After I came across this interview by John and Yoko, I wanted to further explore the events of Friday, 12 September 1969 and the following week. Particularly since, as legend goes, this was the day John privately decided to leave the Beatles.
Earlier that week — either on Monday or Tuesday — John, Paul and George had a meeting at Apple, which they record for Ringo, who was in the hospital doing exams on his intestines at the time. The three attending Beatles discuss their next album and a potential Christmas single. Most of what we know from that meeting concerns the matter of track distribution in the next album, and whether they should now have a set 4-4-4-2 allocation system. Regardless, they seemed to be pretty much planning for the future.
Then on Friday, John and Yoko give an interview to various publications, where John closes it by saying:
[T]he Beatles are always discussing, “Should we go on or shouldn’t we? Why are we together for now?” And what it gets down to is I like playing rock n’ roll and I like making rock n’ roll records. Now, I’ve got either the choice— if I want the whole LP to myself — is to get a few musicians together. Now, I know that— I’ve played with other musicians — just very rarely, but occasionally I’ve played with them — and it needs some work together to get anything going. I don’t like session men, so I try not to use them. I don’t like violinists or anything these days. I try not to use anybody but the Beatles. And if I wanted to make a record I’d chose the Beatles! I can say, “Give me a ‘Be Bop A Lula’”. So therefore, we’ve got that going. And even from a commercial point, when we discuss it, “What’s the biggest selling name? Beatles or John Lennon and The Fabs? Or George Harrison and The Fabs?” Which— Where’s our biggest market? It’s Beatles! Who are our closest friends? Beatles! Who do we have the most arguments with? Beatles. So Beatles is it!
So, from this excerpt we can gather that The Beatles had been talking about whether or not they should go on. This is nothing new. They’d been forced to constantly consider their continued existence as a band in the early days of “When is the bubble gonna burst?”. They’d already far outlived their initial expectations and the only long-term plans John and Paul ever had was on the longevity of the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team.
JOHN: You can be big-headed and say, “Yeah, we’re gonna last 10 years.” But as soon as you said that you think, “We’re lucky if we last 3 months!”
PAUL: We’ve thought about it a probably the thing that John and I will do will be write songs, as we have been doing as a sort of side-line now. We’ll probably develop that a bit more, we hope. Who knows, at 40 we may not know how to write songs any more.
The decision to stop touring and retreat to the studio in 1966 was another big moment they actively chose to reinvent themselves in order to be able to continue as a group. And all through the Get Back sessions at the beginning of 1969, there was a constant dialogue on what did they need to do to sustain them going forward.
GEORGE: Well, what I was saying about the songs was like, the reason, you know, like, I’ve got about twenty songs from 1948 was because I knew very well the moment I’d bring them in the studio, that – [blows raspberry] there it’s gone, you know.
PAUL: Yeah.
GEORGE: And, uh, so I never did. And, like, slowly now, I can bring a couple out because I can get it more like how it should have been then. And that’s – you know, it’s like, it’s just…
PAUL: You see, but it doesn’t matter what’s going wrong. It really doesn’t matter what’s going wrong, as long as the four of us notice it.
GEORGE: [disbelieving; laughs] Well, I’ve noticed it, alright.
PAUL: No, but and – and – instead of just noticing it, determine to put it right, you know. [pause] ‘Cause that’s what I’m – that’s what I’m onto.
GEORGE: Maybe we should have a divorce.
PAUL: Well, I said that last week, you know. But it’s getting nearer.
JOHN: Who’d have the children?
PAUL: [pause] Dick James.
JOHN: Oh, yeah.
From this piece of dialog we can see that George’s concerns with being able to put his own songs out will still be discussed over half a year later, in that meeting in 9 September 1969. So George suggests a divorce, to which Paul replies he’d said the same thing the previous week. John worries about who’d get the children (their songs), and in an unfortunate fit of prophetic irony, Paul answers Dick James. But more on John and Paul’s custody battle for their creative offspring later.
Getting back to John’s statement in 12 September 1969, we see again a continuation of their preoccupations with track allocation on their albums. John states that if he really wanted to get the whole LP to himself, the solution would be to just gather other musicians. But crucially, he goes on to explain how there’s no way to replace the easy flow and implicit communication the Beatles have with each other, resulting from a lot of shared time and experiences.
