How the Beatles split up BEFORE Abbey Road

Whoever could have imagined it? Fifty years after its initial release The Beatles’ last album, Abbey Road, is set to top the charts again.

Remixed and repackaged, and coming with various forms of deluxe offerings, including a couple of extra Paul McCartney demo recordings of songs he gave away to other artists at a time when he just couldn’t stop writing hits, it’s an astonishing milestone of popular music.

Back in the Sixties, virtually everyone accepted without question that The Beatles were exceptional, and that some of their songs would have a long life.

But, in truth, none of us could have predicted the tribes of tourists who walked across that famous zebra crossing in London’s St John’s Wood on the album’s re-release last Friday — as thousands have been doing this past half century.

It’s pointless to ask whether any of today’s rock stars will be so recognised in another 50 years’ time. Some of their songs might possibly still be sung. But they won’t have the historic clout which the four left behind on the stripes of that crossing the day that album cover photograph was taken.

Because the extraordinary thing is that even before Abbey Road was released on September 26, 1969, John Lennon had already told the other three Beatles that he wanted a divorce from them; that for him, The Beatles were already dead. It was a huge secret at the time — and would remain so for many months.

The occasion for his outburst had come several days’ earlier, during a Beatles’ board meeting at their multi-media corporation Apple headquarters in London, when Allen Klein, their new American manager, needed their signatures on a recording contract that he’d only just negotiated.

Before they got the pens out, however, Paul McCartney, buoyed by knowing how well the group had worked on making Abbey Road, began talking about how The Beatles should start playing live again — they had given up touring in 1966.

Paul suggested it might be an idea for them to play surprise one-night stands at unlikely places, ‘by just letting a few hundred fans into the village hall’ and then closing the door. Then he asked John and Ringo what they thought — George being away in Liverpool, visiting his sick mother, at the time.

Paul McCartney with his then-wife Linda, wearing the same suit he is seen sporting on the Abbey Road cover

Only John replied. ‘I think you’re daft,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving The Beatles. I want a divorce’… like, he added, the one he’d had from his first wife, Cynthia, the previous year.

Paul was distraught. He and John were not nearly as close as they’d been before Yoko Ono’s arrival, but they’d got along well enough in the studio that summer. A few weeks earlier they’d even been talking about doing another album and putting out a new single at Christmas.

John, however, had had second thoughts, mulling about life without The Beatles when he’d suddenly been asked to fly to Canada one weekend to play at a rock and roll peace festival. He’d taken Eric Clapton with him.

The Beatles had become a straitjacket for him, the others even having refused to record his new song Cold Turkey as a single — which was hardly surprising. It was about his heroin addiction.

He hadn’t, he later told me, gone to Apple that day intending to blurt out his decision. But Paul’s enthusiasm for a Beatles future had been the trigger. And, once he said that he was leaving, it couldn’t be unsaid — although Paul, who was in shock, hoped it could.

It was a huge worry for manager Klein, too. And, fearing that news of the split might be commercially disastrous for Abbey Road, which was due to go on sale, as well as the film and album of Let It Be, which had been made earlier that year but wouldn’t be released until the following spring, he immediately insisted that no one breathe a word about it. Then, quickly he got the band to sign the contracts in front of them.

Not surprisingly, the meeting ended with Paul in despair, Ringo no doubt wondering what was going to happen, and John and Yoko going back to their home near Ascot. When George returned from Liverpool, he was said to be pleased with the news. He could now get on with his solo career.

So began the big secret, with the individual Beatles’ lips sealed and behaving in public as if nothing untoward had happened.

Soon Abbey Road was top of the album charts, followed by the new single, Something — the first to be written by Harrison. On the flip side was John Lennon’s Come Together, making it another double-sided worldwide hit.

On the surface, everything was fine, but, as the weeks passed, Beatles watchers were becoming aware of small changes. After doing his publicity duties for the new album — and he gave no hint to me — the usually approachable Paul was rarely seen at Apple any more. Then a rumour took hold in America that said he was dead.

