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[pc31]

agreed.....paul seemed the most functional always.......

[Loco Mo]

I also think that the cessation of touring in 1966 was an inestimable factor leading to the B's breakup.  They were a live performing band.  They found their identity in playing together before audiences.  They thrived on the feedback or lack thereof they received since the earliest of days.  Now they were essentially only meeting in the studio to record in a mostly antiseptic environment with the most salient of their professional promoters privileged in be in their attendance.

Many of you who visit here are in bands or have been.  Can you imagine not playing together in clubs, festivals, parties, etc. but only in a recording studio?  The cohesiveness and the mutual camaraderie you share is felt primarily in the immediacy, tension and spirit of your live, unable-to-edit, performances together.  The B's lost that precious component of who they were.  They played hard, worked hard, in Hamburg and beyond, and now that experience was to be no more.

Is it any wonder they became increasingly solo oriented with Paul ultimately using the other B's as his sidemen, as John proclaimed and complained?

Maybe the most important root of their eventual end lies here and not in the most vaunted Yoko Ono disconnect.  I don't think John could compete with Paul anymore anyway.  I think he'd had it and didn't want to bother with it any further.

Paul was probably the biggest and finally, the last major Beatles fan.  He tried to keep it together but the team was going down and they did and never returned.

I think it was their Trousers...I think it was that they'd stopped touring which begat boredom which begat tensions, and most importantly, Brian's passing was the key to their demise.

[adamzero]

I think ignorance of their real financial condition contributed heavily to their downfall.  Paul's lawsuit did them all a big favor in sorting out their financial situation, in getting rid of Klein, and in holding their money in escrow so it couldn't be wasted away at the rate they were spending.  If the Beatles had known how fragile their financial situation was in 1969, they might have been a little smarter about putting personal animosities aside--maybe even touring.  

I agree with the comments above re. playing live.   The Beatles were natural performers--when they could catch a great vibe they were unstoppable.  The performance clips (not the stadia shows) show they liked to banter with the audience--the club was their ultimate venue.  They tried to replace the club with the studio but it didn't fulfill the spontaneity that true living playing provides.  The Get Back idea was a good one, but still a little sterile if you're going to film all those rehearsals.  The rooftop "performance" shows the Beatles at their best--in a "small venue"--and at their worst, separated from the man in the street and their bewildered audience below.  

In live playing there are magic moments when "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."   It's hard to be just a studio band and still be a band.  

Even during their last tour, they were still playing " Twist and Shout", and the "old" stuff, and that was after 'Revolver' was released. That's like having sex with Yoko, when you can have an Egg McMuffin...(I don't know what that means either, it just popped into my head).