Perspectives: McCartney: What lead to “Too Many People” Part 2
Paul described the situation as him nearly having a nervous breakdown, he would lie awake shaking, one night after he had been asleep, he awoke, he couldn’t lift his head from the pillow, and he feared he would suffocate. He hardly had the energy, but he pulled himself up and sat up, he had so much that he wanted to express - but couldn’t. Paul got up the nerve to the rest of the band and asked to be let go from the Apple label, but the rest of the band replied ‘No, we’re not going to let you go.’ Klein reasoned that Paul had recorded things like “Those Were The Days” for Mary Hopkin, a mirror of what had happened with James Taylor when Klein didn’t want to let Taylor go from the label, but James Taylor had been released. Paul once even had a private conversation with George Harrison with the similar request, and George replied with ‘You’ll stay on the fucking label. Hare Krishna’. Paul described his situation mentally:
“I was having dreams that Klein was a dentist. I remember telling everyone and they laughed but I said, ‘No, this was a scary fucking dream1’ I said, ‘I can’t be with this guy any longer. He was in my dreams now, and he’s a baddie.’ He was giving me injections in my dreams to put me out and I was thinking, Fucking hell! I’ve become powerless. There’s nothing I can do to stop this rot. So I decided to just get out, but they wouldn’t let me out, they held me to the contract.”
What Paul
is describing sounds like the traps that narcissists create when it comes to
obligations. Paul took his new wife and adopted daughter and went to the farm in
Scotland in December 1969, took a Studer four track that he had installed in
Cavendish Avenue the prior September and started making music. With the exception
of staff from Apple, the engineering staff from Abbey Road and Morgan studios
in Willesden – no one knew. They had to start to use the Studer without VU
meters that hadn’t been shipped yet, but the home studio and secret studios
gave Paul some productive control again, he was even given a planned release
date from Apple from Neil Aspinall of April 17th.
To Paul’s
credit, he did come back for the Let It Be sessions on January 3rd,
1970 to record “I Me Mine” with George and Ringo, John wasn’t involved. Back a
year earlier as seen in the Get Back documentary, George ran through the
song with Paul and Ringo while they showed keen interest, John just waltzed
with Yoko in the background – he didn’t care. This is why George’s hostility
towards Paul seems a little puzzling in hindsight, John wasn’t always
supportive of George. On March 25th, George had informed Paul the 17th
release date wouldn’t affect other releases, but little did Paul know – Phil
Spector’s work on Let It Be changed everything.
Paul was
working on the package design when he called up Apple and was told the release
date had to be changed, that the release date for Let It Be was going to
be changed to coincide with the film release date, ironically, they had already
shut out Paul for input on the mixing and completion of Let It Be, it
was the final straw. It is known that Ringo came by Paul’s home to deliver the
message about the release date changes for April, Paul threw him out with fury.
Ringo was shocked and disturbed, but the group backed down on the release date,
Paul got his release date, but he won a temporary battle. People tend to want to see Paul as spoiled,
but when you take in the full context of the situation, one begins to see
Paul’s point. When the Let It Be documentary was being completed by
Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the companion album had to be prepared. George Martin and
Glyn John’s mixes had been discarded for Let It Be, and producer Phil
Spector was brought in. But it was the April 1st sessions that would
cause the most consternation, Phil had altered Paul’s track “The Long and
Winding Road”, first recorded by the band in January 1969. But the orchestra, harp,
and female choir seemed out of place with the original intent.
The
exclusion of Paul from those scoring sessions seems unheard of; Paul could have
shown up. Typically, a Producer will present an outside musician session
scoring and walk it through the artist prior to the date. Furthermore, John’s
place holder bass work could have been re-recorded by Paul, and John could have
added some additional guitar or other instruments. There is a feeling that Phil
Spector used the scoring sessions as a showcase to impress Lennon and Harrison,
rather than serving the song. In fairness, Paul had informed few of the key
figures about his solo project, but then again, Paul was mentally drowning.
