They were best friends since they were teenagers. Together they wrote some of the greatest songs the world has ever known. In 1971, they tried to destroy each other, one record at a time.
By the time Paul McCartney released Ram in May 1971, The Beatles had been done for just over a year. Those wounds were still very fresh. The lawyers had moved in and buried inside that new album was a line John Lennon just couldn’t ignore.
“Too many people preaching practices / Don’t let them tell you what you wanna be.”
Those lyrics were a shot aimed directly at Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, at their protests, their activism and the whole new life they’d built together. The insult was subtle enough to deny, yet sharp enough to hurt.
Lennon wasn’t in the mood to ignore it or let it go.
“It starts off with ‘too many people going underground. That was your first mistake. You took your lucky break and broke it in two,'” Lennon said later. “Now, if that doesn’t mean what it says, I don’t know what.”
So Lennon sat down and wrote back his reply.
“How Do You Sleep?” came out swinging. Lennon was hurt and went after everything, calling McCartney’s solo work “muzak,” suggesting the only song he wrote worth remembering was “Yesterday”, questioning how anyone, especially a star of that caliber, could live with themselves after falling so far. With George Harrison on slide guitar, Klaus Voorman on bass and the cameras rolling, Lennon recorded one of the most brutal take down songs one musician has ever aimed at another.
Photo by Fox Photos on Getty Images
But between takes, he went even further.
Caught on film and later surfacing in the 2000 documentary Gimme Some Truth, Lennon wrapped up a take, smirked, and said exactly what he really felt, on a version that never made the record:
“How do you sleep, ya c**t?”
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It wasn’t a lyric in the song. It wasn’t part of a performance. It was just one man in anguish saying the quiet part out loud.
What It Was Really About
Years later, Lennon was honest about where all of it came from.
“I wrote it in immediate response to his album,” he said. “I thought I should answer all of this. But then I thought, no, it’s going to get crazy. We’d be talking through newspapers at each other.”
Photo by John Pratt on Getty Images
Then he said something more revealing.
“After the Beatles ended, I was insecure,” Lennon admitted. “I’d be thinking, maybe Paul wrote everything. Maybe I didn’t do anything. I’d look through the songs and think, well, I did write that. Okay. I’m alright.”
@thebeatles Only letdown was the cops showing up “Don’t Let Me Down” • Apple Corps, Savile Row • 30 Jan 1969 • © Apple Corps Ltd
♬ Don’t Let Me Down – Rooftop Performance / Take 1 – The Beatles
That’s not actually anger at all. That’s fear and insecurity.
McCartney saw the situation exactly for what it was.
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“If somebody didn’t genuinely love somebody,” he said, “they wouldn’t go to those lengths to lash back. He was hurt. It was his way of defending himself.”
Lennon eventually said as much himself.
“It was just a moment of anger,” he said in reference to the song. “You put it down and then you look back at it.”
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives on Getty Images
The most moving part of the story came out after Lennon was gone. Ono pulled McCartney aside and said exactly what he needed to hear.
“He did love you,” she told him.
Lennon was gone before they ever got the chance to say any of it face to face.
Two men in a feud that shook the entire music world. Lyrics and songs were used as weapons against one another. But underneath all of the drama and hurt remained a friendship that neither of them ever fully walked away from.