Paul McCartney Says Yoko Ono Was an 'Interference in the Workplace' for The Beatles — Here's WhyThe 81-year-old Grammy winner took a trip down memory lane during a recent podcast episode.

ByAmanda Breen•Oct 16, 2023

McCartney says Ono's presence during the recording of 1968's 'The White Album' was 'disturbing.'
In 2021, McCartney revealed that John Lennon instigated The Beatles' split.

Change in the workplace can bestressful— even for high-profile professionals.

Just askPaul McCartney. In a new episode for hisMcCartney: A Life in Lyricspodcast, the 81-year-old Grammy winner reveals how havingJohn Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, join The Beatles' recording sessions put a strain on their process,Peoplereported.

"Things like Yoko being literally in the middle of the recording session [were] something you had to deal with," McCartney told the poet Paul Muldoon, recalling the band's recording of 1968'sThe White Album. "The idea was that if John wanted this to happen, then it should happen. There's no reason why not."

^{Lester Cohen | Getty Images}

Although the band was "heading toward" a breakup at the time and Ono's presence was "disturbing," the group didn't outright object to having Ono in the studio. Still, McCartney maintains that "none of them particularly liked it."

"It was an interference in the workplace," McCartney explains to Muldoon. "We had a way we worked. The four of us worked with George Martin. And that was basically it. And we'd always done it like that. So not being veryconfrontational, I think we just bottled it up and just got on with it."

Fans blamedMcCartneyfor the band's 1970 breakup, but more than half a century later, the co-lead vocalist said it was actually Lennon who initiated the split,CNNreported.

Amanda Breen

Entrepreneur Staff

Features Writer

Amanda Breen is a features writer at Entrepreneur.com. She is a graduate of Barnard College and received an MFA in writing at Columbia University, where she was a news fellow for the School of the Arts.

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