Allegedly, Spector did send a formal letter open to any suggestions to all parties for the sessions, but it is difficult to surmise if Paul was excluded, but it seemed to be true. Neither Paul or George Martin were aware that Spector was working on the tapes, until after the fact, and with Paul only minutes away from EMI studios, many argue it was indefensible wasn’t asked to step in – Paul had in early January. Paul commented in the Evening Standard;
“The album was finished a year ago, but a few months ago American record producer Phil Spector was called in by John Lennon to tidy up some of the tracks. But a few weeks ago I was sent a re-mixed version of my song “The Long and Winding Road”…No one had asked me what I thought. I couldn’t believe it. I would never have female voices on a Beatles records. The record came with a note from Allen Klein saying he thought the changes were necessary. I don’t blame Phil Spector for doing it, but it just goes to show that it’s no good me sitting here thinking I’m in control because obviously I’m not. Anyway, I’ve sent Klein a letter asking for some of the things to be altered, but I haven’t received an answer yet.”
Paul’s letter was rather blunt, as seen here.
Paul never did get an answer; but it led to another reason to make the most difficult decision of his life.
Release
It first appeared that John Lennon would have the upper hand, Rolling Stone magazine was still based in San Francisco, when John and Yoko had planned to visit the bay area after some matters in Los Angeles. The documentary Let It Be had been released in May of 1970, and in the interim there was a screening in a San Francisco theatre where Jann, Jane, John and Yoko attended a showing of Let It Be, and it has been reported tears were shed during the ending rooftop gig. Who knows why John was crying, but perhaps it was recognition over what had been lost with his band’s end. Jann invited them to the Rolling Stone offices, then helped moved John and Yoko’s accommodation from a Hilton to a Huntington hotel in Nob Hill. Jann courted John for an interview, and it worked. A tentative agreement was reached. Jann later admitted: “We were a full forum for John and Yoko, anything they said, we printed.”
John wanted to control his media narrative and he saw Rolling Stone as a way to do it, Later that year Jann’s interview was conducted in New York, at the Midtown, Manhattan offices of Allan Klein, although Klein wasn’t present during the infamous interview, it could appear like it was a way for Klein to have some indirect control. Klein did insist on making his own recording of the interview recording for insurance purposes. Lennon poured out everything he wanted to in that interview, and that interview did buoy attention to Rolling Stone and helped their circulation. Something that tends to get missed is that while John didn’t conduct that interview on Heroin, he was going through withdrawals, that may have explained his anger and erratic behavior.
There’s the issue of Jann’s ethics in that situation, it seemed as thought Jann was exploiting the moment without thinking about the impact. Also bear in mind that John and Yoko spent four months with Authur Janov, John was convinced he was able to be more open and candid with his feelings, even if it seemed to scorched earth. John had a history of seeking ‘father figures’ who held the answers, some argue he did it with Brian Epstein and later Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, only to discount them later on.
Regardless, Lennon only agreed to the magazine interview, and in spite of John’s thoughts on the matter, Jann would push his publishing partner Alan Rinzler to work on getting a book deal out of the interview even after publication, Wenner would still press the idea to Lennon In April 1971 while in Britian, to which John told him ‘no’. John developed a regret about his involvement and it circulating further after what was promised.
Jann published the book under the title “Lennon Remembers”, much to John’s frustration. John sent Jann a scathing letter:
“As your company was failing (again), and as a special favor (Two Virgins was the first), I gave you an interview, which was to run one time only, with all rights belonging to me. You saw fit to publish a book of my work, without my consent --, In fact, against my wishes, having told you many times on the phone, and in writing, that I did not want a book, an album or anything made from it.”
Jann misread the situation; he was doused in the illusion he was closer friends to John than he actually was; they would not speak again. Yet the damage was done as far as public perceptions, that interview would help to codify certain impressions of Paul. Years later, after the rest of the band had removed themselves from Klein, Jann received a package in 1974, a Polaroid photo of John with Paul, Linda, May Pang, and Keith Moon, with Lennon holding Paul’s daughter Mary, that was dated “Palm Sunday, 1974 – How do you sleep?” The tables had turned, Jann was being attacked. Even Paul would keep his distance with Jann and Rolling Stone: “We didn’t really wanna hang out with him, we’d make fun of him,” It would be a while before Paul would trust Jann and the magazine. To be fair, Paul did his own interview for Life magazine in 1971 to present his side of the story.
