#hdys

[good-to-drive]

My favorite comments on How Do You Sleep

[tavolgisvist]

Paul on Eat At Home

Nobody was writing simple and easy-to-follow recipe books for meat free home cooking. So, eating in bed was something we both really liked to do. There were a couple of other things we really liked to do, but that’s for another day. It’s a very different take on domesticity from that ‘Bed-In for Peace’ that John and Yoko had in a hotel room in Amsterdam in 1969. Right from the start, he and I were always bouncing off each other when it came to subjects for songs. But the world represented here is certainly much quieter, conducted without the world’s press. You have to remember that Linda and I were newly married, with a baby, and we were desperately trying to escape the hurly-burly and just find time to be a family. We were completely cut off on our farm in Scotland, a place I’d bought a few years before but Linda really fell in love with. So we just made our own fun. We drew a lot. We wrote a lot. We inspired each other. <many beautiful and touching words about lovely life with lovely Linda> From a musical perspective, ‘Eat at Home’ owes much to the example of Buddy Holly, a huge influence on The Beatles when we were growing up and starting to write our own songs. One of the aspects I rather enjoy is that I modified Buddy Holly’s tendency to mimic a speech hesitation by introducing a sheep’s baa into the phrase ‘eat in be-e-e-ed’. I was proud of that!

(Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, 2021)

I know, it's just regular coincidence but it's so funny.

[presidentmckinley]

hey so i didn't really advertise how do you sleep but you guys should read it it's my ongoing assassins fic and it's really long it's almost 8 thousand words so far

chapters 1 and 2 are both up, i just posted 2

[eppysboys]

a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure

[anotherkindofmindpod]

George, who played lead guitar on How Do You Sleep?, tried to mend fences during the October 3 (1971) opening party for the finally completed € 500,000 (S1.200,000) studios in the basement of Apple's Savile Row offices and distanced himself from the song in the process. "It's a bit sad now that Apple is in the position all four of us planned three years ago. l just wish Paul would use the studio if he wants. It's silly not to. I can't see the four of us together again. But I'd like us at least to be friends. We all own this business and it's doing well and I'd like all four of us to enjoy it now."

Asked about How Do You Sleep?, he said, "It doesn't help at all. I'm glad it wasn't about me. I said to John as we were recording it, 'It's pretty hard on him!'”

-McCartney Legacy Vol 1 (2022)

[pwordmccartney]

i can’t get over how insane how do you sleep is if you think about it for more than ten seconds. the grievances that john allegedly has with paul according to the lyrics— making cheesy music and being too conservative (neither of which are really even true ���)— are like diss-track ass grievances. You Suck Haha ass lines. mean for no reason.

HOWEVER you can tell how genuinely hurt and angry john is, from the way he sings it, from the demos, from the line “how do you sleep at night.” some of the more specific lines, like the one about Yesterday, the stuff that’s just straight up mean, have been attributed to klein and yoko. that makes sense, both of them were john’s yes-men at the time and if john was mad at paul, they were gonna back him up on that. but i keep coming back to the demos where john will sing “how do you sleep, babe” or “brother.” both words indicate a DEEP connection and thus a deep hurt. making ““““‘muzak”””””” is not a personal slight to john. neither is being attractive, having death rumors, or……. loving your mother???? all these things are is, in john’s eyes, kind of lame and/or funny.

“how do you sleep at night” is not the kind of thing you say to someone who you think makes corny music. it’s not the kind of thing you say to someone who you think is too square. it IS, however, the kind of thing you say to someone who you feel has betrayed you, who you feel has something to apologize for. my question is simple: what did john consider paul’s great infraction, the thing he hoped paul would lose sleep over, the thing he clearly wanted a resolution to?

[mermaidinthecity]

Boy, you tried to make a mess of me. Tear me down and make me believe. Thank God I didn't fall too deep. Why'd you try to make a mess of me? There was something about the things you said just to try to get into my head. Go lie in that empty bed. Boy, you know now just what you did. So tell me why you're trying so hard, well, just to break my heart? Kept on pulling me in. Thought I would give in. So tell me, tell me, before, tell me, I leave, tell me, how do you sleep?

