Yoko Ono in startling new evidence over claims she broke up The Beatles

Yoko Ono was not a factor in the break-up of The Beatles despite being blamed for decades, a ­historian claims. Martin Lewis points to Apple TV’s recent Get Back seriesas evidence her presence in the Beatles studio did not cause the tension between John Lennonand his ­bandmates many insist was behind the demise.

Yoko being at the 1969 Let it Be album recordings has gone down in music folklore as the beginning of the end for the Fab Four. But Martin, who has worked with both her and Paul McCartney in recent years, said: “The fans wanted a villain. The media likes a villain. We all do. That’s natural, but not reality.”

Speaking about the Apple TV series, he added: “They are in the studio. Yoko’s there, which was unusual. They didn’t normally have wives or girlfriends in the studio. Who does John relate to through the whole eight hours? He looks at Yoko once in a blue moon. His eyes are on Paul. He’s with his buddy of the last 13 years. It’s all about John and Paul.

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“Yoko was there, she wants to be there. He’s not rude. He’s just not interested. He’s working with his mate and having fun. The whole film gives the lie to that nonsense. It’s John and Paul, but bonding, writing, having fun, reminiscing. He’s polite to Yoko.

"She didn’t break up the Beatles. John and Paul have been together since July 57, when they were 17 and 16 respectively. They were nearly 30. That’s a long time. So they were growing apart. She’s not the villain.”

Martin also claimed racism played its part in the treatment of Yoko and her public perception. Speaking at the LA Jewish Film Festival’s opening night film Midas Man, about Beatles managerBrian Epstein, he said: “A lot of it was racist because John was dumping his English rose wife and going off with a Japanese and an Asian woman. John made a very interesting point… up until Yoko, he was [called in the media] John.

“The minute he met Yoko, he became Lennon.” In 2023, McCartney claimed Yoko’s presence in the studio caused issues between him, Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison. He said: “I don’t think any of us ­particularly liked it. It was an ­interference in the workplace.”

Martin claimed Yoko, 92, will not be writing a memoir to set the record straight on her lifelong negative representation. A recent book about her, Yoko, by David Sheff, said she was spending her last days “listening to the wind” on a 600-acre farm bought with John in New York State.

Daughter Kyoko Cox, 61, said of her mother: “She believed she could change the world, and she did. Now she is able to be quiet - listen to the wind and watch the sky.She is very happy, in a happy place. This is genuine peacefulness.”

In the biography, musician son Sean Lennon, 49, praises his mum for fighting adversity.

Sean, who is now in charge of the family’s interests in the Beatles estate, said: “She had this ability to overcome difficulty with positive thinking.

“She really wanted to teach the world to do that. She taught my dad to do that. It’s not going to stop a moving train, or a bullet. But I think there’s something profound about it.”

The couple met in November 1966 at London’s Indica Gallery.

They married in Gibraltar three years later. The Beatles split in 1970. John wasmurdered on the doorstep of his New York home in December 1980.