But at the moment, Paul was mired in getting out of the clutches of Klein, at the start of 1971. Paul wanted to sue Klein, but John Eastmen pointed out that Klein was not party to any of the agreements, and had not been involved when they were drafted as far back as 1967, It always came back to the same issue: the only way out was to dissolve the Beatles partnership itself, Paul had to break up the Beatles, as much as this would soon turn into a public relations disaster, to save future millions, it was the best route. “Talk about traumas!” Paul would later say.
Paul’s lawyers started to build the case, while the McCartney album hit the stores. Roughly two years after Klein got involved, the case date came up February 1971 while Paul was working on Ram.
“They called me and Linda back from L.A: John Eastman said, ‘You’ve got to be there every day in court’, But I realized it was make or break. And it was, it really was. The Beatles fortune was on the line. Not just mine, but theirs as well. Which is now how I can look back on it and think, Thank God I did that; If I had not had the nerve to sue them, none of us would have anything now.”
The other three never showed up, but sent affidavits, In John’s affidavits, he denied he tried to pressure Paul to sign with Klein, when he did. Paul’s confidence grew as he could face Klein. Paul’s lawyer, David Hirst, did a masterful job, countless documents were pour through, but one document was damning, when Klein got the royalty advance from EMI of the Beatles, Klein had been entitled to 20 percent of the 7.5 percent increase, but Klein overcharged by 500,000 pounds, and that was the basis, in a letter signed off by the other three in January 1970 that royalties owed to Apple Records be paid to ABKCO, that all earnings on records sold between September 1969 and April 1972, and then after January 1976, be directed to ABKCO, was signed by all three Beatles but never implemented by Capitol, Paul’s lawyer’s didn’t know about this until discovery.
The agreements were done without Paul’s consent, and the judge Stamp, was scathing about Klein in his ruling, arguing Apple was not some Frankenstein set up to control the individual partners. The judge didn’t trust Klein to administer their affairs, so Paul won. A side point, once again, the delays in getting the Beatles 1962-1970 compilations out probably had to do with this. They couldn’t get Klein for what he had done as it wasn’t a crime, but years later in 1979 Klein did go to prison for two months for not declaring income from Apple Promotional records between 1970 until 1972. Most of this related to George’s Concert for Bangla Desh release. It would take another six years to be completely disentangled from Allen Klein until 1977, but Paul was free. But it came at a price, the tensions between the four of them would remain high for a spell. It’s all too common for musician clients to be taken advantage of by managers.
But the pieces were in play for Paul to have to defend himself; to which he did.
All those songs
In spite of the poor reviews for McCarttney, Paul and Linda decided to press forward months later in late 1970. It would be irrational to expect Paul to cease to exist now that he was an Ex-Beatle. The couple left Scotland for New York and secretly audition musicians for what would become Ram (1971), they put out adverts under the guise of session players for advertising jingles, eventually, David Spinozza was brought in on guitar and Denny Seiwell was brought in on drums. Hugh McCracken would also be brought in. Sessions for Ram began in October 1970 and would run until March 1971. There were two songs that seemed related to the Beatles and John Lennon, “Three Legs”, and especially “Too Many People”. For the record, Ram is a fantastic album and "Too Many People" is a great opener, vibrant and interesting. Nothing happens in a vacuum - people don’t just lash out unless something has built up in them to take action. Paul made a full explanation about “Too Many People” in 2021, so here are the points he raised, and then additional points.
“The song was written a year or so after The Beatles breakup, at a time when John was firing missiles with his songs, and one or two of them were quite cruel. I don’t know what he hoped to gain, other than punching me in the face. The whole thing really annoyed me.”
In Fairness, it’s unclear what songs from Plastic Ono Band would account as an actual attack, the first song that mentions Paul in one line is “I Found Out”, a pretty scathing rebuke of many things. The only other song would have been the rebuke in “God”, rejecting The Beatles, and the use of the word ‘Yesterday’, which could have been more general, or a dig that Paul’s song being their most remembered track. The real missiles lobbed were in the notorious “Lennon Remembers”, the Rolling Stone interview conducted by Jann Weiner at the end of 1970. Paul’s first album were mostly instrumentals, experiments, or devotionals to Linda, so technically John fired the first shot.
