In January 1969, George Harrison walked out on The Beatles after a furious row with Paul McCartney, but the band’s guitarist would later return to the fold.
The later years of The Beatles were fraught with tension. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr had been collaborating since 1962, and creative differences began to surface after their 1966 retirement from touring as they focused on studio experimentation.
These differences led to disputes, and the recording sessions for 1968’s ‘The White Album’ were notably contentious. Ringo temporarily left the band during the recording of ‘Back in the USSR.’ Reflecting on that period, Paul remarked, ‘There was a lot of friction during that album.
Despite the difficulties, The Beatles returned to the studio in January 1969 for their next project, initially titled ‘Get Back.’ Paul wanted the band to return to their rock and roll roots and live performances, having retired from touring in 1966, and they gathered at Twickenham Film Studios in London to prepare and record a new album.
The plan was to film their rehearsals for a TV special to accompany their return to live performances. However, the Liverpool Echo reports that things didn’t go as planned.
In “The Beatles Diary,” Barry Miles penned, “It was a disaster. They were still exhausted from the marathon ‘The Beatles’ (‘The White Album’) sessions. Paul bossed George around; George was moody and resentful. John would not even go to the bathroom without Yoko at his side… The tension was palpable, and it was all being caught on film.”
During their time at Twickenham, George walked out of the studio, informing the band that he was quitting, fed up with the internal tensions and his dwindling role. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the director of the TV special, remembered George leaving after lunch on January 10, 1969.
Lindsay-Hogg recounted, “We’d finished the first course when George arrived to stand at the end of the table. We looked at him as he stood silent for a moment. ‘See you ’round the clubs,’ he said. That was his goodbye. He left.
“John, a person who reacted aggressively to provocation, immediately said, ‘Let’s get in, Eric (Clapton).'” He’s just as good and not such a headache. Paul and Ringo would not be drawn in, and after lunch, we went back to the studio where Paul, John, and Ringo improvised a ferocious riff, half an hour of anger and frustration expressed with guitars and drums. Yoko sat on the edge of the rostrum on the blue cushion, which had been George’s, and howled into his mike.”
Ringo Starr looked back on the day George Harrison walked out on The Beatles, explaining, “George left because Paul and he were having a heated discussion. They weren’t getting along that day, and George decided to leave, but he didn’t tell John, me, or Paul.”
He revealed, “There’d been some tension going down in the morning, and arguments would go on anyway, so none of us realized until we went to lunch that George had gone home. When we came back, he still wasn’t there, so we started jamming violently.”
Starr also noted their reaction to the tension: “Paul was playing his bass into the amp, and John was off, and I was playing some weird drumming that I hadn’t done before. I don’t play like that as a rule. Our reaction was really, really interesting at the time. And Yoko jumped in, of course; she was there.”
Harrison himself later discussed his temporary departure from the iconic band, saying, “They were filming us having a row. It never came to blows, but I thought, ‘What’s the point of this? I’m quite capable of being relatively happy on my own, and I’m not able to be happy in this situation. I’m getting out of here.'”
He further reflected, “Everybody had gone through that. Ringo had left at one point. I know John wanted out. It was a very, very difficult, stressful time, and being filmed having a row as well was terrible.”
On George Harrison’s return, certain conditions were met, including abandoning plans for a live show and instead recording the new album at their personal studio within Apple HQ. They resumed their sessions there on January 21, 1969, and the atmosphere reportedly saw an upturn.
“I got up, and I thought, ‘I’m not doing this anymore. I’m out of here.’ So I got my guitar and went home, and that afternoon wrote ‘Wah-Wah.’
“It became stifling, so that although this new album was supposed to break away from that type of recording (we were going back to playing live), it was still very much that kind of situation where he already had in his mind what he wanted. Paul wanted nobody to play on his songs until he decided how it should go. For me, it was like, ‘What am I doing here? This is painful!’
“Then, superimposed on top of that was Yoko, and there were negative vibes at that time. John and Yoko were out on a limb. I don’t think he wanted much to be hanging out with us, and I think Yoko was pushing him out of the band, inasmuch as she didn’t want him hanging out with us.
“It’s important to state that a lot of water has gone under the bridge and that, as we talk now, everybody’s good friends and we have a better understanding of the past. But talking about what was happening at that time, you can see it was strange.”
At Apple Studios, ‘Get Back’ morphed into ‘Let It Be,’ the final album released by The Beatles—hitting the market on May 8, 1970. Their rooftop gig on January 30, 1969, marked their last live performance, and the band disbanded in 1970, following John’s declaration that he wanted a “divorce” from The Beatles.
