Welcome to Nothing is Real, a podcast about the Beatles.

Everybody thinks they know the Beatles, but how much do we really know? My name's Jason Carty.

My name's Stephen Cotcroft.

And we're live on tape from Dublin and Belfast.

Christ, you know it ain't easy.

The ballad of John and Yoko is a unique song in the Beatles' canon.

It was their last number one. And when we look at the Beatles' last active year of service in 1969, does it give us any clues as to how they could have functioned in the

70s while Get Back on Abbey Road or two perspectives? The Ballad of John and Yoko, it kind of gives

us a third perspective, doesn't it, Stephen? Yes. I mean, I suppose it's almost a John solo project.

And you can see a situation in the 70s where they were coming together.

See what I did there.

You know, every year, every other year doing a group album, doing solo projects.

And this is a period where, you know, each of the four are doing solo projects,

whether that's recording other Apple artists or films or, you know, music projects.

There's Apple label projects.

But this, I suppose, is the first time, maybe the

only occasion on which a John in inverted on a solo project is actually encroaching onto the

Beatles turf. Yeah, and it's their last standalone single as well, which is interesting for a band

who had done so many standalone singles, which you sometimes don't totally connect with their surrounding albums.

You know, you don't often think of we can work it out should be on Rubber Soul, but even though they're of the same era.

So it's curious that even at that late stage in their career, they thought, no, we can still knock out a standalone single.

Well, they knocked out the standalone single can still knock out a standalone single. Well, they knocked out

...