The long and winding road to the Fab Four’s break-up

It could be said eight violins, four violas, four cellos, three trumpets, three trombones, two guitars, and a choir of fourteen women were what finally broke up The Beatles.

When Paul McCartney heard that this lavish orchestration had been added to his Let It Be album track ‘The Long And Winding Road’ by producer Phil Spector, he called in the lawyers.

“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” according to Denise Kelly who has studied more than 300 pages of legal documents relating to the Fab Four’s demise.

They are set to go under the hammer on Thursday, days after the 44th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, who was shot dead on 8 December 1980.

Ms Kelly, from Dawsons auctions, said the bundles must be copies made for legal teams.

She said they gave a “fascinating insight” into events inside and outside the courtroom.

The friction began with the death of Brian Epstein in 1967, which left a management vacuum.

Klein, who had been the manager of the Rolling Stones, began to court Lennon in 1968, and George Harrison and Ringo Starr were soon on board.

Once Klein was in, he brought in Spector to give the as yet unreleased Get Back sessions recordings his signature ‘Wall of Sound’ treatment – a radical departure from the pared back, as-live sound McCartney had wanted the album to have when The Beatles set about the project in January 1969.

In April 1970, upon hearing the lush orchestral treatment given to The Long And Winding Road, McCartney wrote a terse letter to Klein in which he said he had considered orchestrating the song, but decided against it.

He demanded many of the orchestral instruments be lowered in volume and the harp at the end of the song be removed completely.

“Don’t ever do it again,” he wrote.

It would be another four years before the legal wrangles to finally break up the Beatles were complete.

“The old saying in pop is ‘where there is hit there’s a writ’,” said litigation public relations expert Jonathan Coad.

“As Holly Johnson once said, ‘The real kings of rock and roll are the lawyers’,” he added.

High earners such as The Beatles were subject to a higher tax rate of about 90% in the mid-1960s, a situation that prompted George Harrison to write Taxman.

But after Epstein’s death it became clear that contrary to the sentiments of Harrison’s Revolver album opening track, the taxman was not getting his hands on as much as he might have been.

Kelly said the newly discovered documents show money was unaccounted for and the band’s taxes had not been paid for years, which meant HMRC was chasing them without them even knowing it.

Just a few months after Epstein’s death from an accidental sleeping pills overdose, The Beatles formed Apple Corps, which they hoped would protect their financial interests.

And Lennon wanted a strong figure at the helm. According to Klein himself, Lennon wanted “a real shark – someone to keep the other sharks away”.

McCartney was dubious about the man the New York Times called “the toughest wheeler-dealer in the pop jungle” and man who had said: “Don’t talk to me about ethics. Every man makes his own. It’s like a war.”

Instead, McCartney wanted to draft in respected New York entertainment lawyer Lee Eastman, who in March 1969 had become his father-in-law.

But under The Beatles’ one-member one-vote democratic system, McCartney was outvoted: Klein was in, and on 10 April McCartney walked out and found himself “suing [his] mates”.

Kelly said the bundles from the bitter High Court battle showed the difficulties faced by the lawyers who represented both parties as they unravelled the complex finances.

They showed many questions the legal teams raised during numerous meetings, such as, why was a written agreement not made and filed when Pete Best left the group and Starr joined?

Others included how to approach Ringo Starr’s disagreements over The White Album, and how to manage the growing tensions and disputes between The Beatles over film rights and clips used for Hey Jude, Revolution and Magical Mystery Tour.

“Most worrying of all to the lawyers at the time,” said Kelly, “was the ‘chronic failure of Allen Klein and his company ABKO Music and Records Inc. to produce accounts going back to 1966, now being demanded by the Inland Revenue’.”

She added: “Even though John, Paul, George, and Ringo had grown tired of being The Beatles, and wanted to record and perform as individual artists, this must have been a difficult time for each of them, especially having had such a close friendship and successful partnership.

“One of the lawyers even suggested during one meeting when they had gone round and round and round in circles, ‘Would it be easier if The Beatles just retired?’”

The lawsuit was a tricky balancing act for McCartney according to litigation PR expert Coad.

“When striking a deal, keeping your reputation is as important as the financial deal. The last thing Paul McCartney would have wanted was to lose his image as a loveable Beatle.”

He added: “Lots of bands were ripped off in the ’60s and ’70s.

“Bands made their money with song-writing royalties so who got the song-writing credit was very important. Take Queen for example: Brian May Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor were concerned that John Deacon was missing out because he had not written songs.

“Very early on, and very wisely, all songs written by John Lennon or Paul McCartney were known as Lennon / McCartney songs to avoid arguments.”

However the break-up ruined the harmony between Lennon and McCartney.

On McCartney’s second post-split album Ram (1971) the song “Too Many People” included a swipe at Lennon and his partner Yoko Ono, whose presence was resented by the band.

The line “You took your lucky break and you broke it in two” was interpreted as a dig by McCartney, who later said stunts like Lennon and Ono’s “bed-in for peace” protest in Amsterdam “got up his nose”.

Lennon riposte was How Do You Sleep? on the Imagine album, with its barb “The only thing you done was yesterday / And since you’ve gone you’re just another day.”

Harrison had already written about Klein, the break-up and its aftermath in his song Beware of the Darkness, from his hugely successful and critically acclaimed first solo album, the prophetically titled All Things Must Pass.

Beatles historian and writer Spencer Leigh said he believed talk of civil war within the band had been over-egged, and that Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back had shown “that this period wasn’t as acrimonious as some people have described it”.

“I don’t think Allen Klein was up to no good,” he said. “He was just looking after himself.”

But not only did Epstein’s death on the August Bank Holiday weekend in 1967 come as the so-called Summer of Love was fading, in some ways it marked the start of what Harrison would figuratively describe in Here Comes The Sun as “the long, cold lonely winter”.

It would be a winter that would end in a cold, frosty legal battle.

If the break-up were to happen today, Coad said, there would be larger legal teams and an army of forensic accountants, with both sides seeking to win the media war.

But in a way, it might not ended so catastrophically for the Fab Four.

“The big difference is that today bands might split for a few years and then get back together again, such as Oasis or The Eagles,” said Coad.

“That didn’t happen in the era of The Beatles.”