How Do You Sleep by Orianthi

[tavolgisvist]

I often wonder did John understand someday what he in the end lost the game? He was so proud for his win in it:

But Paul would always give in to his dad. His dad told him to get a job, he fucking dropped the group and started working on the fucking lorries, saying, “I need a steady career.” We couldn’t believe it. So I said to him—my Aunt Mimi reminded me of this the other night—he rang up and said he’d got this job and couldn’t come to the group. So I told him on the phone, “Either come or you’re out.” So he had to make a decision between me and his dad then, and in the end he chose me. But it was a long trip.

(John Lennon, interview with Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld, September, 1971)

And then, after all John's trikcs, two-year refusal to one-on-one meeting and writing, forming a union with Klein against Paul, Paul isolation, HDYS and RS - Paul get back to his family and now not John protects Paul against Jim but Jim protects Paul against John. And Paul allow dad do it.

And I wonder if, did Jim McCartney say to Paul: I told you - or just gave a deep sigh of relief that the instigations of the devil ends?

This Is Not Here Press Conference @ Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY (October 8, 1971).

Reporter: What do you think of Paul, John?

John: I’ve changed, you know, he’s still the closest friend I’ve ever had except for Yoko. So I mean I’m still close to him whatever goes on.

In terms of timeline, the next day was John’s 31st birthday, where I believe we have audio recording of John conducting a nostalgic singalong of Yesterday during the party.

[menlove]

I've seen breakup album polls but songs specifically...

[good-to-drive]

There's something very monkey's paw about Paul trying to provoke John into some kind of mild, deniable reaction just to get a little attention and instead getting the harshest diss track he's ever heard with like half their mutual friends tacitly endorsing it, and also in John playing Paul's action-reaction game like he's in it to win it and ending up looking like some petty instigator Paul had rightfully washed his hands of. With very few tweaks that story could be on the alfred hitchock hour and I would probably think it was incredible.

[tavolgisvist]

'Regardless of his intentions, McCartney would have known that lines such as “When I thought you was my friend/But you let me down/Put my heart around the bend” and “My dog he got three legs/But he can’t run” would be analysed by legions of Beatles-watchers the world over. And he cannot have failed to recognise that the lines would be interpreted as a commentary on his former band.'

They're so funny. Why “When I thought you was my friend/But you let me down/Put my heart around the bend” and “My dog he got three legs/But he can’t run”? Why not “When I thought you was my friend/(When I thought I could call you my friend)/But you let me down put my heart around the bend”?

'Perhaps ironically, Lennon professed a liking for the song, listing it as one of the better recordings on RAM. […]'

Well, maybe Lennon knows what he says?

But I'm not that about.

First, Paul recorded RAM and 3 Legs: 'You can knock me down - with a feather, but you know it's not allowed'

Then John writes his HDYS.

And Paul answers on the question about it: “I think it’s silly. If he was going to do me he could have done me, but he didn’t. That didn’t phase me one bit. ‘You live with straights’. Yeah, so what? Half the f-king world’s straight; I don`t wanna be surrounded by hobnailed boots. I quite like some straight people, I’ve got straight babies. ‘The only thing you did was Yesterday’. That doesn’t bother me. Even if that was the only thing I did, that’s not bad, that’ll do me. But it isn’t, and he bloody knows it isn’t because he’s sat in this very room and watched me do tapes, and he’s dug it.”

Also

John about RAM:

I thought it [Ram] was awful! McCartney was better because at least there were some tunes on it, like Junk*. I liked the beginning of Ram On, the beginning of Uncle Albert and I liked some of My Dog’s Got Three Legs. I liked the little bit about ‘Hands across the water’, but it just tripped off all the time. I didn’t like that a bit!

and Paul about Imagine:

I liked ‘Imagine,’ I didn’t like the others much. But really, there’s so much political shit on at the moment that I tend to play them through once to see if there’s anything I can pinch.

