Paul McCartney expressed doubt that the Beatles would ever have reunited, had it been possible following their 1970 split.

He reflected that all four members made a “conscious decision” to move away from their past, although he admitted that he wasn’t certain about his position.

“We made a decision when the Beatles folded that we weren’t going to pick it up again," McCartney told the Sunday Times. "So we switched off from the Beatles. You talk about something coming full circle that is very satisfying; let’s not spoil it by doing something that might not be as good. It was a conscious decision to leave well enough alone, so I don’t really think we would have. But who knows? We could have.” He added of John Lennon: “We had certainly got our friendship back, which was a great blessing for me.”

In 1975 – five years before his death – Lennon said he’d settled on a “why not” attitude to getting back together, adding: “It’s never got to a position where each one of us wanted to do it at the same time. … If we wanted to do it, then it would be worth it.” Ringo Starr echoed those sentiments in 2015, saying: “I think the stumbling block was just sitting around and saying, 'Okay, let's do it.' And we never got to that. You know, we did in twos, we talked about it.”

In the new interview, McCartney also said he’d found it “reaffirming” to look back via Peter Jackson’s upcoming documentary The Beatles: Get Back, which focuses on the group’s final months. “Because it proves that my main memory of the Beatles was the joy and the skill,” he explained. “The proof is the footage. I bought into the dark side of the Beatles breaking up and thought, ‘Oh God, I’m to blame.’ I knew I wasn’t, but it’s easy when the climate is that way to start thinking so. … But at the back of my mind there was always this idea that it wasn’t like that, but I needed to see proof.”

 

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