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It was John who first said, ‘I want a divorce.’

In the autumn of 1969, Paul began to feel nostalgic for the days when the Beatles were at their happiest. He felt that the only way to restore their lost sense of camaraderie was to go back on the road, turning up unannounced to play small halls in out-of-the-way places: ‘I thought, “That’s what I miss, and what they miss too – playing.”’

He mentioned his plan to Ringo and John. Ringo appeared to go along with it, but John replied, ‘You’re daft,’ adding, ‘Anyway, I’m leaving the group. I want a divorce.’

John had in fact been talking about the end of the Beatles, on and off, ever since the days of ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’. ‘Sometimes I feel I’d like to try something completely different, like film directing,’ he told a journalist from Rave magazine in February 1964, just as they were conquering America. ‘… There’d be less of the limelight, but I wouldn’t mind.’ Two years later, he gloomily told Maureen Cleave: ‘We can’t go on holding hands forever. We have been Beatles as best as we ever will be – those four jolly lads. But we’re not those people any more. We are old men.’ At that time he was twenty-five years old.

Yet for all their hyperbole, John’s words contained a bizarre truth: the Beatles had aged with an almost macabre rapidity. In the five years from 1964 to 1969 they matured at a rate of knots, not only in the range and depth of their music, but also physically. Look at this shot of them in 1964:

Max Scheler – K & K/Getty Images

and this one, taken in 1969:

Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo

Comparing these photographs, just five years apart, it’s as though they have been crushed by the weight of the world’s adulation. Such talent, so many dreams, such joy – and now they just looked trapped and bruised. Within the space of those five years they went from innocence to experience, from hope to weltschmerz. It reminds me of the terrifying climax to Rider Haggard’s She:

Oh, how beautiful she looked there in the flame! No angel out of heaven could have worn a greater loveliness. Even now my heart faints before the recollection of it, as she stood and smiled at our awed faces, and I would give half my remaining time upon this earth to see her once like that again.

But suddenly – more suddenly than I can describe – a kind of change came over her face, a change which I could not define or explain, but none the less a change. The smile vanished, and in its place there came a dry, hard look; the rounded face seemed to grow pinched, as though some great anxiety were leaving its impress upon it. The glorious eyes, too, lost their light, and, as I thought, the form its perfect shape and erectness … And her face – by Heaven! – her face was growing old before my eyes!

… ‘Oh, look! – look! – look!’ shrieked Job, in a shrill falsetto of terror, his eyes nearly dropping out of his head, and foam upon his lips. ‘Look! – look! – look! she’s shrivelling up! she’s turning into a monkey!’ and down he fell upon the ground, foaming and gnashing in a fit.

Pictures of them around this time could almost accompany cautionary tales, or act as illustrations of the famous observation by St Teresa of Àvila: ‘More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers.’

By the end, their world had soured. Intimacy and friendship curdled into irritation and recrimination. Despite his increasing reputation as a songwriter, George felt that John and Paul were still treating him as the little boy who tagged along. ‘John and Paul did allow him the occasional track on the Beatles’ albums – but only in the same grudging spirit as one might throw a dog a bone to keep him quiet,’ observed Geoff Emerick. He remembered George snapping, ‘Look, I don’t have to listen to you!’ when Paul offered him advice on ‘Here Comes the Sun’.

John also resented being bossed around by Paul; in turn, Paul was frustrated by John’s inertia, his sneery refusal to join in.

Meanwhile, Yoko’s continued presence in the studio, crouching silently, all in black, set them all on edge, not least the prickly John, on red alert for any tremors of antipathy towards her: as Paul sang ‘Get back to where you once belonged’, John convinced himself that he was shooting nasty looks in her direction.

John’s paranoia on this score was not entirely delusional. Paul, George and Ringo resented Yoko being in the studio. ‘John’s in love with Yoko and he’s no longer in love with the three of us,’ Paul confided to a journalist at the time. George later recalled, ‘The vibe I picked up was that she was a wedge that was trying to drive itself deeper and deeper between him and us.’

Tony Barrow witnessed Yoko’s early days in the studio. ‘The first time Yoko spoke out at full volume during a recording session it was to convey some relatively trivial word of advice to John about whatever he was singing at the moment. The other Beatles looked around, straight-faced, startled, stunned. There was a moment’s dead silence that was broken by Paul: “Fuck me! Did somebody speak? Who the fuck was that?” Of course he knew full well who had spoken. The others joined in: “Did you say something, George? Your lips didn’t move!” “Have we got a new producer?”’

Regardless of Yoko, the atmosphere between the four had grown fractious and scratchy. Whenever they could, they worked separately from each other. Harmonies were few and far between. At different times, George and Ringo both stormed out of the studio in reaction to perceived slights and stayed away for several days.

As it happens, this was Ringo’s second day back at work: two weeks before, while they were recording ‘Back in the USSR’, he had walked out, saying, ‘I’m going on holiday.’ Everything had come to a head: like Paul and George, Ringo resented Yoko’s presence in the studio; he worried that his drumming wasn’t up to scratch; and he felt that the other three were treating him as an outsider. The final straw came when Paul, at his most bossy, ticked him off for fluffing the tom-toms. In Sardinia, Ringo received a telegram saying ‘YOU’RE THE BEST DRUMMER IN THE WORLD. COME ON HOME. WE LOVE YOU.’ When he finally reappeared, they had decorated the whole studio with thousands of flowers to welcome him back. ‘And that was a beautiful moment for me.’

Ringo had come to believe that the others looked down on him: ‘I … felt that the other three were really happy and I was an outsider. I went to see John … I said, “I’m leaving the group because I’m not playing well and I feel unloved and out of it, and you three are really close.” And John said, “I thought it was you three!” So then I went over to Paul’s and knocked on his door. I said the same thing: “I’m leaving the band. I feel you three guys are really close and I’m out of it.” And Paul said, “I thought it was you three!”’

Working as an assistant engineer on Abbey Road, the eighteen-year-old John Kurlander noticed how hard the group found it to be in a room together: ‘When just one of the Beatles was on a session it would be absolutely great; with two of them it would be OK; with three of them the atmosphere would get a bit tense; and when the four of them were together it would occasionally be unbearable.’

And they were at war over money: after they split up, their multitudes of legal actions went on almost as long as the group itself. For his part, George Martin considered it odd that they lasted as long as they did: ‘They were in each other’s pockets as prisoners, virtually, for eight years, and they didn’t lead individual lives. They just wanted to lead their own normal lives, with wives and families, and they were eventually able to do that, and I think it was quite right that they should do.’ But he acknowledged that their split was also caused by more worldly struggles: ‘Money gets in the way of things … There’s bound to be differences when there’s so much money involved. And it was more than that. It was a question of control, too.’

The day after Paul’s announcement, Derek Taylor gave an interview to the Daily Sketch. ‘It is almost as if they have divorced each other,’ he said.