I even got a phone call in the middle of the night from a Chicago radio station asking me to confirm that he was still alive. ‘He was when I saw him last week,’ I told the listeners.

The Dalai Lama’s Gyuto Monks walking across Abbey Road crossing in 2017

At the time, John and Yoko were on a junket of non-stop publicity for the two, with John returning his MBE to the Queen in November. Could it be that the most obsessive American fans were intuitively on to something?

Paul was very much alive, and Abbey Road was considered by many to be their best work, but perhaps something else had died.

With this in mind I wrote an article for the London Evening Standard at the end of November, 1969, explaining the situation under the headline: ‘The Day the Beatles Died’ — referring to the fact that they now rarely played together as a group — not even in the recording studio.

I was half expecting a letter from The Beatles’ lawyers when the newspaper was published, but instead a single white rose was delivered to my desk the next day, with the message: ‘To Ray with love from John and Yoko.’

I’d got it right, but to a greater extent than I’d realised. From that day on I would have my own mole in The Beatles organisation, in the figure of John Lennon.

Then, just before Christmas, John invited me to join him and Yoko in Toronto where they were pursuing their War Is Over peace campaign that had begun with their bed-ins and record Give Peace A Chance.

There, he decided to let me in on the big secret. Beckoning me to his and Yoko’s bedroom, he closed the door and said simply: ‘I’ve left The Beatles.’ Then he giggled.

I was, I think, speechless. All the signs had been there, but all the same, I was astonished, and, I have to admit, devastated, too. I was as big a Beatles’ fan as anyone. I didn’t want them to break up.

As a journalist, however, I recognised that this was the biggest scoop I would ever get in my career. But John hadn’t quite finished. ‘Don’t tell anybody yet. I’ll let you know when you can put it out,’ he added.

So, I didn’t tell anyone, and the big Beatles secret continued for another four months.

Paul had taken it very badly. Being a Beatle had been the only job he’d ever known, and, after a few weeks of indecision, he hid away at his farm in Scotland, hoping John would change his mind.

Finally, however, he gave up on his old friend. Returning to London, and, never short of songs, he began an album on which he played all the instruments. It would be simply titled McCartney.

Occasionally, over these months, I would ask John if it was time yet for me to run my Beatles break-up story, but he always asked me to wait until after the Let It Be film was released in April.

By March 1970, Paul had completed his solo album and wanted it released. Allen Klein, backed by the three other Beatles, suggested he hold back until after Let It Be came out. To release two albums at much the same time could damage the sales of both, it was reasonably argued.

But then Paul was sent a demo of the Let It Be album and heard the female choir that Phil Spector, who had remixed the unfinished tracks, had added to The Long And Winding Road. He was furious at not having been consulted. ‘I would never have women’s voices in a Beatles record,’ he told me.

At this point it was decided by the other Beatles to let him put his solo album out first, which was accompanied by a Press release. Never once did he say in it that he had left The Beatles, but he did say he wasn’t working with them, had no plans to work with them and wasn’t writing with Lennon.

Newspapers around the world interpreted his responses to mean ‘Paul Quits Beatles’ and that was it. The secret was out. The Beatles had broken up

I spoke to John at lunchtime (mine), breakfast time (his), that day. ‘Why didn’t you write it when I told you in Canada?’ he said.

‘You asked me not to,’ I replied.

His reply was withering. ‘You’re the journalist, Connolly, not me,’ he came back. Sometimes you just couldn’t win with John.

By keeping a promise, I’d been scooped, but in John’s mind he’d been scooped, too. As he had started The Beatles, he felt he should have been the one to announce their dissolution.

You had to have been there to appreciate the near universal shock the announcement generated. Tears of Beatlemania hysteria had flowed half-way around the world a few years earlier. Now eyes were wet with abandonment.

The Beatles hadn’t been just another rock group. They’d been the cultural locomotives with which a generation had come to identify. And now they were no more.

• Being John Lennon — A Restless Life, by Ray Connolly, is published in paperback.