“I decided to turn my missiles on him too, but I’m not really into that kind of a writer, so it was quite veiled. It was the 1970s equivalent of what we might call a ‘diss track’,,,,but back then it was fairly new ‘genre’. The idea of too many people ‘preaching practices’ was definitely aimed at John telling everyone what they ought to do – telling me, for instance, that I ought to go into business with Allen Klein, I just got fed up with being told what to do, so I wrote this song. ‘You took your lucky break and broke it in two.’ Was me saying basically, ‘You made this break, so good luck with it’. But it was pretty mild. I didn’t really come out with any savagery, and it’s a fairly upbeat song. It doesn’t really sound that vitriolic. If you didn’t know that story, I don’t know that you’d be able to guess at the anger behind the writing.”
Most people read the song as a comment about John’s involvement with Yoko, but another read, in part, is that Paul is directly questioning John’s judgement and blind faith over Allen Klein, that is what lead to John’s over-the-top reaction with “How Do You Sleep?” from Imagine, I have seen from personal experience, people don’t just get wildly defensive unless they feel that they may have wronged the other person, in this case, John’s treatment of Paul in early 1970. Paul further elaborated:
“It was all a bit weird and nasty, and I was basically saying, ‘Let’s be sensible. We had a lot going on for us in The Beatles, and what actually split us up is the business stuff, and that’s pretty pathetic really, so let’s try to be peaceful. Let’s maybe give peace a chance.’”
Outwardly, John was promoting peace, but internally, due to the influence of a bad apple, John was being antagonistic towards the Paul and it must have looked very hypocritical. Unfortunately, Narcissists are very good at cultivating enablers, and having people not see it.
“The thing is, so much of what they held to be true was crap. War is over? Well no, it isn’t. But I get what you’re saying: war is over if you want it to be. So, if enough people want war to be over, it’ll be over. I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but it’s a great sentiment: it’s a nice thing to think and to say. I’d been able to accept Yoko in the studio, sitting on a blanket in front of my amp. “I’d worked hard to come to terms with that. But then when we broke up and everyone was now flailing around, John turned nasty, I don’t really understand why. Maybe because we grew up in Liverpool, where it was always good to get in the first punch of a fight.”
This is just a personal hunch, as I don’t know what was in John’s head or heart, but I suspect John was wildly insecure about the launch of his solo career, in spite of him already putting out a few good singles, he had to take down the McCartney persona. John held the cards at that moment with Klein, and getting the good graces of Rolling Stone magazine to advocate for him for the sake of access. As Paul had noted John was an ‘Maneuvering swine.’ A point even acknowledged by John in his Rolling Stone interview that would be published as Lennon Remembers.
When it
came to picking Klein over Paul wishes, John stated:
“That’s what leaders do…Maneuvering is what it is, let’s not be coy about it. It is a deliberate and thought-out maneuver of how to get a situation the way we want it. That’s how life’s about, isn’t it, is it not?”
Even Jann Wenner would parrot the idea that Paul was consistently hostile towards Yoko, while forgetting that Paul did write the liner notes for Two Virgins. You can see in the Get Back documentary in early 69 that Paul was sympathetic towards John’s love of Yoko. Paul further explained with the bigger picture:
“I had to fight them for my bit of The Beatles and, in fact, for their bit of The Beatles, which many years later they realized and almost thanked me for. Nowadays, people get it, but at the time I think the others felt they were the ones who were victims, who were bring hurt by my actions…. A lot of hurt went down during that period in the early 1970s – them feeling hurt, me feeling hurt – but John being John, he was the one who would write a hurtful song. That was his bag.”
The problem with “How Do You Sleep?” is that while it is a good song, it feels very puerile, and full of a lot of defensive self-projection. Paul has noted that Klein and Yoko were suggesting lyrics, the song was done as a laugh, or like a naughty schoolboy taking down the school master. John’s line “Jump when you momma tell you anything” seems quite odd, Paul lost his mother at 14, like John lost his mother as a teen. Was the line referring to Linda? It was John who was already known, or would become known, for calling Yoko ‘Mother’. His line “You live with straights who tell you - you was king’ is also another odd line, John was just as guilty of being surrounded by sycophants as what he was accusing Paul of. “The one mistake you made was in your head’, that’s pretty obvious a rebuttal to Paul’s ‘You made your first mistake’, but it seems pretty childish and addresses nothing, it doesn’t offer an answer, because on some level John knew he was in the wrong. The most damning line wasn’t ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Another day’, but ‘A pretty face may last a year or two’, because it suggested Paul was just superficial and a light weight, which was very much not true. John hoped Paul staying power wouldn’t last very long - but that was wish fulfillment.
