Opinion • Beatles
Paul Was Right
For a decade, Paul McCartney was the villain of the Beatles breakup. The real story is that he was the only one in the room who saw clearly — and history proved every word of it.
In early 1969, John Lennon told a room full of Beatles that they needed Allen Klein. Paul McCartney looked at Klein, did his homework, and said no. That refusal cost McCartney his reputation for the better part of a decade. The press called him difficult. John called him obstructionist. Rolling Stone called his solo debut a statement about breaking up the band. The public bought all of it. There is a reason none of that narrative survived contact with the actual facts.
Klein Was Everything Paul Said He Was
Allen Klein had a resume before the Beatles that should have set off alarms. He managed the Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s and negotiated them a substantial advance from Decca Records. The advance went directly into a company Klein controlled. The fine print gave him no obligation to release the money for twenty years. The Stones would spend years in litigation over unpaid royalties, stolen publishing rights, and neglected taxes so catastrophic it forced them into French exile in 1971. Klein was convicted of a misdemeanor tax charge in connection with that period and served two months in prison in 1980. This was the man John Lennon voted to hand the keys to Apple Corps.
McCartney refused. He brought in his father-in-law Lee Eastman and brother-in-law John Eastman, both entertainment lawyers, as his preferred advisers. Lennon, Harrison, and Starr outvoted him three to one and signed with Klein in February 1969. McCartney held out. He never signed. That unsigned contract would become a document of considerable historical significance.
The Media Made McCartney the Villain
When the Beatles finally dissolved in public view in 1970, the story that took hold was simple: Paul left. Paul sued. Paul broke up the Beatles. That narrative had active help from the most powerful music publication in America at the time.
Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner had a personal and professional attachment to John Lennon that went beyond fandom. When McCartney released his first solo album in April 1970, Wenner reportedly pressured both his music editor Greil Marcus and the album's reviewer Langdon Winner to rewrite a favorable review they had submitted. By Wenner's framing, the album was not music to be evaluated on its merits. It was a statement by the man who broke up the band, and it needed to be treated as such. The review was rewritten. It ran negative. The pattern continued for years. Rolling Stone, during the critical period when the Beatles' legacy was being sorted and assigned, was effectively a platform for the Lennon interpretation of events.
In December 1970, Wenner sat down with Lennon and Yoko Ono for the interview that became known as "Lennon Remembers." Lennon used the session to relitigate the breakup in the most pointed terms possible, attacking McCartney's credibility and the quality of his music. The interview ran in Rolling Stone, was eventually published as a book without Lennon's full consent, and became what music historian Erin Torkelson Weber has called the foundational text of a particular version of Beatles history. Lennon would stop speaking to Wenner after the unauthorized book deal. But the damage to McCartney's public image was already done.
The Lawsuit Was Not What It Looked Like
When McCartney filed suit against the other Beatles in December 1970, the headlines read: Paul sues the Beatles. The subtext that rarely made it into coverage was the actual reason. Because all four members were still legally bound in a partnership, Klein collected commissions on everything they produced, including McCartney's solo work. McCartney was paying a manager he had never hired, had never signed with, and believed was actively mismanaging the band's finances. The lawsuit was the only legal mechanism available to dissolve that arrangement.
McCartney has said plainly that he did not want to sue his bandmates. He wanted to sue Klein. His lawyers told him that suing Klein alone would not free him from the partnership. Suing the partnership was the only way out. The public saw it as McCartney blowing up something beloved. The legal reality was that he was trying to stop someone he believed was going to pillage it.
Then Klein Did It to All of Them
The vindication came methodically. Klein commissioned Phil Spector to overdub the raw "Get Back" session tapes without Paul's involvement or approval, releasing them as "Let It Be" in 1970. He sought permission from John rather than Paul, knowing the two were estranged. The resulting album with its lush orchestration was, to McCartney, a direct violation of the original spirit of the sessions.
After the Beatles dissolved, Klein retained his grip on Lennon and Harrison. He helped Lennon with the Imagine album and handled George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. The Bangladesh concert raised significant money for relief efforts. Klein's handling of the proceeds became a serious problem for Harrison, who faced questions from the IRS about funds that had not been properly distributed. The legal fallout from that relationship would drag on for years.
Klein subsequently sued the remaining Beatles for $19 million when they declined to renew his contract. The case settled in 1977 with Apple paying Klein $5 million and Klein returning $800,000. Harrison's legal battles with Klein over publishing and other matters were not fully resolved until 1998, three years before Harrison died.
Lennon eventually fired Klein and, in a television interview, acknowledged that McCartney had a point. He said Paul "might have been right" about Klein. It was not the most effusive admission in rock history, but from Lennon, in that era, it was substantial. George and Ringo both came to the same conclusion, simply by living through the consequences.
What the Revisionism Gets Right
None of this makes the Beatles breakup a simple story of good guy versus bad guy. The band was fracturing on multiple fronts. Lennon had one foot out the door by late 1969. Harrison had spent years feeling artistically sidelined. Yoko Ono's presence in the studio changed the group's internal dynamic in ways that went beyond any single business decision. The strains were real and ran deep.
But the specific question of Allen Klein has a clear answer. McCartney assessed him correctly. He resisted on sound grounds. He sued to protect assets that Klein would have otherwise controlled indefinitely. And when the relationship Klein built with the other three Beatles finally deteriorated, it deteriorated in exactly the ways Paul had predicted. Lennon's own admission that Paul "might have been right" was delivered casually, as if he were conceding a minor point. The history says otherwise.
McCartney spent years being the uncool Beatle, the one Rolling Stone sneered at, the one his own bandmates publicly dismissed. He has outlasted almost all of it. He is still touring in his eighties. The catalog he fought to protect is among the most valuable in the history of recorded music. Allen Klein died in 2009, his legacy largely defined by litigation. Jann Wenner eventually sold Rolling Stone. And Paul McCartney was right.