Paul McCartney admits he enjoyed his 'I told you so' moment with his Beatles bandmates

30 September 2026, 11:31 | Updated: 30 September 2026, 11:57

Paul McCartney had a major falling out with his fellow Beatles.

The Beatles break-up has been pored over for decades since the split, with plenty of fingers being pointed in all directions by those in and outside the band.

One factor that all agreed caused conflict was the appointment of controversial New York businessman Allen Klein as the band's manager after the tragic death of Brian Epstein.

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John Lennon brought Klein into the picture, and won the backing of George Harrison and Ringo Starr in hiring him for the job ahead of Paul McCartney's pick of Lee and John Eastman, the father and brother of his then girlfriend (and future wife) Linda.

McCartney was outvoted and things really disintegrated from that point on. While Epstein made countless financial mistakes as an inexperienced manager of the band in what was effectively a new type of business, Klein's tenure caused plenty of issues and stoked conflict among the Fab Four.

Legal issues led Paul to actually be forced to sue John, George and Ringo on New Year's Eve in 1970 so he could dissolve The Beatles partnership, with a judge ruling in McCartney's favour three months later.

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The ill feeling most definitely lingered between McCartney and his former bandmates, and you can see it in the early post-Beatles collaborations.

Everyone seemed happy to work with Ringo, but while John worked with George on Imagine and George's debut featured handclaps from John and Yoko, Paul never got into a proper studio with John ever again and didn't work with George until after Lennon's death.

Speaking at a Q&A with Judd Apatow at a screening of the recent Man on the Run documentary, McCartney admitted that it felt good when his former bandmates finally realised he was right to be suspicious of Klein.

Paul McCartney, Judd Apatow and Morgan Neville

"There was this business guy, Allen Klein, who was basically stealing [from] The Beatles, and I was the only one who thought that," McCartney said.

"The other guys thought, 'No, we love him'... You'd be at a meeting with him and he'd go, 'What do you want?'. The New York guy.

"And we all go, 'I don't know.' 'What do you want, a million dollars?' 'Oh, yeah.' 'Okay, you got it.'"

He added: "He just promised the earth and didn’t deliver it. But meanwhile, I could see that this was a crook. But it was me against the other guys and that was the worst thing.

Paul McCartney - ‘Got Back' with Ringo Starr at The O2, London

"I'd come up against the guys making music, but it was okay because you could say, 'You know what? I know I really think this is right', and they'd either agree or they wouldn't, and I'd go with their version, but it was relatively easily solved.

"But this was suddenly… all the money we'd ever earned was going to go in this guy's bank account. And I just really had to fight it."

McCartney said suing his former bandmates was "the only way" despite it also being "not a great idea", and was asked what it was like when they eventually realised that he was right and they were wrong.

"It was years later, yeah," McCartney said: "But it was nice."