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.
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.
"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."
"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.
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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:
Related: 1980 John Lennon Radio Interview, Recorded the Day of His Murder, Captured His Final Message
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."
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"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♬ Don't Let Me Down - Rooftop Performance / Take 1 - The Beatles
That's not actually anger at all. That's fear and insecurity.
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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
"He did love you," she told him.
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.
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