Why The Beatles would never get back together even if John Lennon and George Harrison were still alive?

When The Beatles broke up, for many, it felt like the end of the world. For a band to do so much in such a short amount of time is truly monumental, as they changed the way that people wrote music, but also the way that they recorded, promoted and published it. They had become a huge part of many people’s lives, which meant that when they broke up, it really affected a number of people. However, to anybody who was paying attention, the split was inevitable.

There were a number of problems that the band had as members battled addiction, fell out with one another and dealt with the pressure of being in the biggest band on the planet; however, they were always connected thanks to their devotion to music. Regardless of what the Beatles had going on in their personal lives, music was always the champion. Unfortunately, their intention behind the music they were making eventually changed, and once this happened, the band was operating on borrowed time.

I won’t sit here and say that Ringo Starr wasn’t an important part of The Beatles, of course he was, but he didn’t contribute a great deal when it came to songwriting. Your predominant songwriters throughout the band were George Harrison, Paul McCartney and John Lennon. All of them were great writers, and all of them had different opinions on what it was that made a good song. It was these various ideologies that caused friction in the band and led to disagreements towards the end of the ’60s.

Before anything else, John Lennon was always adamant on using his music to convey the truth. He had been compromising with The Beatles from day one, as they had to cut their hair and change the way they dressed in a bid to be accepted by the American audience. He also couldn’t fully embrace how he felt about the world or himself in his music because it didn’t fit with the joyous brand that The Beatles had made for themselves.

The creative that made The Beatles split inevitable
Paul McCartney enjoyed the brand that The Beatles had. He was able to write songs with great melody and that fit comfortably onto mainstream radio stations. He is one of the best when it comes to writing choruses and catchy tunes, and while many of us as listeners thank him for it, it wasn’t the kind of music the rest of the band wanted to make. Tracks such as ‘Hello, Goodbye’ and ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ might have been well received by fans, but the band despised them.

“John Lennon came to the session really stoned, totally out of it on something or other, and he said, ‘All right, we’re gonna do ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’,” recalled Richard Lush, the band’s engineer at the time. “He went straight to the piano and smashed the keys with an almighty amount of volume, twice the speed of how they’d done it before, and said, ‘This is it! Come on! He was really aggravated.”

George Harrison’s frustration came predominantly from the fact that so many of his offerings received pushback. It’s almost fun to imagine now, given how strong his offerings for the band were, but his songs didn’t meet the McCartney-Lennon sound that band built a brand on, so they were politely (strangely, more like) dismissed. Subsequently, he struggled to find his tone of voice initially as he was never given permission to properly explore it.

It seems these days that almost every band that has previously split up and never looked to be getting back together are getting back together. One of the most notorious reunions has been Oasis, but other bands in previous years, such as Blur, Guns N’ Roses and even S Club, have all managed to set their differences aside and perform some more shows. It begs the question, given this trend, if we hadn’t lost George Harrison and John Lennon, would The Beatles ever get back together? It’s a worthy question, but after some consideration, I’m sad to report that I don’t think they would.

The differences that split the band up were only highlighted further as each member embarked on their solo careers. Harrison worked on some solo projects where he could really find his tone of voice and not worry about his tracks receiving pushback. Lennon really didn’t hold back once he was freed from The Beatles’ shackles as he progressed to write songs such as ‘Imagine’ and ‘Mother’, which were borderline confrontational. McCartney stayed true to his brand, and even today is still considered one of the greatest writers of pop music the world has ever known, delivering classics as a solo artist and with Wings.

The differences between their solo careers reflect what split the band up in the first place: they disagreed on what good music was. Therefore, even if they could reconcile personal differences, it’s unlikely they would ever be able to come to an agreement on what they deem their best work. They went down their own paths, and the thing that bound them when the Beatles first started up had contorted and evolved so much for each individual member that it could never be used as a bridge between them again.

The stadium shook when Paul McCartney brought Ringo Starr on stage for his show in 2024. It’s more than likely that a lot more stadiums would shake if Harrison and Lennon were still with us, as the band would more likely feature as special guests at one another’s shows rather than do a full-fledged reunion.

It might sound sad and negative, but I take more positives away from this ideology. It means that the bands breakup wasn’t in vain, instead, they parted ways because they had different paths to walk down, and they spent the rest of their lives walking down them. The Beatles split: sad, yes, but equally, inevitable and necessary.