“A Beatles reunion would ruin the whole Beatles thing.” — Paul McCartney
After The Beatles split in 1970, the world never stopped asking: Will they ever get back together? Offers poured in. Millions were promised. But despite the noise, it never happened. Why?
The answer wasn’t simple—but it was honest.
John, Paul, George, and Ringo had grown apart. Not just as a band, but as people. By the mid-’70s, they were solo artists with their own voices and their own stories. Paul was fighting legal battles. George had found spiritual peace. John had stepped back from fame. And Ringo? He just wanted them to sit in a room together again, for old time’s sake.
They almost did. In 1974, three of them—Paul, George, and Ringo—ended up on a track together. Close, but never complete. John was in New York. Far enough to miss it. But not so far that people stopped hoping.
There were talks. There were ideas. There were even jokes—like the time Lennon said he and McCartney considered walking to Saturday Night Live after an offer to reunite… for just $3,000. But they never did. “We never talked about it,” John later admitted. “We could make records maybe… but touring? No.”
For Elton John, a close friend of Lennon’s, the idea of a reunion was “impossible.” He said it might’ve been genius… or a disaster. And deep down, the band seemed to agree. The magic they had in the ‘60s couldn’t be copied. Not even by them.
The closest we ever got was the Anthology series in the ‘90s, when Paul, George, and Ringo recorded new tracks using old Lennon demos. It was beautiful. But it wasn’t The Beatles—not really. Not the four of them.
Looking back, maybe McCartney was right: “A reunion would ruin the whole Beatles thing.”
And yet, it’s still the greatest “what if” in music history.
