The story of John Lennon and Paul McCartney is a complicated one. Together, they formed arguably the greatest songwriting partnership of all time, making The Beatles the most significant rock band the world has ever seen. They pushed the established musical boundaries and beckoned culture into the bright light of the future with their words and music.
Despite Lennon and McCartney changing the world with the potency of their collaboration, the break-up of The Beatles in 1970 was a sticky situation for all involved. Notoriously, McCartney wrote ‘Too Many People’ as a critique of his old partner, a standout moment on his celebrated 1971 solo album, Ram.
The song contains lines about “preaching practices” and “going underground”, with McCartney airing his frustrations about what he perceived as Lennon’s hypocrisies. While Ram wasn’t received particularly well upon release, it has since benefitted from a reappraisal later in life and is now considered one of McCartney’s best. Too Many People’, though, only added fuel to what was becoming an increasingly hostile public spat. It was so acrimonious that even 50 years later, McCartney is still sensitive when broaching the topic.
“This song was written a year or so after the Beatles breakup, at a time when John was firing missiles at me with his songs, and one or two of them were quite cruel,” McCartney recalled in his 2021 book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. “I don’t know what he hoped to gain other than punching me in the face. The whole thing really annoyed me. I decided to turn my missiles on him too, but I’m not really that kind of a writer, so it was quite veiled.”
He added: “It was the 1970s equivalent of what we might today call a ‘diss track’. Songs like this, where you’re calling someone out on their behaviour, are quite commonplace now, but back then, it was a fairly new ‘genre’. The idea of too many people’ preaching practices’ was definitely aimed at John telling everyone what they ought to do – telling me, for instance, that I ought to go into business with Allen Klein”.
This high-profile slight against John Lennon was responded to with the brutal and cutting ‘How Do You Sleep?’, a track from his 1971 album Imagine. Lennon said at the time: “I heard Paul’s messages in Ram – yes there are dear reader! Too many people going where? Missed our lucky what? What was our first mistake? Can’t be wrong? Huh! I mean Yoko, me, and other friends can’t all be hearing things.”
Lennon recorded the song with former Beatles guitarist George Harrison, adding extra bite to the track. He explained: “So to have some fun, I must thank Allen Klein publicly for the line ‘just another day’. A real poet! Some people don’t see the funny side of it. Too bad. What am I supposed to do, make you laugh? It’s what you might call an ‘angry letter’, sung – get it?”
Despite the ill will between them, when speaking to Hit Parader in 1972, Lennon was democratic when discussing The Beatles’ songs and even revealed the name of the number he thought was McCartney’s “best”. This is the 1968 ballad, ‘Hey Jude’. Famously, it evolved out of the track ‘Hey Jules’ that McCartney had written to comfort Lennon’s young son, Julian, after his father left his mother for Yoko Ono.
When discussing the 1968 hit, Lennon said: “Paul. That’s his best song. It started off as a song about my son Julian because Paul was going to see him. Then he turned it into ‘Hey Jude.’ I always thought it was about me and Yoko, but he said it was about him and his.”
During his famous 1980 Playboy interview, Lennon also offered another theory to the song’s inception: “He said it was written about Julian. He knew I was splitting with Cyn and leaving Julian then. He was driving to see Julian to say hello. He had been like an uncle. And he came up with ‘Hey Jude.’ But I always heard it as a song to me.
“Now I’m sounding like one of those fans reading things into it… Think about it: Yoko had just come into the picture. He is saying. ‘Hey, Jude’—’Hey, John.’ Subconsciously, he was saying, ‘Go ahead, leave me.’ On a conscious level, he didn’t want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, ‘Bless you.’ The devil in him didn’t like it at all, because he didn’t want to lose his partner.”
The track deserves it’s acclaim. We needn’t tell you about the power of ‘Hey Jude’, all you need to do that is to listen to this song being sung at a festival or large gathering and hear 90% of people join in and you’ll feel just how impactful the track has been as, after nearly 60 years following its release, ‘Hey Jude’ still lands.
