While many people associate the end of the Beatles with the year 1970, the band’s official breakup didn’t happen until years later in the happiest place on Earth. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison might’ve eventually reached the inevitable consensus that the Fab Four was no more, but it was actually John who started and ended the split.
After a wave of publicity, legal battles, and falling outs among former friends and colleagues, Lennon signed the contracts that would make the Beatles’ breakup official. Then, he returned his attention to his vacation.
The Beatles’ seemingly impenetrable foundation began to crack in the late 1960s, but the official dissolution contract didn’t come until years later, in 1974. The musicians and record company’s legal representatives scheduled a meeting for all members to reconvene and sign the contract on December 19, 1974, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. By then, Paul, George, and Ringo had already signed the contract.
After the soon-to-be former Beatles waited at the hotel, Harrison was the first to ask about Lennon’s whereabouts. Lennon’s lawyer, Harold Seider, gave his client a call.
“I was with John, and it was up to me to tell Harold he had decided not to attend the meeting,” Pang told the Daily Mail in 2008. “Although John was concerned with shouldering a major tax burden because he lived in the United States, I could sense there was a bit more on his mind. His official reason for not showing was the ‘stars aren’t right.’” Unsurprisingly, everyone impatiently waiting at the Plaza was furious upon hearing Lennon’s cosmic refusal to attend.
People were bound to toss around blame in a breakup as messy and lengthy as the Fab Four’s, and many accused Paul McCartney of stoking the era-ending fire. However, McCartney vehemently denies this assertion. “Stop right there,” McCartney said in an interview with BBC Radio 4 (via The Guardian). “I am not the person who instigated the split. Oh no, no, no. John walked into a room one day and said, ‘I am leaving the Beatles.’ Is that instigating the split, or not?”
But despite John Lennon instigating the Beatles breakup, he would be the last Beatle to sign the contract officiating the dissolution. After refusing to attend the mid-December meeting in New York, Lennon flew to Florida to spend the Christmas holiday with his son, Julian Lennon, and May Pang. Lennon, his mistress, and his son stayed at the Polynesian Village Hotel in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. This is where an Apple lawyer would eventually find Lennon and deliver the hefty contract for him to sign.
And indeed, Lennon signed it, officially disbanding the Beatles forever in the “happiest place on Earth.” Pang recalled Lennon telling her to take out her camera and photograph him signing the contract, which she dutifully did. “He called Harold to go over some final points. When John hung up the phone, he looked wistfully out the window. I could almost see him replaying the entire Beatles experience in his mind,” Pang later recalled.
