The Paul McCartney song which left John Lennon furious at former collaborator

A song written following the split of The Beatles left John Lennon furious with Paul McCartney.

Though the so-called song war between the former collaborators lasted just two albums, it was enough to deal damage to the pair’s friendship. The fallout following the break-up of The Beatles led to several years of barbed insults from McCartney and Lennon in interviews and songs. McCartney would hit back at comments made by Lennon by writing a piece for Ram, which left Lennon infuriated. The Imagine songwriter would reply to the Ram track by thanking controversial Beatles manager Allen Klein publicly in an issue of Crawdaddy Magazine. He went on to write a song as a direct reply to the Ram classic. It is safe to say Lennon was not best pleased with his former writing partner, and the more direct track he wrote as a response made it clear.

The Ram song Too Many People from McCartney does not name drop Lennon or Yoko Ono, but does hit out at the “lucky break” The Beatles had afforded Lennon. McCartney sings of Lennon making his “first mistake,” which he said was taking his “lucky break” and breaking it in two.

Lennon was enraged by the comments made by McCartney, and shared as much with the readers of Crawdaddy Magazine. He wrote: “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. 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?”

Lennon would then feature How Do You Sleep on his Imagine album, which made clear pops at McCartney. One line referred to McCartney doing little since the release of Yesterday while another noted the “Paul is Dead” conspiracy, a theory which suggests the “real” McCartney was replaced.

Though the song wars would come to an end there, McCartney says he had a planned response to Lennon, called Quite Well, Thank You. He also said the song was meant as a knock at Lennon and Ono’s preachy political stances.

McCartney said: “I was looking at my second solo album, Ram, the other day and I remember there was one tiny little reference to John in the whole thing. He’d been doing a lot of preaching, and it got up my nose a little bit.

“In one song, I wrote, ‘Too many people preaching practices,’ I think is the line. I mean, that was a little dig at John and Yoko. There wasn’t anything else on it that was about them. Oh, there was ‘You took your lucky break and broke it in two.”

Lennon has since compared Too Many People to Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone, suggesting the two tracks share an intentionally nasty perspective.

He said: “Well, it was like Dylan doing Like A Rolling Stone, one of his nasty songs. It’s using somebody as an object to create something. I wasn’t really feeling that vicious at the time, but I was using my resentment towards Paul to create a song. Let’s put it that way.”