Beatles breaking up is interesting. a bit dismissive to call it "petty infighting". it was a complicated situation. this is how i see it:
- Beatles go against their longtime manager Brian Epstein in 1966 to quit touring & focus on studio recording. start of the psychedelic era experimentation.
- After living in hotel rooms for three years straight they all wanted breaks from one another. John meets Yoko and starts doing heroin around this time. George goes to India and Ringo chills w Peter Sellers.
- Their manager Brian dies in 1967 of suspected suicide. Paul, who sort of ran the Sgt. Pepper sessions, is in the middle of running the group through the ill-fated Magical Mystery Tour. These four stoned as fuck musicians, it turns out, are poor career managers. Financial pressure starts to be a major concern.
- That year they try to buy the rights to their songs and are outbid. Due to constantly being outbid and outlawyered over the decades, the Beatles did not own the rights to their own songs for 50 years. Paul McCartney finally bought those rights in 2016.
- In 1968 they start Apple, thus beginning the start towards independence. It will fail (but at least it gives George Harrison the idea to do Handmade films and eventually fund The Life of Brian and Time Bandits).
- During White Album sessions Ringo quits the band, as he is well aware many people think he is a bad drummer, and he felt outclassed and unloved. He comes back a few days later but Paul tapes several drum tracks on for the album in his absence (Back in the USSR, Dear Prudence).
- Much of the White Album is taped alone, many tracks feature only 1 member.
- Mere months later, in the middle of winter, Paul has the band get together for another new album, and it will also be a concert, and a movie.
- George Harrison is skeptical of the whole thing, he storms out after being lectured by Paul how to play his guitar one day. He goes home to write "Wah Wah", one great track from a 3 LP masterwork of songs (All Things Must Pass) that the Beatles will ignore due to a creatively stifling song quota.
- John and Yoko keep doing art shows and releasing noise albums that attract undue political attention, they get busted for drugs. The US gov't starts a file on them that will haunt them across the 70's. Paul is hanging out w Eastman-Kodak heir Linda Eastman & her hipster friends in the Swinging 60's glitterati.
- There is a split in leadership choices, Paul wanting his new rich in-laws, the other Beatles wanting the former infamous Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein.
- John, Yoko, and Ringo record with Revolver cover artist and longtime German Beatle fan Klaus Voorman a series of Plastic Ono Band records. These are essentially proto-punk or krautrock style albums. This noise rock version of the Beatles performed for several years in fact before the Beatles were officially split up.
- John eventually threatens to quit after a tense business meeting. Paul coaxes him to stay, just like he did with George and Ringo.
- Paul releases his solo album, it includes a letter announcing the band breaking up. He told no other members he would be doing this. Everyone thinks it is shitty he used the breakup to promote his solo album. The other three had released already several solo albums by then.
- The end started a very public feud between John and Paul. Thus begins a decade of angry lawyers.
The sad thing about it all is, honestly, they could have kept going. The stuff they put out was quite revolutionary, and John's noise rock stuff was super ahead of it's time. The Beatles could have invented punk if they wanted. However, I think it is like any relationship, years and years of straw, and eventually one breaks the camel's back. A shame but at least we got a lot of amazing music!