If you believe Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono was the not the cause of the Beatles' breakup more than four decades ago.
In an interview with famed British journalist David Frost set for broadcast on Al Jazeera English next month, Macca makes it clear that in his view, the band was already on a long and winding road to splitsville before John Lennon's widow even came on the scene.
"She certainly didn't break the group up, the group was breaking up," the Guardian quotes the 70-year-old McCartney as saying about the moptops' 1970 demise.
Of course, that line of thinking isn't exactly shared by Beatles fans, many of whom assert that once Yoko and John fell in love, that marked the beginning of the end for the Fab Four as Lennon wanted to strike out on his own. The singer-songwriter would subsequently record his 1970 debut solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
But according to Paul—who once chafed at Ono's presence in the recording studio during the Beatles' final years—the Japanese artist's influence opened Lennon up to the avant garde and new musical paths without which he would never have penned songs like "Imagine."
"I don't think he would have done that without Yoko, so I don't think you can blame her for anything. When Yoko came along, part of her attraction was her avant garde side, her view of things, so she showed him another way to be, which was very attractive to him," added McCartney. "So it was time for John to leave, he was definitely going to leave."
Imagine that.
If anything, the "Get Back" singer chalked up much of the divisions that erupted within the Beatles to talent agent Allen Klein, who took over running the group's business affairs after their original manager, Brian Epstein, died in 1967.
"I was fighting against the other three guys who'd been my lifelong soul buddies," noted McCartney. "I said I wanted to fight Klein."
We're glad he set the record straight on an important piece of pop history.