Paul McCartney clarifies ‘hurtful misconception’ about The Beatles’ split

Singer said he found being blamed for band's split ‘hurtful’

Paul McCartney has revealed why he sued The Beatles after the band broke up, debunking one of the biggest “misconceptions” about their split.

The musician officially announced his departure from the group on 10 April 1970 amid professional disagreements with John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Star.

Later that year, McCartney filed a suit calling for the band’s formal dissolution and, years later, he won rights to the band’s music from record company EMI and music publisher Allen Klein after a long legal process.

In a new interview with GQ Magazine. McCartney said that it was because of this that he was ”thought to be the guy who broke The Beatles up and the bastard who sued his mates.”

He said that suing the band was the “only way” to stop the band’s music from being protected by forces he believed did not have its best interest in mind.

“The only way for me to save The Beatles and Apple, which allowed us to release Anthology and all these great remasters of all the great Beatles records, was to sue the band,” he said.

“If I hadn’t done that, it would have all belonged to Allen Klein,” he said. “The only way I was given to get us out of that was to do what I did. I said ‘Well, I’ll sue Allen Klein,’ and I wasn’t told I couldn’t because he wasn’t party to it. ‘You’ve got to sue the Beatles.’

He said that, because of this, everybody has thought for years that “we all sort of hated each other”, which he called “a misconception”.

McCartney said that suing the band was “horrendous” as he was the only one who didn’t trust Klein. He also described the negative press he received as a result "hurtful".

“I knew that, if I managed to save it, I would be saving it for them [the rest of The Beatles] too. Because they were about to give it away. They loved this guy Klein. And I was saying, “He’s a f***ing idiot.”

He said that the fights that led to the band’s break up were due to the fact that “families have disputes”, stating: “Some people want to do this and some people want to do that.”

Earlier this year, while celebrating Black Lives Matter, McCartney revealed that The Beatles angrily refused to perform in front of a segregated audience in 1964.