Yoko Ono Likens Beatles' Breakup To "A Divorce"

USMagazine, Saturday, December 29, 2012, 7:30am (PST)

Before there was Harry Styles and One Direction, there was John Lennon and the Beatles.

And, Yoko Ono reveals in a recently surfaced 1987 interview, the band's split -- or "divorce," as she refers to it in a sit-down interview with famed rock journalist Joe Smith -- happened simply because the Fab Four growing apart.

"The Beatles were getting very independent," she told Smith, adding that while Lennon was "feeling very good about" the split, the other members weren't so ready to let go.

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"Each one of them [was] getting independent. John, in fact, was not the first one who wanted to leave the Beatles," she said. "[We saw] Ringo one night with Maureen [Starkey Tigrett], and he came to John and me and said he wanted to leave. George was next, and then John." 

It was Paul McCartney, the 79-year-old artist and peace activist recalled, who kept holding onto the band. 

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"Paul was the only one trying to hold the Beatles together," she said. "But the other three thought Paul would hold the Beatles together as his band. They were getting to be like Paul's band, which they didn't like." 

Earlier this year, McCartney himself sat down in an interview with British journalist David Frost and cleared the air about Ono’s supposed hand in the band’s split. 

"She certainly didn't break the group up; the group was breaking up," he said in the October interview.

This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Yoko Ono Likens Beatles' Breakup To "A Divorce"