The Truth About the Beatles Reunion That Almost Happened

Thursday, February 19, 2026

Nearly 60 years after the most devastating breakup in music history, Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville is shedding new light on what kept the Beatles from reuniting.

“Every single interview any of them gave in that entire decade, they were asked, ‘When are the Beatles going to get back together?’” Neville, 58, told Obsessed: The Podcast host Matt Wilstein in a new interview about his latest documentary, Man on the Run. “They could not escape it.”

Despite the band’s refusal to answer those questions at the time, Neville now believes they had something in the works.

“I actually think, if John had lived, they would’ve gotten back together,” the director added. “Eventually, somehow, somewhere.”
Portrait of the The Beatles. From left to right: Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison, circa 1965.
The Beatles' split in 1970 rocked the music world to its core and left each of the band's members questioning their musical futures. McCartney later reflected that he thought he might "never write another note of music ever."

Neville has spent his 30-year career piecing together the lives of pop culture’s biggest names: Johnny Cash, Anthony Bourdain, and Steve Martin, to name a few. Now, he’s set his sights on one of the music industry’s biggest living legends: Paul McCartney.

In his new documentary, Man on the Run, Neville details McCartney’s turbulent decade following the split of his boyhood band.
Producer Caitrin Rogers (L) and director Morgan Neville win Oscars 2014
Neville won an Oscar for his documentary about the behind-the-scenes lives of backup singers. Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

“In the early days, they were feuding, and I think they were all just trying to get away from each other in some ways,” Neville said of the reunion talks.

According to the filmmaker, McCartney had talked with John Lennon about playing on his 1975 album Venus and Mars, so the pair’s feud had “considerably thawed by then.”

To the acclaimed documentarian, it was an issue of time rather than of disdain. Lennon’s untimely murder just 10 years after the breakup put a tragically permanent end to any tentative plans the bandmates may have had in place.

Source: Owen Mason-Hill/thedailybeast.com