Forget What You've Heard: The Beatles Might Have Broken Up Over an English Biscuit

The reason for the Beatles’ demise in 1969 has long been argued and analyzed: how Ringo Starr left the group for two weeks during the White Album sessions, that George Harrison was inspired to go solo after seeing the changes in musical stylings from contemporaries like Bob Dylan, or that when the band ceased live performances in 1966, its members drifted apart while pursuing more individual projects. These moments and more in the Fab Four’s last years together were certainly sowing the seeds of disbandment for the iconic rock band. But most heated discussions on the matter include the marriage of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and Ono’s long-alleged intrusion into the band’s inner workings.

However, there might be a bit more to it than just a clingy wife: One little-known theory involving Ono and a digestive cookie, or as the Brits call them, biscuits, some believe, could have contributed to the crumby ending of one of the greatest bands in music history.

In the book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, sound engineer Geoff Emerick, who worked with the band on Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album and Abbey Road, recalls strife among the band members at the studio during the making of Abbey Road, the band’s final recording. Emerick describes Lennon arranging a full-sized bed to be wheeled into the studio for Ono to lie in during the band’s recording sessions, to the shock of Paul McCartney, Harrison and Starr. The reason was said to be the couple having recently been in a car accident, and Ono still suffering from back pain.

Emerick writes: “Jaws dropping, we watched as it was brought in and carefully positioned by the stairs. … More men appeared with sheets and pillows and somberly made up the bed. Then Yoko climbed in. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Paul, Ringo and George were as gobsmacked as I was. For the next month Yoko lived in that bed.”

It’s well documented that Harrison and McCartney were already at odds with Ono, and things got only more heated as she entered their workspace for the months of February through August, 1969, during the making of Abbey Road. This, despite Lennon's assertion to Rolling Stone in 1971 that Starr had always been accepting of his relationship to the eccentric Japanese-American conceptual artist and singer.

But Harrison seemed to have the hardest time sharing his space, and, as it turns out, his snacks.

While in the control room during a recording session for Abbey Road, Emerick writes, Harrison stared bug-eyed at Ono through the window: “Curious, I looked over his shoulder. Yoko had gotten out of bed and was slowly padding across the studio floor, finally coming to a stop at Harrison’s Leslie cabinet, which had a pack of McVitie’s digestive biscuits on top. Idly, she began opening the packet and delicately removed a single biscuit. Just as the morsel reached her mouth, Harrison could contain himself no longer. ‘That bitch!’”

Safe to say there wasn’t something in the way she moved — unless it was out of the studio.

Harrison’s passionate response to the theft of his biscuit wasn’t entirely unwarranted. Turns out, they’re pretty delicious and are long-woven into the fabric of English culinary culture. McVitie’s digestives are thin, crisp, cookie-like snacks that are as common in the U.K. as graham crackers are in the U.S. A tasty companion to a cup of tea, these biscuits have been around for well over a hundred years. (Pick some up at The British Emporium in Grapevine.) Still, Harrison must have had enough pocket change to pick up a few more on the way home, but we digress.

Emerick continues: “‘She’s taken one of my biscuits!’ Harrison explained. He wasn’t the least bit sheepish either. As far as he was concerned, those biscuits were his property, and no one was allowed to go near them. Lennon began shouting back at him, but there was little he could say to defend his wife (who, oblivious, was happily munching away in the studio) because he shared exactly the same attitude toward food.”

Abbey Road was eventually released in September 1969, a month after recording finished. Seven months later, McCartney announced the unofficial breakup of the Beatles (an official breakup wouldn’t come until 1974, after a lengthy legal process). Harrison, McCartney and Lennon didn’t completely abandon their friendship during this time, although Harrison and McCartney still never fully warmed up to Ono, at least while Lennon was still alive. It's believed that years after Lennon's death, Harrison went to McCartney to persuade him to be at peace with Ono — to let it be.

And it’s no secret that Ono has endured public scrutiny for breaking up the Beatles for decades. But since the Peter Jackson documentary The Beatles: Get Back was released in 2021 (following the band's time in the studio recording their last released album, Let It Be) showed the near-constant squabbling among the bandmates, there’s been a slight shift in public opinion about what really could have broken up John, Paul, George and Ringo — and perhaps a realization that Ono has taken far too much blame. And while the feud over a McVitie’s biscuit did add fuel to the fire, it's easy to see that the fire had already been burning for some time.

How exactly the cookie crumbles in the story of the Beatles is not entirely clear. Still, what we're left with is the greatest advertisement opportunity for a snack food brand in history: a biscuit so good it could have broken up the Beatles.