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The Beatles · S10 E7
April 10, 1970
Paul McCartney announces he has left the Beatles. The press release lands like a bomb. The greatest band in history is over
April 10, 1970. Journalists receive advance copies of Paul McCartney's debut solo album, and tucked inside each one is a self-interview in which Paul states he has no plans to work with the Beatles again. By the end of the day, every newspaper in the world is running the same headline.
"Maybe I'm Amazed" (Paul McCartney, 1970). The first great solo track by any Beatle, released on the McCartney album that contained the breakup press release. Paul recorded every instrument himself in his home studio: drums, bass, guitars, piano, vocals. It's a raw, desperate love song to Linda, and it sounds like a man clinging to the one thing that hasn't fallen apart. This is what came next.
Maybe I'm Amazed, Paul McCartney (1970)
Paul recorded the entire McCartney album alone at home on a four-track Studer tape machine, teaching himself drums by trial and error. "Maybe I'm Amazed" is the one track where the homemade quality becomes a strength: the piano is slightly out of tune, the vocal is pushed to its limit, and the guitar solo sounds like someone who needed to scream but chose an instrument instead. It wasn't released as a single until the Wings live version in 1977, which is why many people know that version better than the original.
Sources
Miles, Barry. "Many Years From Now." Secker & Warburg, 1997.
Sounes, Howard. "Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney." Da Capo Press, 2010.
The End
John actually told the others he was leaving the band in September 1969, right after Abbey Road was finished. Allen Klein persuaded him to keep quiet to avoid hurting ongoing business negotiations. For seven months, the world's biggest band is secretly already over, and the three remaining members are left waiting for someone to say it publicly. Paul breaks the silence first.
Sources
The Beatles. "The Beatles Anthology." Chronicle Books, 2000.
Norman, Philip. "Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation." Simon & Schuster, 2005.
“I started the band. I finished it. It's as simple as that.”
— John Lennon
TAP TO REVEAL: Who actually broke up the Beatles?
Let It Be
The Let It Be album arrives on May 8, 1970, nearly a month after Paul's announcement. Phil Spector has overdubbed orchestras and choirs onto songs the Beatles intended to keep raw. Paul is furious. The album reaches number one in both the UK and the US, but it feels less like a triumph and more like a funeral.
Sources
Lewisohn, Mark. "The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions." Hamlyn, 1988.
The Beatles. "The Beatles Anthology." Chronicle Books, 2000.
The Breakup
Glass Onion, The Beatles (1968)
Written two years before the breakup, "Glass Onion" is John deconstructing the Beatles' own mythology while they're still inside it. He references "Strawberry Fields," "Lady Madonna," "The Fool on the Hill," and "Fixing a Hole," poking fun at fans who read hidden meanings into everything. The line "the walrus was Paul" was a deliberate joke to mess with conspiracy theorists. Listening to it now, knowing how it all ends, the song sounds like John already saying goodbye.
Glass Onion, The Beatles (1968)
"I told you about Strawberry Fields, you know the place where nothing is real." Lennon wrote this as a deliberate response to fans and critics who overanalyzed Beatles lyrics, pulling references from five different songs and scrambling them into nonsense. The strings were arranged by George Martin to sound deliberately aggressive, matching the song's confrontational tone. "Looking through a glass onion" means peeling back layers only to find more layers, and that's exactly what the song does to you.
Who was actually the first Beatle to say they were leaving the band?
What Remains
Between 1962 and 1970, four men from Liverpool recorded roughly 230 songs, sold over 600 million records, and changed the sound of popular music so completely that every band that came after them exists in their shadow. They were together for less than a decade. They were kids when it started and barely thirty when it ended. The music outlived everything else.
Sources
Lewisohn, Mark. "The Complete Beatles Chronicle." Hamlyn, 1992.
The Beatles are over. But four solo careers are about to begin, and the decade that follows will bring a triple album that stuns the world, an assassination that shatters it, and a legacy that only grows larger with every passing year.
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To be continued
Season 11: After
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