Paul McCartney Called 1967 a ‘Time for Reassessment’
The Beatles had their “pop stardom” phase and their psychedelic phase. According to Paul McCartney, the Beatles were already reassessing their music and experimental sounds in 1967. Here’s what we know about this rock band — and McCartney’s hint at the 1970 break up.
When did the Beatles break up?
The Beatles’ break up came in stages. When fans became too loud (and the Fab Four couldn’t hear their instruments during concerts), the band stopped touring in 1966. That also meant the end of John Lennon’s “particular discomfort” with meeting fans with disabilities, according to Cynthia Lennon.
The band’s final live performance was their rooftop concert at the Apple Headquarters in London, as seen in The Beatles: Get Back. At that point, there were already inklings of a split. Harrison walked out during one rehearsal after a negative reaction to his original song “I Me Mine.”
He eventually returned to the Beatles, with Ringo Starr revealing that he once seriously left the band after feeling “left out.” After writing the songs for Abbey Road, and releasing their final album Let It Be, the band split in 1970. However, McCartney was already exploring new sounds (and a serious “reassessment” by 1967.
Paul McCartney was ‘thinking things out’ with the Beatles in 1967
McCartney appeared in a New Musical Express interview, discussing music, the Beatles, and his time in India. He also mentioned the band’s direction toward experimental sounds, some of which appeared on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
“We enjoy recording, but we want to go even further,” McCartney said (via Beatles Interviews). “I would like to come up with a completely new form of music, invent new sounds. I want to do something, but I don’t really know what.”
In a separate interview, John Lennon said the Beatles clinked glasses together or used “bleeps from the radio” for original songs. There was even an anvil on “Maxwell’s Siver Hammer,” as seen in The Beatles: Get Back.
“At the moment I’m thinking things out. There seems to be a pause in my life right now — a time for reassessment…,” he added. “I would like to do something else, but what that will be, I don’t know.”
Although he had a large role in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting duo for the Beatles, McCartney eventually released “Band on the Run,” “Live and Let Die,” and other fan-favorite tracks as a solo artist.
Paul McCartney announced the Beatles’ breakup with a self-interview
Although McCartney did not explicitly say the Beatles broke up, he did mention the group separating in his 1970 “self-interview,” later transcribed by History.com.
“Personal differences, business differences, musical differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family,” the songwriter said of the split. “Temporary or permanent? I don’t really know.”
