Paul McCartney has said Yoko Ono did not split up The Beatles.
The singer told David Frost, in a new interview to be aired next month, that Yoko Ono’s relationship with John Lennon was not the main reason why the band split up, reports The Guardian.
The newspaper, which has seen extracts from Frost’s exclusive interview, reports that McCartney admits he had found Yoko sitting in on The Beatles’ recording sessions very difficult but did not blame her for the group’s demise.
Speaking to Frost, McCartney said: “She certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up. When Yoko came along, part of her attraction was her avant garde side, her view of things, so she showed him another way to be, which was very attractive to him. So it was time for John to leave, he was definitely going to leave one way or another.”
McCartney goes on to say that without the support of Yoko Ono, he believes Lennon would not have written songs such as “Imagine”, adding: “I don’t think he would have done that without Yoko, so I don’t think you can blame her for anything.”
However, the singer placed more of the blame of The Beatles break-up on businessman Allen Klein, who succeeded manager Brian Epstein following his death in 1967.
Mock punching a photograph of Klein, the 70-year-old added: “I was fighting against the other three guys who’d been my lifelong soul buddies. I said I wanted to fight Klein.”
The Frost/McCartney interview will be screened on TV channel Al Jazeera English next month. The series of 60-minute interviews begins on November 6.