Good boys, lovely.

*It's interesting that he mentioned exactly Junk

[tavolgisvist]

I need more John's comments on RAM

like this

and this

or this

btw, Paul's comment on How Do You Sleep?

Melody Maker interview, November 11th, 1971

(add to this)

1971 / 1990: John makes a case for writing ‘How Do You Sleep’ as self-defence, and implores everyone to listen to 'Too Many People’. Years later, Paul comments wryly. (Note: Unfortunately I haven’t figured out the original source for John’s interview, but I do like how seamlessly the BBC engineers overlay the actual track of 'Too Many People’ with John singing it. You can listen to an alt. copy of John’s clip here which is edited down but doesn’t have an overlay over “You took your lucky break”.) 

JOHN: Oh, hell’s bells. Well I mean, uh – listen to Ram, folks. The lyrics weren’t printed. Just listen to it. I’m answering Ram. We believe that we can’t be wrong… Well, I believe you could possibly be wrong. When I heard Ram, I immediately sat down and— 

YOKO: And then “that was your first mistake.” 

JOHN: That was your first mistake, doo-doo… You took your lucky break and broke it—  Whose lucky break?

…

PAUL: Yeah, we were digging at each other. I mean, I was in a High Court case here, and they were all trying to sell me down the river, you know. I had to actually sue them, and they were telling me I was stalling. “Too many people preaching practices, don’t let them tell you what you want to be.” Yeah. That’s what John and Yoko were doing to the world. “You must be like this, you must be like this.” So I was kind of talking to kids, “You don’t have to listen to them.” 

[presidentmckinley]

Art for my assassins fic! The placement of objects around it was deliberate. Song lyrics are from How Do You Sleep by John Lennon, of course! I couldn’t have written the fic (or titled it) without this lovely diss track

Here it is without the objects (boring)

I made it using brand new art supplies my best friend from school gave me for Christmas. This was a largely experimental piece and it went SO MUCH HARDER than I was expecting it to

anyway. https://open.spotify.com/track/7xsr2OppItxPB4whucYr2G

Chapter III is coming very soon

[passerine2019]

something I like to talk to beatles moots about

if we’re talking about how deep of a cut the insults go, How Do You Sleep? wins. nearly immediately

If we’re talking about song replay-ability and just the quality of it, Too Many People wins. (I have NOT listened to 3 legs don’t kill me)

I can’t in good faith say that there’s a winner between the Paul and John “distracks” because they’re both good in their own special way (but if I had to choose it would be too many people)

[javelinbk]

You ever think about the whiplash that Paul must have suffered while listening to ‘All Things Must Pass’?

Wah-wah, you made me such a big star

“Wait, is this about who I think it is? The little bastard”

Isn’t it a pity, now isn’t it a shame, how we break each other’s hearts and cause each other pain

“But! You just said…!”

(5 minutes later)

“Tell me whaaaat is my liiiiife without your loooove!!!!”

[ohblahdo]

Yeah, I don't know about that. It's like saying, "oh, Too Many People is so mild and vague, John shouldn't have been upset by it" - even if we think that, it doesn't change the fact that John WAS upset by it. I'm sure there are people who could have laughed off HDYS, but Paul doesn't like being criticized, he particularly doesn't like his songwriting ability being criticized, he was sensitive to the fact that all his best friends were allied against him, and he'd already been getting shellacked in the press for two years by the time Imagine was released. So I really don't think he was likely to find "Paul McCartney is a boring, talentless has-been who only writes muzak - co-signed John and George" to be particularly flattering. We can laugh about it now, but I don't think that changes how miserable the experience was for him at the time.

Ok the more I think about How Do You Sleep the more I realize how unharmful it was to Paul. Like now I’m at the point where I believe Paul got off to it. Because the lyrics are so incredibly stupid they don’t really say a single insightful thing about Paul, all the song actually says is that John was still obsessed with him and there’s no way Paul wasn’t lowkey pleased about that lol