Mary McCartney/MPL Communications Ltd.A certain contingent of Beatles fans has long blamed John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, for the 1970 breakup of the group, but Paul McCartney insists that's just not the case.  The Guardian reports that in a new TV interview with veteran U.K. journalist David Frost, McCartney maintains that Ono "certainly didn't break the group up, the group was breaking up."

The rock legend goes on to credit Ono with inspiring his late band mate to create some great music and to delve more deeply into avant garde pursuits.

"I don't think he would have done ['Imagine'] without Yoko, so I don't think you can blame her for anything," says McCartney.  "When Yoko came along, part of her attraction was…her view of things, so she showed him another way to be, which was very attractive to him."

Sir Paul adds, "It was time for John to leave, [and] he was definitely going to leave [one way or another]."

In the hour-long interview, which will air next month on the Al Jazeera English channel, McCartney places more of the blame for the Fab Four's split on Allen Klein, who took over management of the group after Brian Epstein's death.

During the program, Macca is shown throwing a mock punch at a photo of Klein, who he claims helped create more enmity between the band's members.  "I was fighting against the other three guys who'd been my lifelong soul buddies," he notes.  "I said I wanted to fight Klein."

McCartney does admit that, in hindsight, that The Beatles breaking up when they did "wasn't that bad a thing," adding that the band left "a neat body of work."

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