Paul McCartney nearly wrote a follow-up to John Lennon’s How Do You Sleep? at the height of the so-called song wars.
The former members of The Beatles spent time in the studio recording songs aimed at one another, with the back and forth coming to a head when Lennon released How Do You Sleep?, a song which featured on his 1971 album, Imagine. Lennon wrote it as an attack on his former bandmate after believing McCartney’s track Too Many People, which features on Ram, was aimed at him. George Harrison appears on How Do You Sleep?, playing slide guitar, and McCartney very nearly wrote a response to Lennon’s venomous song.
According to McCartney, who spoke on Ramming: The Making of Ram, a follow-up song was planned. McCartney also confirmed the title of his album, Ram, was related to “ramming on” after the break-up of The Beatles. He said: “I just hit upon the word ram. It’s strong, it’s a male, animal. And then there’s the idea of ramming. Pushing forward strongly. Very short, very succinct kind of title you wouldn’t forget. I was in the middle of this horrendous Beatles breakup and it was like being in quicksand.
“The lightbulb went off one day when we realised we could just run away and just go to Scotland where we knew we loved it and go and hang out. So you know, you find me mowing a field on my tractor or shearing a sheep with old-fashioned hand shears, just to keep myself amused I would sit around making stuff up on the guitar. We thought that’s maybe the way to go, see what forms out of the bare elements.”
McCartney did it as a way to break from the “super important” sense of being a high-profile musician after the bust-up of The Beatles. He, along with Linda McCartney, formed Wings soon after. McCartney says, though, he nearly wrote a song called Quite Well, Thank You, in response to How Do You Sleep? from Lennon.
Later in the documentary, McCartney speaks of Too Many People and what he meant when writing the song. He said: “Too Many People was really a message to John across the airwaves. I did feel like he was preaching a little bit about what people should do and how they should live their lives. I felt the song was a bit hypocritical. There was a little spate of song wars that went on, you know, he’d done How Do You Sleep? and I nearly did a song, Quite Well, Thank You.
“It kind of settled down, The Beatles mess got sorted out and we were able to talk to each other like human beings and friends and that was something I was really always very glad on because we’d been through too much to let business arguments blow up our whole relationship.”
While McCartney and Lennon would never perform live with one another again, a lucrative offer from Saturday Night Live producer could have seen the two reunite for an alleged $3,000 offer.