Paul had seen the incongruity of John, a wealthy man lecturing the working class, and man who was both genius - and at times - a fool. John didn’t pursue another reply, perhaps he was too busy with his activism or the move to New York in 1972. A year that would see John’s weakest album “Some Time In New York City” released. That year also saw the rise of another New York band, Steely Dan, and their debut Can’t Buy a Thrill. There would be a kind of poetic karma or justice over the song John and Paul feuds, when Steely Dan recorded “Only A Fool Would Say That”, a rebuttal to “Imagine” that recognized the inherent flaws with their idealism.
That band was signed to ABC Records, they were not associated to Apple Records, they had no obligations to the Beatles, as much as they were massive fans, and they didn’t need to be sycophants, Fagan and Becker could be more cleared eyed when they wrote: “I heard It was You, Talkin’ ‘bout a world were all is free, it just couldn’t be, and only a fool would say that.” The point is, most working-class people will just shrug their shoulders at John’s idealism, he held some nice ideas worth merit, but it’s difficult to talk about peace or equal sharing when one is hardly peaceful themselves. John did change his views about Klein and would even write “Steel and Glass” about him in 1974.
Epilogue
Paul would weather the storm, defeat Allen Klein - and with Wings - move to a highly successful career, and even critical acceptance for the second half of the 70s. John’s solo albums would start getting panned by Rolling Stone starting with Mind Games. George’s solo albums would remain the most interesting and although he suffered the occasional slings. George kept his footing with his late 70s albums and would see a massive revival in the late 80s. After separating with Yoko in late 1973, John would resolve his issues with Yoko, and after an effort by the American Government to deport him for past legal issues. John would prevail and stay in New York. Yoko would become pregnant with Sean Lennon, and John retired from the music scene to raise Sean starting in 1975. John was poised for a comeback in late 1980 with the Double Fantasy album, when a nobody silenced John with several bullets. Paul, George, and Ringo would be affected and haunted by the death for decades. George invited Paul, Linda and Ringo to contribute to “All Those Years Ago” in 1981 Paul would write and release “Here Today” in 1982 – the love never really went away.
As of this writing, The Beatles combined collective net worth is at over 1 billion, Paul’s personal worth is 1.2 billion. The John Lennon estate is estimated at 800 million from sales, streaming, and licensing. The George Harrison estate is estimated at 400 million, and Ringo Starr’s net worth is estimated at 350 million. The faithful Neil Aspinall managed the business of Apple as a corporate entity and set up numerous great deals to benefit the band. The Beatles remain a cultural juggernaut today. Allen Klein’s net worth at the time of his death was around 500 million. Of course this was built on Klein’s companies owning rights to recordings, that he exploited from the hands of others.
Jann
Wenner’s net worth is estimated around 800 million, Jann was able to control
the narrative over how people view classic music artists through Rolling Stone,
and as a co-founder with Ahmet Ertegun of the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame from 1987,
and as a chairman of the Hall of Fame Foundation until he stepped down in 2020,
a man who controlled the narrative for the music buying public with RNRHOF, but
it’s a very mixed legacy as Rolling Stone Magazine has been plagued with
scandals.
John once quipped in the late 1970s that “Time wounds all heels”, and that seems to have borne fruit for certain figures who tried to divide all of them back then, Paul and John reconciled their differences by the mid-seventies. George passed in November of 2001. Paul and Ringo are still very active today at the ripe old age of their mid-eighties. The children of The Beatles and grandchildren will be the beneficiaries of their band’s hard work. The love that was made, the output, was always equal in the end.
Sources
Books: “Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now” by Barry Miles, published by Owl Books / Henry Holt and Comp, © 1997
“The Lyrics” by Paul McCartney, Published by Liveright
Corporation, © 2023 by MPL Communications, Inc
“I Me Mine” by George Harrison and Derek Taylor, Published by Genesis Publications © 1980, reprint © 2002
Online: Vanity Fair: “Jann Wenner, John Lennon and thegreatest Rolling Stone cover ever” by Joe Hagan, September © 2017
Life magazine: "The Ex-Beatle tells his Story" by Richard Merrymen (c) 1971
All comments are welcome!
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