‘How Do You Sleep?’: John Lennon’s most vicious song could have been so much worse
It’s well known that as The Beatles came to an end, the two men who had guided them to worldwide fame and unstoppable success were fracturing a little more as every second passed. John Lennon and Paul McCartney had been best friends since their teenage years, but years down the line, with the weight of fame and fortune becoming near-unbearable, the two men were at each other’s throats.
While some will point to Yoko Ono’s introduction to the group as one of the reasons McCartney and Lennon’s relationship began t sour, the truth is that the writing was on the wall for some time. Lennon’s vision for the bad, and art at large, was to be a provocative experiment in activism. He wanted to deliver rock and roll songs capable of change. Meanwhile, McCartney was devoted to the art of perfecting a pop song, diligently pawing over track after track to get just the right sound. It was the creative chasm that would lead to their difficult relationship.
Of course, it wouldn’t just be songwriting that would spark their issues. The introduction of Allen Klein to the group would become a flashpoint, with McCartney eventually taking his bandmates to court in 1970, signalling the end of the free-loving decade as well as the band. The group’s litigious ending would create an inescapable bad feeling for all involved.
For any musically inclined artist, when faced with complex emotions, the first port of call to express them will be in song. It was only a matter of time before the four men would begin writing harsh words about each other within the rhyming couplets of a pop song. Paul McCartney would strike first with ‘Too Many People’.
Starting by covertly telling Lennon to ‘piss off’ with the phrase “piece of cake,” McCartney writes this song as a bonafide list of everything he hates about a certain group of people. And, of course, when we say, ‘a certain group of people’ what we mean is John Lennon and Yoko Ono. “I heard Paul’s messages in Ram,” recalled Lennon, “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.”
McCartney viciously attacks Lennon and his choice of music, women, and lifestyle, lavishing heaps of resentment on Lennon in McCartney’s most pointed songs. Not to be outdone, Lennon would reply with his own barbed and brutish hit ‘How Do You Sleep?’ And he got started within the lyrics right away, singing: “So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise / You better see right through that mother’s eye / Those freaks was right when they said you was dead / The one mistake you made was in your head”
Things went further as he bellowed: “The only thing you done was yesterday / And since you’ve gone you’re just another day.” However, what is most surprising is that the original lyrics were even more vicious, as Lennon was set to finish the couplet with “You probably pinched that bitch anyway”. During another recording session, Lennon sang “How do you sleep, you c***?” rubber-stamping the anger.
Thankfully, for all Beatles fans, Lennon was saved by the cool head of his former bandmate Ringo Starr. The drummer was a part of the recording sessions, like his fellow Beatle George Harrison, and managed to curtail Lennon from going too far. “Some of it was absolutely puerile,” Felix Dennis, Lennon’s longtime friend, said in Barry Miles’ book Many Years From Now. “Thank God a lot of it never actually got recorded because it was highly, highly personal, like a bunch of schoolboys standing in the lavatory making scatological jokes.”
Dennis confirmed: “I remember Ringo getting more and more upset by this. At one point, I have a clear memory of him saying, ‘That’s enough, John.’”
It’s easy to see how, if given the opportunity, Lennon could have easily lost his temper. Thankfully, the slightly muted song wasn’t the end of their relationship. The two men would reconcile some years later and become firm friends again before Lennon’s tragic death in 1980.
We’ve all said things we don;t mean in the heat of the moment, sadly we don’t all have the chance to record a few versions of an argument before we send it out into the world. Lennon’s song was certainly vicious, but it oculd have been so much worse.
