paul McCartney threw Ringo Starr out of his house
McCartney planned on releasing his debut solo album before The Beatles’ Let It Be, but the band’s management felt it would be best to push back the release date. As McCartney was getting along best with Starr at this point, they sent him to ask.
“Ringo came to see me,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “He was sent, I believe — being mild mannered, the nice guy — by the others, because of the dispute. So Ringo arrived at the house, and I must say I gave him a bit of verbal. I said: ‘You guys are just messing me around.’ He said: ‘No, well, on behalf of the board and on behalf of The Beatles and so and so, we think you should do this,’ etc. And I was just fed up with that.”
McCartney got so angry that it shocked both him and Starr. He threw his bandmate out of his house.
“It was the only time I ever told anyone to GET OUT!” McCartney said. “It was fairly hostile. But things had got like that by this time. It hadn’t actually come to blows, but it was near enough.”
When George Harrison had an affair with Ringo Starr’s wife
In the 1970s, Harrison dealt a punishing blow to both his and Starr’s marriages when he had an affair with Starr’s wife, Maureen Starkey. Though Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd, had long suspected something was going on, Harrison refused to admit it. Eventually, in a poorly timed confession, Harrison told Starr, Boyd, and a friend that he was in love with Starkey during a dinner party.
“Ringo worked himself up into a terrible state and went about saying, ‘Nothing is real, nothing is real,'” Boyd explained in her book Wonderful Tonight. “I was furious. I went straight out and dyed my hair red.”
Though The Beatles had been broken up for several years at this point, all the former members got dragged into the fight. Even Lennon, who ended his first marriage by having multiple affairs, angrily described the relationship as “virtual incest” (via Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents by Mikal Gilmore).
When George Harrison smashed John Lennon’s glasses
After The Beatles broke up, Harrison nearly came to blows with Lennon again. Lennon and his girlfriend, May Pang, met up with Harrison in the early 1970s. Pang said Harrison seemed “edgy,” and his anger eventually boiled over.
“Then George’s anger really burst forth,” Pang wrote in the book Loving John. “‘Where were you when I needed you!’ he snapped. It was the first of a series of explosions, each of them followed by moments of tense silence.”
He kept yelling at Lennon until he reached over and ripped his glasses off his face.
“Suddenly, he reached over, yanked John’s glasses from his face, and dashed them to the floor,” Pang wrote. “His face was a mask of fury and contempt; I had never seen an angrier man. George’s anger even paralyzed John.”
Though Harrison apologized the following day, the fight between the former Beatles bandmates shocked Pang.
