Just Finished Reading "And In the End" by Ken McNab

And In the End is a 2020 book by Ken McNab describing the turmoil-filled year of 1969 for the British band the Beatles, a year that led to their breakup.   I just finished reading it and thought the author, a journalist from Scotland, did an excellent job treating the subject from the viewpoints of not only Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, but also from others who were around them at that crucial time.  After the drug overdose death of their manager Brian Epstein in 1967, the Beatles were directionless and helpless regarding their financial and legal matters.  Creating Apple Records as a new way to bring in and promote new talent, they soon discovered that their project was speeding them toward bankruptcy.  The fact that the British tax laws meant that they were losing some 90% of their income to the government didn't help, as was also the fact that although John, Paul and George wrote by far most of their own music, they did not own majority ownership rights to the songs and only derived a percentage of the royalties.  Epstein's death and Apple's financial troubles prompted Lennon in a January 1969 news conference to declare how badly the band's finances were...prompting successful American music promoter and manager Allen Klein, already known for his work with groups like the Rolling Stones and Animals, to quickly meet with Lennon and his soon-to-be wife Yoko Ono: not only did Klein impress the two, but Lennon convinced Harrison and Starr to join him in hiring Klein as the Beatles' manager.  But Paul McCartney was skeptical at the start of Klein and thought him to be engaged in shady practices...he wanted his fiancée Linda's father John Eastman to take charge as band manager.  This split between McCartney and the other three Beatles, along with several other negative incidents over the course of the year, including Harrison's angry departure from the band only a week after beginning recording for a new album in January and several difficult business meetings, eventually culminated...despite the band's having recorded two excellent, memorable albums (Let it Be and Abbey Road)...in their breakup.  Without reproducing the book in its entirety, let me instead provide my own insights. For one, each of the Beatles had their own personal lives, loves, and interests. These tended to draw them apart from each other.  The money and song ownership issues cast a gloom over their whole Beatles enterprise, to which they had devoted themselves so much for their entire adult lives...they were worn out from it all.  But to me, the glaring problem that accelerated their demise was the faulty notion...probably held more by Paul than the others...that they were under some sort of time pressure to constantly stay busy coming out with new material.  Looking back from today's era when it's an accomplishment for musical acts to space their albums out by two or three years, the frantic pace of the Beatles in the sixties seems almost insane. If anything, these guys seriously needed a break from it all and to chill out!  Ironically, they had just signed a contract in September of '69 that would have accorded them that breathing room when John, reacting to Paul's suggestion that they go on the road performing at small venues, retorted that he was leaving the band.  Had they managed to stay together, I'm sure their music would have been a lot different, and I regret that we missed out on a lot of potentially great songs because of their breakup.  The supreme irony, I think, is that after Lennon's outburst at McCartney, the band did end up going on an extended break...after which the latter announced the end of the Beatles in April of 1970.  If you're interested in the history of rock music, or maybe just liked the Beatles and some of their songs, this is a good book that captures the personalities and viewpoints of the principals involved in the closing of their illustrious, long collaboration...