Sometimes, Breaking Up is Hard to Do: The Beatles, 1970-74

“Why don’t The Beatles get back together?” That’s the question posed by a character in Billy Joel’s “All You Wanna Do Is Dance,” from his 1976 album, Turnstiles.

Why can’t these people get a life? The thought surely occurred many times to John Lennon. During interviews in his post-Beatles years, he expressed irritation that so many would ask him — and the other former Beatles — when they would bury the hatchet and be great again for all of us who loved them so. In his famous Playboy interview in the fall of 1980, Lennon went on a rant about not wanting to be nailed to that cross again, and later in a Newsweek interview, he was more succinct, if not puzzling:

“What if Paul and I get together again? What the hell would it … It would be boring.”

The end of The Beatles was made known to the public more than ten years earlier when Paul McCartney announced he was leaving the band on April 10, 1970. A sad day for the world of music, but according to Terry Wilson, author of Four Sides Of The Circle, it confirmed a new beginning for The Beatles, their second phase, which would last through 1974. That phase would be most successful for Lennon, McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Their solo singles and albums would climb to the top of the charts. Especially impressed was the expert on all things Beatles, John Lennon, who said by the middle of ‘71, “I think we’re much better than we ever were when we were together.”

Agree with Lennon or not, readers of Four Sides Of The Circle have to be impressed with Wilson’s assessment of the work of the former Beatles over a period lasting roughly five years. Painstaking in his pursuit of historical accuracy, Wilson misses little, thoroughly covering four separate bodies of work that often equated what The Beatles released, as “the greatest show on earth” from ‘62 through ‘70.

Subtitled The Beatles’ Second Phase, 1970 - !974, Wilson’s book is breezy, but serious — fact-filled for the academic, but also informative to genuine fans. It’s the best book on The Beatles as solo artists since You Never Give Me Your Money, written by Peter Doggett in 2009.

Wilson starts his extensive overview of Beatles solo recordings with a musical warhorse, “Give Peace A Chance,” Lennon’s first release using the Plastic Ono Band identity. Recorded in a Montreal hotel room on June 1, 1969 with Tommy Smothers strumming his guitar and Yoko Ono, Alan Ginsberg, Petula Clark, the Radha Krishna Temple and others providing back-up vocals, “Give Peace A Chance,” a stirring antiwar anthem, was Lennon’s initial step away from The Beatles and released in the US the next month. The single peaked at No. 14 in the US, the country that most needed to consider giving peace a chance. Lennon asserting his independence on the fly was always interesting and most of the time inspiring, but one can speculate how much bigger the song would have been if Lennon had called McCartney, Harrison, and Starr to say, “I have this really important song that we must record now. I can do it myself, but it will have far more impact if the world hears all The Beatles singing the words ‘give peace a chance.’” He would have been right.

A few months later Lennon recorded the second Plastic Ono Band single, “Cold Turkey,” with Starr on drums. In January ‘70, the third and greatest Plastic Ono Band single, “Instant Karma,” was recorded with Harrison on electric guitar. The appearances of other Beatles on Lennon solo material started a pattern Wilson notes early in the book’s introduction:

“Of their officially released songs in this book, if one takes McCartney out of the equation then some 25 percent of the output features more than one of them. This is part of the reason The Beatles cannot truly be said to have separated in 1970, a sense of mutual attraction pulling them back together.”

The pattern peaked in ‘73 when Lennon and Harrison played on Ringo Starr’s recording of “I’m The Greatest,” a Lennon composition. “I’m The Greatest” opened Ringo, the breakout album by Starr, which despite Richard Perry’s glossy production, served as the peak of Starr’s solo recording career. Ringo caused great excitement in the record business. McCartney contributed a new song, “Six O’Clock,” on which he played keyboards and provided back-up vocals. All four of The Beatles! All on one album! Everything else in the record business seemed to be put on hold for a moment. For those of us thinking like the character in the aforementioned Billy Joel song, the possibilities were endless.

What seemed truly endless from mid ‘70 through ‘74 were solo releases by the former Beatles. For those of us in the business, there were periods when it seemed each week brought a new release by a member of the Fab Four. And many of those recordings were brilliant, exactly what we expected from four former Beatles – in their second phase.  Four Sides Of The Circle covers every solo recording, released or not, in depth. From Lennon’s in Montreal to McCartney’s November ’74 recording in London, when he worked on three tracks for the Venus and Mars album, to be released the following spring, it’s all there, the music, the back-stories, and the memories.

Another phase followed, with more great albums by Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison. That phase lasted almost five full years until – at a peak moment – tragedy struck. Hopefully, Terry Wilson plans to cover that third phase of exceptional – and even sometimes – disappointing music. It’s a story that should be documented with the same perception as Four Sides Of The Circle.

This article will also appear in the February issue of Beatlefan magazine, now marking 45 years of continuous publication. For information, go to https://beatlefan.com/