John Lennon's response as all four Beatles almost reunited years after split
There were many reasons behind The Beatles' split and relations remained strained for some time. Tensions ran high in the final years of the 1960s as creative differences emerged among the band.
They had retired from touring in 1966 and focused on recording innovative, boundary-breaking music in the studio. That began with the iconic 1967 album 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', which captured the zeitgeist of the so-called summer of love that year and spent 27 weeks on top of the Record Retailer chart in the United Kingdom.
The recording sessions of its follow up, known as 'The White Album', were notoriously feisty. Ringo Starr left the band for a period, fed up with the mood, as The Beatles clashed.
About that period of recording, Paul McCartney said: "There was a lot of friction during that album. We were just about to break up, and that was tense in itself". John Lennon later added: "The break-up of The Beatles can be heard on that album."
In September 1969, after the band had recorded the majority of what became 'Let it Be' (the 'Get Back' sessions) and 'Abbey Road', John told Paul, George Harrison and Ringo that he wanted a "divorce" from The Beatles. Paul went away to work on his first solo album 'McCartney', believing it was all over for the group.
Source: uk.news.yahoo.com/Dan Haygarth
