The Lastdays
August 29, 2020

'And in the End' - a book about the last year of the Beatles

Journalist Ken McNab goes into the nitty-gritty details of the last year of the Beatles in his book 'And in the End: The Last Days of the Beatles'. As it turns out it was - money, and the fifth Beatle. "The idea that they'd set up their own company called Apple and run it themselves, smacks of incredible naivete... They were not equipped and didn't have the skills to be business managers" - McNab tells in an All Music interview about the beginning of the end The other reason was manager Allen Klein, "the demon king... who created this terrible schism between Lennon and McCartney". The other Beatles didn't really like Yoko Ono - "McCartney had to deal with tiptoeing around this relationship with John and Yoko... Harrison walked out on the band (...) Much of the reason for that was because he couldn't stand Yoko being in the studio, and her presence stymied John's creativity and made him very passive when it came to group decisions". Finally, Lennon got into a row with McCartney when he found out the bassist has been buying Beatles' shares, ignoring the gentlemen's agreement that all the four members will keep equal parts. But, there's a lot of light in the book - "When you get to 'Abbey Road', it's amazing how they were able to put down the boxing gloves and reunite for one last album, their last letter to the world".