When asked if this was the start of a solo career or a break with the Beatles, Paul replies “Time will tell” and “Both”; his response to whether his break with the Beatles will be temporary or permanent is “I don’t really know.” But his one-word answer to the follow-up question is a bombshell:

Q. Do you foresee a time when Lennon-McCartney will become an active songwriting partnership again?

A. No.

The Daily Mirror breaks the news—PAUL QUITS BEATLES—and he confirms it, telling the Record Mirror on April 18 how much working solo suits him. “I only had me to ask for a decision, and I agreed with me.”

*  *  *

John is woken from a deep sleep when reporter Ray Connolly calls for his comment.

John is floored by the double cross. “Oh, Christ,” he shouts into the phone. “He gets all the credit for it!”

Let It Be goes on sale May 8.

The next day, New Musical Express publishes a searing review titled “Have the Beatles Sold Out?,” which decries the album, with its doubled sticker price and funereal black cover, as a “cardboard tombstone.”

“Musically, boys, you passed the audition,” assesses the critic for Rolling Stone, harking back to John’s closing line atop the Apple roof before concluding that the flaw of overproduction “somehow doesn’t seem to matter much anymore anyway.”

Paul defends himself to the press: “I didn’t leave the Beatles. The Beatles have left the Beatles, but no one wanted to be the one to say the party’s over.”

*  *  *

The next time John sees his former bandmate, he’s larger than life.

With McCartney atop the US Billboard charts on the strength of the anticipation of Paul’s solo effort, which includes the ballad “Maybe I’m Amazed,” John and Yoko travel to San Francisco to meet with twenty-four-year-old Rolling Stone writer Jann Wenner about booking an interview.

The three of them (and Jann’s wife, Jane) slip unrecognized into a nearly empty theater to see Let It Be. Though the film (which goes on to win an Oscar and a Grammy for Best Original Score) had premiered in New York on May 13, none of the Beatles attended. John is seeing it now for the first time. At the sight of Paul singing on the rooftop of Apple records, first John, then Yoko, dissolves into tears.

“He’s crying, she’s crying, and we’re just trying to hold on to ourselves,” Wenner says. “You’re there helping come to the emotional rescue of the Beatles.”

*  *  *