"LIKE BURTON AND TAYLOR": MACCA'S SHOCKING REVELATION ABOUT WHY THE FAB FOUR WILL NEVER REUNITE

Paul McCartney compares Beatles split to Hollywood's most turbulent romance in rare Capital Radio interview

• McCartney told DJ Nicky Horne in 1980 that The Beatles split was akin to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's famous break-up

• He claimed preserving "the legend" was the second biggest reason for not reuniting

• Macca ironically cited Wood and Wagner as the only famous couple to successfully remarry – oblivious to Burton and Taylor's own 1975 remarriage

---

It was the spring of 1980. Margaret Thatcher had been in power for nearly a year, inflation was soaring to 21%, and the musical landscape was shifting dramatically as punk gave way to new wave. Meanwhile, a certain Liverpudlian bassist was promoting his latest solo venture, "McCartney II," a quirky electronic experiment worlds away from the music that made him famous.

In those days, you couldn't switch on Capital Radio without hearing the mellifluous tones of Nicky Horne, the station's resident rock guru whose "Your Mother Wouldn't Like It" programme had become essential listening for music aficionados across London. If you were a recording artist with something to flog, Horne was your man – respected, knowledgeable, and possessing that rare ability to ask probing questions without sending his interviewees storming out of the studio.

So there was Paul, settled in the Capital Radio studios on May 17th, 1980, ostensibly discussing his new album – a collection that would give us the synthesizer-driven "Temporary Secretary" and the chart-topping "Coming Up." But as inevitably as night follows day, as predictably as Ringo follows a backbeat, the conversation turned to The Question.

It was The Question that had haunted McCartney since April 1970. The Question that journalists couldn't resist asking, that fans couldn't stop dreaming about, that promoters would have sold their grandmothers to make happen. Would The Beatles ever reunite?

By 1980, Paul must have developed a facial tic whenever he heard those words. Yet Horne, brave soul that he was, ventured where countless interviewers had gone before. But his approach was clever – not asking directly about reunion prospects, but instead wondering whether McCartney subscribed to the view that putting "the four of you back on stage together again would destroy the legend."

Macca's answer was revealing. "Yeah, I mean, that's why we haven't done it, you know. That's – that's probably the second real reason we haven't done it."

The second reason? One can almost hear listeners across London leaning closer to their wireless sets. If preserving the legend was only reason number two, what, pray tell, was reason number one?

"The first reason is that we did split up, like Elizabeth Taylor and [Richard] Burton, you know, and once you split up, you're split up."

It was a curious comparison. Paul likening the Fab Four to Hollywood's most famously tempestuous couple – a pair whose passionate, alcohol-fuelled relationship had captivated the public through marriage, divorce, remarriage, and second divorce. Were the Beatles' internal dynamics really that melodramatic? Was there something Macca wasn't telling us about those recording sessions?

But Paul wasn't finished. He continued, "It's not easy to get things back together. It's not – it's only, uh, Bob Wagner and Natalie Wood who've actually remarried, you know. They're the only ones you ever hear of who actually got back together. So it's not a common thing."

Here's where our Paul revealed a gap in his Hollywood knowledge that would make any gossip columnist wince. By the time of this interview, Burton and Taylor had already enacted their own reunion tour. After divorcing in 1974, the tempestuous pair had remarried in 1975, only to divorce again less than a year later. Perhaps Paul had been too busy touring with Wings to keep up with the tabloids.

The irony is delicious. In attempting to explain why a Beatles reunion was as unlikely as Burton and Taylor getting back together, McCartney inadvertently chose a couple who had done exactly that. It was rather like saying, "We'll reunite when hell freezes over," unaware that Satan had already installed an ice rink.

Was Macca having us on? Was this a knowing joke, a sly wink to the more celebrity-savvy listeners? It seems unlikely. The earnestness with which he offered Wagner and Wood as the only example of a high-profile reconciliation suggests he genuinely wasn't aware of the Burton-Taylor remarriage. Perhaps celebrities in the pre-internet age could afford to be a bit less omniscient about their fellow famous folk.

The context of this interview is crucial. In May 1980, McCartney was at an interesting juncture. "McCartney II" represented both a retreat to solo basics (he played every instrument himself) and a forward-looking embrace of synthesizer technology. The album received mixed reviews initially but has since been reappraised as an influential precursor to modern electronic music.

Wings, the band he'd formed after The Beatles, had effectively disbanded following a disastrous January 1980 trip to Japan, where Paul was arrested for marijuana possession and spent nine days in prison before being deported. Though never officially announced, the Wings era was ending. The timing of Horne's interview caught McCartney at a moment of transition.

More poignantly, this conversation took place just seven months before John Lennon's murder in December 1980 would render the reunion question moot forever. At the time of the interview, Lennon was in his househusband period, having recently emerged from a five-year musical hiatus with the album "Double Fantasy."

Nicky Horne, our intrepid interviewer, was not just any radio presenter. A pioneer of album-oriented rock radio in the UK, Horne had built a reputation for intelligent music coverage at a time when the medium was often more concerned with chart hits and gimmicks. His programmes on Capital Radio, particularly "Your Mother Wouldn't Like It," became institutions for serious music fans. When he asked about preserving "the legend," it came from a place of genuine musical appreciation rather than tabloid gossip-mongering.

So how many times had Paul been asked about a Beatles reunion by 1980? If we assume he gave roughly 15 interviews per year since the break-up (a conservative estimate), and that 80% of those interviews included The Question in some form, we're looking at approximately 120 times that Paul had been asked to revisit the possibility of getting back with his old mates. No wonder he had a stock answer ready.

