The Beatles were never a band meant to go until the end of time. As much as they may have provided the soundtrack of the 1960s, part of the reason why they broke up was about being realistic about where their lives were going. They were no longer the same scruffy moptops kids the world fell in love with, and it took only one of them to break down the barrier towards a solo career.

When looking at how the band disintegrated on paper, though, all roads lead back to Paul McCartney. ‘The Cute Beatle’ had already been known as a dictator, and to the uninitiated, him suing the rest of the band after their breakup along with new manager Allen Klein seemed to paint him as the villain who wanted the group to play whimsical ditties for the rest of time.

Then again, Macca was one of the last people to suggest that the band should have a divorce. John Lennon had been the first one to say that he was leaving the group, and George Harrison and Ringo Starr each had their moments where they up and left in the middle of sessions, so it wasn’t like everyone was laser-focused on keeping the four-headed monster float.

But as far as the band’s future together, it was always going to end at the same place where it started. After all, it was John Lennon’s band in the beginning, and when the world got their first listen of ‘Give Peace a Chance’, the wheels had already begun turning for what a Beatles solo career would sound like. And for Lennon, he couldn’t have picked a better message to kick everything off.

While the band was still hard at work making Abbey Road, ‘Give Peace a Chance’ was released in the midst of the sessions, making it the first official solo single to be released by a Beatle. Although McCartney still had writing credits on the song, there’s no doubt that Lennon wrote the entire thing, becoming a universal anthem for peace around the world despite only having one massive hook to tie everything together.

And considering how well the rest of the band fared on their first albums, Lennon is second only to George Harrison in terms of quality. McCartney was still making demos on McCartney, and hearing Starr do his best lounge singer impression on Sentimental Journey was no match for the way Lennon cut right to the chase. In fact, this kind of message manages to equal Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’ without having to be too religiously inclined.

But the real magic behind the tune is how it set the standard for the rest of Lennon’s career. No matter what time period he found himself in, he was never afraid to speak his mind, and considering his future hits, it’s easy to draw a straight line between this song to ‘Imagine’ to almost anything that turned up on Some Time in New York City.

The Beatles had been a lot of fun for nearly a decade, but Lennon had found his calling going in a different direction. His time as a pop star had come to an end, and now it was time for him to write to see if he could spark some real change in the world.