In an interview in Britain's "Daily Express" tabloid, Paul McCartney says he believes the Beatles would have reunited if they'd all lived long enough to make it happen.

He explains, quote, "If John and George were still here, it's highly likely we would've had a Beatles reunion. I think we would've mellowed to the point where we would've said, 'Come on, let's do it.'"

That being said, Paul says he and John ALMOST reunited in 1976 when "Saturday Night Live" boss Lorne Michaels offered to pay them to perform on "SNL".

You can see that HERE

Paul says, quote, "I was at John's place and 'Saturday Night Live' was on, and John said to me 'Have you seen this? They're offering us money to get back together.'

"And John said, 'We should go down, just you and me. We'll show up. There's only two of us, [so] we'll take half the money.'"

So why didn't it happen? They got LAZY. Paul explains, quote, "For a second we were like, 'Shall we do it?' I don't know what stopped us. [But] it would've been work, and we were having a night off…so we elected not to go to work.
"It was a nice idea. We nearly did it."

One last thing: Paul would like to remind everyone that it was John's decision to break up the Beatles. Or John's decision…with maybe some nudging from Yoko Ono. Apparently, some people didn't realize that.

He says, quote, "I certainly had wanted us to keep going, but John certainly didn't. He'd found Yoko and they were into a new thing, which turned out to be a great thing for them. For the rest of us, it was [like], 'Hmm, what are we going to do now?'

"People actually thought I was the one who'd broken the Beatles up when I was the one trying to keep it together…it would've been great to go on forever."

Obviously, stuff like that makes everyone think "WHAT IF?" And Paul understands. He says, quote, "I'm not a great believer in 'What If?' You can't do it, but I suppose it's nice to speculate."

More From Awesome 98