“That’s enough”: the 1971 song that saw John Lennon call Paul McCartney a “c**t”
Just what made John Lennon call his songwriting partner and boyhood pal a cunt?
The two had been through the wars with each other. Sparking a musical bond as early as 1957, Lennon and Paul McCartney had jumped from The Quarrymen to The Beatles in Liverpool’s Merseybeat scene, rode out Beatlemania’s hysteria together, gifted popular music with the finest songbooks it’s ever likely to enjoy, pushed each other to creative greatness, and shared a mutual common ground with the early loss of their mothers.
But sure enough, Lennon spits the Anglo-Saxon venom with sneering seethe on 2000’s Gimme Some Truth documentary. While never included on the original eponymous 1988 feature film, the resurfaced archive of the Imagine sessions sees the former Beatle surrounded by ex-members and associates of the Fab Four, with George Harrison on slide guitar and Revolver artist Klaus Voorman on bass. When Lennon lets loose the C-bomb, there’s a wry smirk on his face as he wraps up the take.
It’s certainly not “Livin’ life in peace”. The fact was, feelings were raw in the Beatles camp early in the 1970s. Mutual fatigue had been setting in as early as the ‘White Album’; the lads were no longer moptops but young men facing up to life outside the confines of the band.
As things soured across the doomed Get Back project, McCartney bore much of the brunt amid the turmoil, perceived as trying to wield too much creative control as well as causing business headaches with his managerial disputes post Brian Epstein, a thorn that would cause bitter litigation and seriously bad blood.
Relationships reached their nadir in 1971. McCartney’s legal lawsuit and Lennon’s snide remarks to Rolling Stone had set the stage, but the lyrics to ‘Too Many People’ proved the last straw. Tucked away on Ram, McCartney took a dig at Lennon and Yoko Ono’s political radicalism and Bagism theatre: “Too many people preaching practices / Don’t let them tell you what you wanna be.”
Shots fired. Lennon decided to roll his sleeves up and muster up as much acidic bite as he could for the scathing ‘How Do You Sleep?’. Everything was on the table, racing through the ‘Paul is Dead’ mythos, remarking that McCartney hadn’t topped ‘Yesterday’ and deriding his later musical efforts as “muzak,” and imploring how he handles such mediocrity in the dead of night via its titular refrain. While not making it to the final record, Lennon fires off “How do you sleep, ya cunt?” during one of its takes.
It’s an aggrieved and incredibly sore cut from Imagine’s otherwise impassioned plea for brotherhood. Ringo Starr wasn’t impressed, reportedly stating, “That’s enough, John,” when visiting the Ascot Sound studio. A capacity for cruelty always lurked in Lennon, an ugly trait his former wife, Cynthia Powell, and their son, Julian, would attest. Lennon and McCartney’s feelings would soften as the years rolled by, Lennon later putting ‘How Do You Sleep?’ down to just another of his morbid self-obsessions during the era.
“It’s me again,” Lennon quipped on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1975. “It’s not about Paul, it’s about me, you know, I’m really attacking myself,” before concluding, “The only thing that matters is how he and I feel about those things.”
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.