During an appearance on BBC radio, Paul McCartney spoke about the "cruel" and "evil" behavior of his late Beatles bandmate John Lennon after the group broke up.
When asked about his song 'Too Many People', McCartney replied (via Ultimate Guitar): '' Too Many People ', this song was written about a year after the Beatles split up. Back then, John (Lennon) was firing rockets at me with his songs, and one or two of them were pretty cruel. "
"I don't know what he was hoping for, other than punching me in the face, the whole thing really pissed me off."
He continued, “I decided to aim my missiles at him too, but I'm not really that type of writer so it was pretty veiled. It was the equivalent of the 1970s to what could be called a diss track today. "
“An idea that too many people were preaching practices was definitely aimed at having John tell everyone what to do. I was just fed up with being told what to do, so I wrote this song. "
"The first verse and chorus have pretty much all the anger I could muster, and when I started chanting on the second line," Too many are reaching for a piece of cake " I remember calling it & # 39; Piss of Cake & # 39; sang. ”
“I got in touch with John again, but my heart wasn't really there. 'You took this break, so lucky with it,' it was pretty mild, I didn't really come out wild. "
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“It's actually a pretty optimistic song, it doesn't sound really snappy. And if you don't know the story, I don't know if you could guess the anger behind this letter. "
“It was all a little weird and a little nasty, and I was basically like, 'Let's be sensible.' We had a lot going on at the Beatles, and what really separated us was business, and that's pretty pathetic , really, so let's just try to be peaceful, maybe let's give peace a chance … "
"'Too many people share the party lines, too many people reach for a piece of cake and a piece of the cake …' The thing about sleeping late, whether that was right, whether John and Yoko (Ono) actually slept late or not, I'm not sure."
“Even though John was a late riser when I went to Waybridge, we were able to ride together. They were all references to people who thought their own truth was the only truth that surely came from John … "
“I was able to accept Yoko sitting on a blanket in front of my amp in the studio. I worked hard to come to terms with it, but when we broke up and everyone was fighting, John got mad. "
“I don't really understand why. Maybe because we grew up in Liverpool, where it was always good to get the first blow in a fight. "
McCartney went on to talk about the Beatles' breakup and revealed how he found out Lennon was leaving the band.
“The whole story, in a nutshell, is that we had a meeting in 1969 and John showed up and said he had met this guy Allen Klein – and then John told us he was leaving the band. Basically it happened that way. "
“It was three to one because the other two went with John, so it looked like Allen Klein owned our entire Beatle empire. I wasn't that enthusiastic about this idea. "
“John actually had Allen Klein and Yoko in the room suggesting texts during the writing sessions. In the (Lennon's' Diss') 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 and I had to work very hard not to take it too seriously, but in the back of my mind I was like, ' # 39; Wait a minute! All I did was 'yesterday'? ""
“I suppose that's a fun pun, but all I did was 'Yesterday', 'Let It Be', 'The Long and Winding Road', 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Lady Madonna…' Fuck you , John! "
"I had to fight with them for my part of the Beatles, and indeed for their part of the Beatles, which they recognized many years later and almost thanked me."
“People get it now, but I think others felt hurt by my actions back then. Allen Klein already had a story with the Rolling Stones. "
"I said, 'Oh, this guy's got such a bad rap.' And good old John says, 'He's been talked about badly, he can't be all bad.' ; John had this distorted thinking that was amusing at times. "
"But not when someone wanted to take everything John, George (Harrison), Ringo (Starr) and I had and worked really hard."
“So I got up as a sane one and said, 'This is not good.' Klein wanted 20 percent, and I said, 'Give him 10 percent if you have to go with him.' 'Oh no, no, no, him wants 20. & # 39;
"It seemed to me that they were all just going on and not trying to do anything sensible."
“During that time in the early 1970's a lot of injuries went down, they felt hurt, I felt hurt, but John who was John was the one who wrote hurtful songs. That was his bag. "
For more information on this, see The Beatles Observer.