[T]he Beatles are always discussing, “Should we go on or shouldn’t we? Why are we together for now?” And what it gets down to is I like playing rock n’ roll and I like making rock n’ roll records. Now, I’ve got either the choice— if I want the whole LP to myself — is to get a few musicians together. Now, I know that— I’ve played with other musicians — just very rarely, but occasionally I’ve played with them — and it needs some work together to get anything going. I don’t like session men, so I try not to use them. I don’t like violinists or anything these days. I try not to use anybody but the Beatles. And if I wanted to make a record I’d chose the Beatles! I can say, “Give me a ‘Be Bop A Lula’”. So therefore, we’ve got that going.
So even now, for John, “Beatles is it.”
It happens that later that evening, live music promotor John Brower — who was hoping to get some high profile guests to boost the sales of the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival happening the following day — called the Apple offices. John got on the phone with him and accepted the invitation, assuming he’d get to perform.
We got this phone call on a Friday night that there was a rock’n’roll revival show in Toronto with a 100,000 audience, or whatever it was, and that Chuck was going to be there and Jerry Lee and all the great rockers that were still living, and Bo Diddley, and supposedly The Doors were top of the bill. They were inviting us as king and queen to preside over it, not play – but I didn’t hear that bit. I said, ‘Just give me time to get a band together,’ and we went the next morning.
— John Lennon, (1969). In The Anthology.
While recounting it later, John says “a band”. But I think he first attempted to gather the Beatles. Not only because it’s completely in line with his quote from earlier that day, where he clearly stated he tries “not to use anybody but the Beatles”, but also from how George later recounts it.
When the Plastic Ono Band went to Toronto in September John actually asked me to be in the band, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t really want to be in an avant-garde band, and I knew that was what it was going to be. He said he’d get Klaus Voormann, and Alan White as the drummer. During the last few years of The Beatles we were all producing other records anyway, so we had a nucleus of friends in the studios: drummers and bass players and other musicians. So it was relatively simple to knock together a band. He asked me if I’d play guitar, and then he got Eric Clapton to go – they just rehearsed on the plane over there.
— George Harrison, in The Anthology.
So, John receives a call Friday night and spontaneously decides to go play live in Toronto the following day. By the time he’s on the phone with George asking him to go with him, John says he plans to get Klaus Voormann to play bass and Alan White to play drums. So I have a feeling there had been a couple of calls to the other members before George got his. And potentially, like George, the other two said no.
Now, there are a lot of reasons for why Paul and Ringo also declined embarking on this impromptu adventure to suddenly perform live, in front of an audience. After all, The New York Times still reports that Ringo is in the hospital only a few days earlier, on 10 September 1969. And Paul himself had a two-week-old baby Mary at home. So one could see why they were unavailable. And once this shifted from a Beatles thing, to a group that John was trying to quickly put together, it makes sense George too gave it a pass, for the reasons he mentioned above.
But John was keen on going, even if it meant playing with other musicians, similar to how he, Yoko and others joined The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus as The Dirty Mac, back in December 1968. And so the first performing line-up of the Plastic Ono Band was formed:
It was very, very quick. We didn’t have a band then – we didn’t even have a group that had played with us for more than half a minute. I called Eric and I got Klaus, and we got Alan White and they said, ‘OK.’ There was no big palaver – it wasn’t like this set-format show that I’d been doing with The Beatles where you go on and do the same numbers – I Want To Hold Your Head – and the show lasts twenty minutes and nobody’s listening, they’re just screaming and the amps are as big as a peanut and it’s more a spectacular rather than rock’n’roll.
— John Lennon, (1969). In The Anthology.
However, this sequence of events seems to have had a big impact on John, who in the space of a few hours goes from having recently stated that the Beatles are it — that they stay together because what they have can’t be replicated with other people, they offer the most financial security and their his closest friends — and so if given the choice, he’ll always chose to play with the Beatles, to having the sudden chance to play live with the Beatles and having the other three say no, letting him down and forcing him to find a replacement. Apparently, this perceived abandonment shook him so much that he’d later recall this as the moment he decided to leave himself.
We were in Apple and I knew before I went to Toronto, I told Allen [Klein] I was leaving. I told Eric Clapton and Klaus that I was leaving and I’d like to probably use them as a group. I hadn’t decided how to do it, to have a permanent new group or what. And then later on I thought, ‘Fuck it, I’m not going to get stuck with another set of people, whoever they are.’ So I announced it to myself and to the people around me on the way to Toronto the few days before. On the plane Allen came with me, and I told him, ‘It’s over.’
— John Lennon, interviewed by Jann Wenner for Rolling Stone (December 1970).
My emphasis on this moment is not necessarily as a “point or no return” for John on the whole Beatles thing. I think there was no such thing, for any of them, really.
