It must have been tough to be a Beatles fan in 1971. You obviously would have felt despondent over the band’s breakup announcement a year earlier. And if you tried to forget, listening to the Fab Four’s solo albums would have reminded you.
That’s because John Lennon and Paul McCartney went back and forth in a series of songs that year, airing out their grievances in public. Luckily, the last of those songs suggested that the animosity might be lessening.
Paul Started It
It’s not like people weren’t aware of the fact that The Beatles’ breakup had been somewhat acrimonious. Paul McCartney’s announcement of the dissolution in 1970 had been cold and unsentimental. John Lennon sang “I don’t believe in Beatles” on his first solo album and dissed McCartney often in a Rolling Stone interview that same year.
But the nastiness intensified in 1971 via a series of solo Beatles songs. Paul McCartney started the onslaught. “Too Many People”, the opening track on his 1971 album Ram, included a series of pointed lines aimed at someone he directly addresses but doesn’t identify.
Still, it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out his target. Lines like “Too many people preaching practices” and “You took your lucky break and broke it into two” clearly referenced his former bandmate. Nonetheless, the approach of “Too Many People” seemed downright subtle once John Lennon delivered his musical response.
“Sleep” Degradation
Lennon’s 1971 album Imagine was notable for the softening and sweetening of his musical approach compared to his harrowing post-Beatles solo debut (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band). But Lennon left room for the musically bluesy, lyrically scathing “How Do You Sleep?” on the tracklist.
Lennon ensured that no one could miss that the song was a swipe at McCartney. He made lyrical references to several songs for which Macca had become famous. For example: “The only thing you done was Yesterday/And since you’re gone you’re just Another Day.”
Even more damning, Lennon called McCartney’s music “muzak to my ears.” He also enlisted George Harrison to play guitar on the track, as if Harrison was endorsing the message. “How Do You Sleep?” is about as insulting as it gets. What would come next in this war of lyrics?
Cooler Heads
Paul McCartney put together the band Wings at lightning speed in the middle of 1971. He and his new cohorts hustled out the album Wild Life and had it in stores by the end of ’71, hardly a half year after the release of Ram. That haste was reflected in the somewhat disheveled nature of much of the material.
But “Dear Friend” stands out as the most focused song on the album. The somber ballad finds McCartney reaching out to Lennon and wondering if they could repair their relationship. “Is this really the borderline?” McCartney wonders, implying that perhaps the two men needed to ease off on the damaging rhetoric.
As it turned out, they would do just that. From that point forward, the two no longer zinged each other in their songs. And, perhaps not coincidentally, their old friendship found itself on firmer footing going forward as well.
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