The "last" serious public inquiry about a reunion is difficult to pinpoint precisely, as the question never really went away until Lennon's death. However, one particularly notable example came in January 1976, when promoter Bill Sargent offered the Beatles $50 million (around £230 million in today's money) for a single reunion concert. Lennon claimed in a 1980 Playboy interview that McCartney was interested, but the others weren't. "Paul would do it," John said. "He's never stopped. But I wouldn't."

The reunion question has always been more than mere curiosity. It speaks to something deeper in our psyche – a resistance to endings, a hope that magic can be recaptured, that time can somehow be reversed. Perhaps we ask not because we truly believe it could happen, but because we need to believe it could.

When The Beatles split, it wasn't just a band breaking up. It was the end of the 1960s dream, the final nail in the coffin of a decade that had promised so much and delivered... well, what had it delivered? Certainly not the peace and love that had been advertised on the packet. The Beatles' break-up was symbolic of broader disillusionment, which is why the fantasy of their reunion carried such emotional weight.

Yet Paul's Burton-Taylor comparison was apt in ways he might not have intended. Both pairs were cultural phenomena whose relationships transcended their work. Both generated art from internal tension. Both found that the very chemistry that made them special made long-term harmony impossible.

The Beatles' split was acrimonious, public, and legally complex. By 1980, lawsuits had been filed, bitter words exchanged in the press, digs made in song lyrics. "How Do You Sleep?" wasn't exactly "All You Need Is Love," was it? The wounds were still raw, the business complications formidable. As Paul suggested, getting back together isn't simply a matter of picking up instruments and playing "She Loves You."

And yet... the "what if" persisted. What if they had reunited? What if, like Burton and Taylor, they had given it one more go? Would it have been a triumph or a disaster? Would they have produced more masterpieces or merely diluted their legacy?

History tends to support McCartney's caution. Rock reunions are rarely the stuff of legend. For every Led Zeppelin at Live Aid (magnificent), there's a Sex Pistols Filthy Lucre Tour (filthy lucrative, but hardly revolutionary). Few bands manage to recapture the alchemy that made them special in the first place. The Beatles, wise enough to quit while they were ahead, kept their catalogue pristine, unblemished by late-career disappointments.

This isn't to say they never performed together again. There were partial reunions over the years. Paul and Ringo have shared stages numerous times. George joined Ringo for a Japanese tour in 1991. John and Paul even jammed together in 1974 during Lennon's "Lost Weekend" period – a session that produced the bootlegged "A Toot and a Snore in '74," notable mainly for how unenjoyable it sounds.

But the four Beatles never performed together publicly after their final concert on the rooftop of Apple Corps in January 1969. The mythical reunion remained just that – mythical.

Which brings us to Paul's second reason: preserving the legend. There's wisdom in this that goes beyond mere commercial calculation. The Beatles exist in our cultural memory as something perfect, frozen in time. From "Love Me Do" to "Let It Be," their story has a narrative arc that no screenwriter could improve upon. To add an epilogue might have been to risk anticlimax.

Now, more than four decades after Horne's interview, technology has created possibilities that weren't available in 1980. Peter Jackson's "Get Back" documentary used advanced techniques to restore footage, bringing the band's final sessions to life with unprecedented clarity. AI can isolate vocal tracks from old recordings, clean up archival audio, even generate new material in the style of deceased artists.

In 2021, McCartney released "Now and Then," marketed as "the last Beatles song." Originally a Lennon demo from the 1970s, it was completed using parts recorded during the "Anthology" sessions in 1995, with Paul and Ringo adding new contributions in 2022. Machine learning techniques helped isolate Lennon's voice from the original tape, allowing his ghostly vocals to join his surviving bandmates.

Is this the future of the Beatles reunion? Not flesh and blood, but algorithms and archives? Holograms of John and George joining Paul and Ringo on stage? Virtual reality experiences allowing fans to "attend" recreations of famous concerts?

It's all technically possible, but one suspects McCartney might still have reservations. The legend remains precisely because it ended when it did, how it did. Technology may create simulations, but it can't recreate the unique chemistry of four lads from Liverpool who changed music forever.

As Paul told Horne in 1980, getting back together isn't common. Perhaps it's rarer still for it to be worthwhile. Burton and Taylor's second marriage lasted less than a year. Wagner and Wood's reconciliation ended tragically with her drowning death in 1981. Sometimes, as difficult as it may be to accept, the end really is the end.

Besides, as McCartney sang in "Band on the Run," "if we ever get out of here," not "when we get back in here." Perhaps he was telling us all along that some journeys only go in one direction. The long and winding road leads to a door, and once it closes, there's no going back – not even for the greatest band that ever was.

In the end, the reunion we really want isn't possible. We don't just want The Beatles; we want to be transported back to a time when their music was new, when possibilities seemed endless, when the world was changing in ways that felt mostly hopeful. We want the feeling their music gave us, and that's something no reunion – holographic, virtual, or otherwise – could ever provide.

So perhaps Paul was right after all. The Burton-Taylor comparison wasn't so far off. Both partnerships burned too brightly to be sustained or rekindled. Both created work that defined their era. Both left us wanting more while giving us enough to last a lifetime.

And that, as Paul might say, is why the answer to the eternal question remains: "You know that it ain't easy." You know how hard it can be. The way things are going, they'll crucify me.

---

This article is part of our ongoing "Beatles Revisited" series, exploring pivotal moments in the band's history through rarely-examined interviews and events. Join us next week when we delve into George Harrison's complex relationship with spirituality and how it influenced his solo work.