I just find it very informative towards understanding John’s state of mind at the time. Putting it into context this way not only highlights John’s volatility (”Beatles is it” -> “It’s over”), but it reinforces how emotionally charged his statements and decisions were. That shift in stance didn’t seem to happen out of the blue, but in reaction to something. Something that he really cares about.
It’s also fascinating that in retrospect he points to this moment — and not a moment sooner — for when he actually seriously considered leaving for the first time. They’ve discussed it throughout the years, and both Ringo and George have actually got up and left at some point; but even during the Get Back sessions John seemed to be mostly on the side of wanting the Beatles thing to go on.
JOHN: The point is, if George leaves, do we want to carry on The Beatles? I do.
By Monday, 15 September 1969, John and Yoko are back in the Apple Corps office in London, giving an interview to ITV News.
Q: Can we now expect some kind of solo John Lennon act?
JOHN: I don’t think I’d perform solo at all. If I feel like performing I’ll perform. I mean, would you call ‘Give Peace A Chance’ a solo performance? Maybe it is, I just play it by ear; if I feel like doing it, I’ll do it.
During this interview he also talks how they were “full of junk” (heroin) and how he’d been throwing up for hours before he went on and almost vomited during ‘Cold Turkey’.
Remember when I told you we’d come back to John and Paul’s custody battle for their songs? Well that Tuesday, 16 September 1969, Maclen Music Limited (John and Paul’s US publishing company) starts legal proceedings against Northern Songs (John and Paul’s UK publishing company). Helmed by Allen Klein, it was an attempt to delay the latter’s selling. (Once upon a time I answer an ask delving into the whole Northern Songs saga, which you can find here.)
But it was for naught. That very Friday, 19 September 1969, John and Paul would lose control of Northern Songs, and consecutively most of their Lennon-McCartney compositions.
Earlier on that same day, Paul talks with David Wigg for the BBC Radio 1 series Scene And Heard. Besides talking about his new babies (Mary and Abbey Road), he also addresses a return to live performances and how he got bored with the repetition of playing to big audiences.
PAUL: I personally — if we’re going to do anything — prefer to just go right back to a small club. Just have 50 people in and sing to them, have a bit of a sing-song. I’d get more fun from that!
Q: And what about John? He seems to be—
Q: —want to get back and perform. Isn’t this going to cause a sort of division in the group?
PAUL: No, no! No, the thing is, John wants to do that. And I think it’s great! See, I’ve just said I don’t particularly like the idea of playing to those many people, but I’d hate to stop him doing it. He loves it! He did this Toronto thing and had a really great time. So I’d be the last person to say, “Well you know, don’t do it because you’ve got to… just do it with the Beatles, or stuff.“ And it’s a great idea anyway.
Paul repeated this idea in the Beatles meeting the following day, on 20 September 1969:
I’d said: ‘I think we should go back to little gigs – I really think we’re a great little band. We should find our basic roots, and then who knows what will happen? We may want to fold after that, or we may really think we’ve still got it.’ John looked at me in the eye and said: ‘Well, I think you’re daft. I wasn’t going to tell you till we signed the Capitol deal’ – Klein was trying to get us to sign a new deal with the record company – ‘but I’m leaving the group!’ We paled visibly and our jaws slackened a bit.
I must admit we’d known it was coming at some point because of his intense involvement with Yoko. John needed to give space to his and Yoko’s thing. Someone like John would want to end The Beatles period and start the Yoko period; and he wouldn’t like either to interfere with the other. But what wasn’t too clever was this idea of: ‘I wasn’t going to tell you till after we signed the new contract.’ Good old John – he had to blurt it out. And that was it. There’s not a lot you can say to, ‘I’m leaving the group,’ from a key member.
I didn’t really know what to say. We had to react to him doing it; he had control of the situation. I remember him saying, ‘It’s weird this, telling you I’m leaving the group, but in a way it’s very exciting.’ It was like when he told Cynthia he was getting a divorce. He was quite buoyed up by it, so we couldn’t really do anything: ‘You mean leaving’? So that’s the group, then…’ It was later, as the fact set in, that it got really upsetting.
— Paul McCartney, in The Anthology.
It’s only recently that Paul has put into words the hurt he felt in that moment (something that we already knew from Mal Evan’s recounts of that day, and how Paul “spent the next hour in the house crying his eyes out.”):
John said, ‘Well, I’m not doing it. I’m leaving. Bye.’ In the ensuing moments, he was giggling and saying how this felt really thrilling, like telling someone you’re going to divorce them and then laughing. At the time, obviously, that was wildly hurtful. Talk about a knockout blow. You’re lying on the canvas, and he’s giggling and telling you how good it feels to have just knocked you out.
