‘Let It Be’ Definitively Proves Yoko Ono Did Not Break Up The Beatles — Paul McCartney and George Harrison’s Squabbling Did

When Peter Jackson’s documentary series The Beatles: Get Back premiered on Disney+ in 2021, fans finally had definitive proof that—despite that prevailing narrative that followed the release of the 1970 documentary Let It Be—Yoko Ono did not split up the Beatles. After all, among the eight hours of footage of the Beatles recording their second-to-last album, there was a candid interview with Paul McCartney where he said it was fine with him, actually, that John Lennon’s girlfriend was hanging around the studio. He thought it was sweet.

But now the original Let It Be documentary is streaming on Disney+, and, for the first time since a low-quality VHS release in the ’80s, fans are able to watch a restored version of the documentary fans saw in theaters in 1970. And guess what? There’s absolutely no evidence that Yoko Ono had a single thing to do with the Beatles break-up in this movie, either! Instead, there is ample evidence that the blame lies entirely on McCartney and George Harrison.

It’s not like anyone truly doubted that the racist, sexist vitriol aimed at Ono after the Beatles split was anything more than, well, racism and sexism. But, still, one might assume that there was at least something in Let It Be that painted the Japanese artist as a villain. Maybe some dirty looks from McCartney? A pointed comment from Harrison? Nope! There is exactly one loaded edit from director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who cuts to a shot of Ono sitting quietly on a stool, while Lennon and McCartney sing “Two of Us” together at the mic. The implication from Lindsay-Hogg is clear: Ono is an interloper on the iconic duo that has memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

Really? Audiences in 1970 were spurned into bigoted rage by that? A cheap, reality TV-esque editing trick, that appears as a single blip in a movie filled with McCartney and Harrison’s bitter bickering? Harrison literally shows up to the studio with a song he wrote about selfish, narcissistic artists, the day after a particularly nasty argument over McCartney nitpicking Harrison’s guitar-playing. He stares McCartney down as he sings it. Surely that is far more juicy than a shot of Ono looking bored while she sits by quietly and lets her boyfriend do his job.

In fact, Ono’s presence seems to act as something as a balm on the tension between the Beatles bassist and guitarist. While Harrison is boldly tinkering with his very own diss track, “I, Me Mine,” Ono and Lennon break out into a joyful waltz around the room. Yeah, they also make out a little first. But so what? No one in the band blinks an eye. It’s only Beatles fans who seemed to have a problem with the most famous rockstar in the world devoting his life to a woman—and an Asian woman, at that.

After watching Let It Be, it couldn’t be more clear that McCartney and Harrison had no issue with Ono—only with each other. Lennon and Ono stayed out of the drama, in their own bubble of love. In one particularly telling scene, McCartney rants to Lennon about Harrison’s reluctance to play for a live audience. Lennon simply nods along in silence, passively smoking a cigarette—the way one might indulge a friend on a not-entirely-justified tirade.

We now know, thanks to astonishing footage featured in Jackson’s Get Back, that Harrison was so fed up with McCartney, that he even temporarily quit the band in the middle of the recording sessions at Twickenham Studios. The other three convinced him to return to the Apple studio to finish the album. Lindsay-Hogg left all of that quitting drama out of his documentary, at the request of the band. (In a previous interview with Decider, Peter Jackson explained, “They didn’t want him to show George leaving the group. […] He couldn’t put that in, but he filmed it.”) But the director still made it clear, with what he did include, that McCartney and Harrison were not on good terms.

And yet, for years after Let It Be—which was released in theaters one month before the Beatles officially announced their split—Ono took the blame. If this re-release of Let It Be proves anything, it’s that Ono’s presence in the studio may have been unconventional, but it was never a problem. Personally, I think every single Beatles fan who ever believed that lie owes her an apology. Yoko Ono didn’t break up the Beatles. McCartney and Harrison did.