Mick Jagger knows the real reason The Beatles broke up

From the moment The Beatles officially split, there has been one big, decades-long question asked over and over and over: What happened? It’s a question that has, by now, been analysed from every possible angle of the situation. Finances, personal relationships, the music itself, the music industry itself, their marriages, their addictions – everything has been put under the microscope, and the diagnosis has never been one simple, clear answer. But you know, who are we to try to crack that code? The measly journalists, fans, and literal historians. This is a case for the big leagues – someone call Mick Jagger.

But really, Mick Jagger does have an insight. As the two leading bands of the British invasion era, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were often thrown together. They were peers; in moments, they seemed to be pretty close friends, even if that friendship was a somewhat complex one.

Jagger is amongst the all-star chorus singing on ‘All You Need Is Love’. He was there during the infamous Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band recording sessions, when the band seemed to operate an open-door policy for any countercultural figures who fancied dropping in to drop some acid and watch an orchestra play. In the early days, the Stones even released a song penned by John Lennon and Paul McCartney as their second ever single at a time when the two groups would be hanging around the London clubs together.

For any act around at the time, and realistically any rock act since, it is impossible to deny the impact of the Beatles. Jagger felt it too, stating, “The Beatles were so big that it’s hard for people not alive at the time to realise just how big they were. There isn’t a real comparison with anyone now.” He continued, “They were this forerunning, breakthrough item, and that’s hard to overestimate.”

But as another act around at the time, and as a man who got some degree of a front-row seat to the people behind the world fame, Jagger has his own inkling about why the band eventually collapsed and why that collapse was inevitable.

“I can hazard a guess that they were both rather strong personalities, and both felt they were totally independent. They seemed to be very competitive over leadership of the band,” Jagger said to Rolling Stone in 1995, when the issue of the band’s split was already the historic dilemma it remains.

The ‘they’ he’s referring to is Lennon and McCartney, the two figures that acted as the group’s de facto leaders given that they were the principal songwriters. But as the years went on and the collaborative and personal relationship between he two splintered, it became a situation where the band had two leaders both trying to lead, and then Harrison and Starr feeling even more underappreciated under it all.

“John and Paul felt they were too strong, and they wanted to be in charge,” Jagger told the magazine, declaring that as the reason why The Beatles broke up. In his eyes, it was bound to happen as he added, “If there are 10 things, they both wanted to be in charge of nine of them. You’re not gonna make a relationship like that work, are you?”

Obviously, it’s speculative as any consideration of the end of the Beatles is, given that the band themselves never discussed it much and that even if they did, it would only ever be a subjective opinion from one member rather than a clear, objective reason. But Jagger’s argument checks out. It aligns not only with Harrison’s reasoning for quitting but also with Jagger’s own experience with the band and the time that Lennon attempted to take credit for the Stones’ own songwriting, proving Jagger’s point that he always wanted control.