Paul McCartney recently talked about the Beatles’ widely known feud on BBC radio. He revealed that during the conflicts within the band, John Lennon wrote his song ‘How Do You Sleep’ to diss McCartney.
The Beatles disbanded after ten years of a successful band career in 1970, and the band members moved on with their solo careers. In those ten years, they achieved many great things and became the best-known rock band in history. However, the dynamics in the band ruined their future success as the Beatles and caused a dramatic breakup.
Legal issues concerning the sharing of the songs’ rights emerged, especially between Lennon and McCartney. These problems lasted even after the band’s official disbandment in 1980. At the time, Paul was blamed for asking too much, and the McCartney and Lennon duo would often clash. However, while Lennon expressed his feelings with a song while McCartney didn’t.
McCartney talked about this in his recent interview and revealed that Allen Klein, the guy Lennon met when he decided to leave the band, wanted to own the Beatles’ entire products. Naturally, McCartney wouldn’t let that happen, and therefore the turmoil began.
Lennon wrote the song ‘How Do You Sleep’ for McCartney, and a line said, ‘The only thing you done was ‘Yesterday,’ which was an understatement of McCartney’s contribution to the band. He expressed his feelings stating that he laughed at the pun first, but then it hit him that it was a huge understatement, and he didn’t like it.
Here is how McCartney told the story:
“The whole story, in a nutshell, is we were having a meeting in 1969, and John showed up and said he’d met this guy Allen Klein – and then the matter of fact, John told us he was leaving the band. It is basically how it happened. It was three to one because the other two went with John, so it was looking as Allen Klein was gonna own our entire Beatle empire. I was not too keen on that idea.
“John actually had Allen Klein and Yoko in the room suggesting lyrics during writing sessions. In the song ‘How Do You Sleep,’ the line, ‘The only thing you did is ‘Yesterday,‘ was apparently Allen Klein’s suggestion. And John said, ‘Hey, that’s great – put that in.’
I can see the laughs doing it, and I had to work very hard not to take it too seriously, but at the back of my mind, I was thinking, ‘Wait a minute! All I did was ‘Yesterday?’ I suppose that’s a funny pun, but all I did was ‘Yesterday,’ ‘Let It Be,’ ‘The Long and Winding Road,’ ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ ‘Lady Madonna…’ Fuck you, John!“
You can watch the full interview and listen to ‘How Do You Sleep’ below.
