“Everybody changes,” May reflects. “With John things changed on a daily basis. It’s a question of time. Five years earlier,” in 1969, when John was the one pushing for a breakup, “was not the same situation. In 1974 he had just seen everyone. The friendship was still there. They were brothers. There was no animosity.”

While the lawyers revise the documents, John and May take Julian, now eleven and visiting the United States for the holidays, down to Florida.

“We wanted to give Julian a good time for his Christmas holiday, somewhere warm,” May tells the Palm Beach Post in 2018. They stay in a borrowed unit at the Sun and Surf condominiums on Sunrise Avenue. “We were there for a week. A few days in Palm Beach, a day or two at Disney World, then we came back to Palm Beach and then home to New York.”

In Palm Beach, they swim and relax, go to a few restaurants, attend a few parties on the island. On Worth Avenue, John buys May some jewelry. It’s a nice break. Just as he enjoyed Disneyland, in California, John enjoys Disney World (especially the Pirates of the Caribbean ride), but he especially appreciates the benign anonymity the crowds afford him. “I don’t like being famous,” he tells a Palm Beach photographer. “I just want to be like you guys.”

On December 29, 1974, while they’re at the Polynesian Village Resort at Disney World, the lawyers catch up to John.

With the revised documents in front of him, he hesitates, aware of what he’s about to do.

“Take out your camera,” John suggests to May.

And then he hesitates again, looking out the window. “I could almost see him replaying the entire Beatles experience in his mind,” she says.

“Even though they all felt they had to break up to get to the next level of their musical careers, John had started this band that changed the world. It changed pop culture. It changed how we live and how we dress. And he knew that. So when he sat down to sign, he knew that this was it. His was the last signature. As he had started the group, he was the one to end it.”

And so it comes to an end in the Magic Kingdom: with a final autograph placed just under the other three, John Lennon signs away the Beatles.

Chapter 50

Chapter 50

Gotta be rock and roll music

If you wanna dance with me.

—“Rock and Roll Music”

In January of 1975, John’s guitar and backing vocals appear on another number-one song in America—Elton John’s reggae-esque cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”