— Paul McCartney, on “Get Back”. In The Lyrics (2021).
From Ringo’s perspective, the only other Beatle present, the meeting didn’t seem to be particularly emotionally charged.
After the Plastic Ono Band’s debut in Toronto, we had a meeting in Savile Row where John finally brought it to its head. He said: ‘Well, that’s it, lads. Let’s end it.’ And we all said ‘yes’. And though I said ‘yes’ because it was ending (and you can’t keep it together anyway, if this is what the attitude is) I don’t know if I would have said, ‘End it.’ I probably would have lingered another couple of years.
But when we all met in the office, we knew it was good. It wasn’t sulky and we weren’t really fighting. It was like a thought came into the room, and everyone said what they said. John didn’t think we should leave, just that we should break it up. It was not: ‘I’m leaving, you’re leaving.’ It was: ‘Well, that’s it! I’ve had enough. I want to do this…’
If that had happened in 1965, or 1967 even, it would have been a mighty shock. Now it was just ‘let’s get the divorce over with’, really. And John was always the most forward when it came to nailing anything.
— Ringo Starr, in The Anthology.
John also recounts that moment in Lennon Remembers:
When I got back [from Toronto] there were a few meetings and Allen said, ‘Cool it,’ ’cause there was a lot to do [with The Beatles] business-wise, and it wouldn’t have been suitable at the time. Then we were discussing something in the office with Paul and Paul was saying to do something, and I kept saying, ‘No, no, no’ to everything he said. So it came to a point that I had to say something. So I said, ‘The group’s over, I’m leaving.’ Allen was there, and he was saying, ‘Don’t tell.’ He didn’t want me to tell Paul even. But I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t stop it, it came out. And Paul and Allen said they were glad that I wasn’t going to announce it, like I was going to make an event out of it. I don’t know whether Paul said, ‘Don’t tell anybody,’ but he was damn pleased that I wasn’t. He said, ‘Oh well, that means nothing really happened if you’re not going to say anything.’ So that’s what happened.
— John Lennon, interviewed by Jann Wenner for Rolling Stone (December 1970).
According to John Green (the Lennons’ tarot reader in the late 70′s), John gave us another perspective on this meeting almost a decade after:
The thing that held us together was that we could work together. You’d be surprised how much that matters. When things fell apart it was because I fell apart. I wasn’t willing to do the extras I always did, and I resented it when Paul tried or George tried. I’m not altogether sure why I felt that way. Tired I guess. […] Then it seemed everybody was drifting off in different directions, and that seemed to make more sense than trying to go on. All that was needed was for someone to pronounce the patient dead, but none of us really wanted to do that. Then I decided that it was my job, unpleasant as it was. I talked to Paul about it and he asked me not to announce the breakup. Asked! Hell, he begged me! I was touched because I thought it was because he had the faith that somehow, somewhere, everything would work out and we’d do it all over again. Well, I was touched all right. Touched in the head. Paul went behind my back and made the announcement as part of a publicity campaign for a record. And for that, my dear Charles, I am never, no not ever, going to forgive him. It was like he took the Beatles away from me as part of a promotional trick.
— John Lennon, as recounted by John Green, in Dakota Days (1983).
This is a lot. But I first want to call attention again to the fact that John and Paul just lost Northern Songs — in the words of Peter Brown, their “child; creative flesh and blood” — and the following day John asks Paul for a divorce.
As before, I don’t think these two events are unrelated or that John’s announcement was something dispassionate, “like a thought came into the room”. John couldn’t contain himself — despite Klein telling him to only say something after they’d gotten the rest of the Beatles to sign the new contract — he just “had blurt it out”. John seemed to be in a quasi-euphoric state, just from telling Paul he was leaving him. And if Green is to be believed, Paul’s reaction touched John and made him hopeful that since Paul cared that much about him leaving the Beatles — since Paul still had faith in them — that everything would work out in the end.
And they keep dancing on this limbo for half a year: John buoyed by the fact that Paul still cared enough about their marriage that he begged John not to go through with a divorce, while Paul was mentally and emotionally trying to come to terms with said divorce.
But further explorations of that at another time. For now, I just wanted to gain a deeper perspective on those few weeks in September 1969. If anyone else has interesting insights of this time, feel free to share it!
