Tag: How Do You Sleep?

My Favorite John Lennon songs

Since I listed George’s songs…I have to finish what I started. This one is the hardest to write of any of them because I’m leaving off a lot of great songs. 

John is the Beatle I favor; on the surface, the reasons are many. The man’s voice was one of the best rock voices I’ve ever heard. I preferred his voice to that of McCartney, Harrison, and Starr. He probably could write better pure rock songs than the other Beatles, and he also had a great sense of melody that could keep up with Paul and, at times, surpass him on ballads. Yes, he could be witty, sharp, and downright hateful at times, but he was the truth guy for them. 

One of the worst days in my teen years was December 9, 1980. I was 13, and that morning I found out that John Lennon was murdered on the 8th. It really hit me hard and changed me in many ways. At that age, this showed me that the world could be an awful place.

When John was murdered, a very unfair thing happened. John was elevated almost as a Saint, which he would have readily admitted he was not. Paul became the sidekick and sank lower in people’s perception of the band. John became the cool one and Paul the square, which was totally unfair to both of them. It didn’t start changing until the Anthology came out in the mid-90s. People started to see Paul as an equal, which he was, and George started to get recognized more and more, as I said last week. And, most people loved Ringo anyway. 

My favorite John songs won’t include The Beatles, as I explained last week in the George Harrison post. This will be just solo John. My favorite albums by him were the first two official albums he released. Plastic Ono Band and Imagine. His Mind Games and Steel and Glass albums are great as well, but he had an edge on those first two that he didn’t have on the rest.

  1. Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) – This song is so damn fresh-sounding. It sounds like it was recorded yesterday. It’s so electric-sounding and live. 

2. Working Class Hero – This song was a favorite of mine of John Lennon when I was younger. He took some flak about this one, and also the song Imagine.  When it came to being a Working Class Hero and having all of his possessions. His answer was

“What would you suggest I do? Give everything away and walk the streets? The Buddhist says, “Get rid of the possessions of the mind.” Walking away from all the money would not accomplish that. It’s like the Beatles. I couldn’t walk away from the Beatles. That’s one possession that’s still tagging along, right?”

3. Mind Games – This is around the time Lennon started to mellow out a bit musically and personally. I bought this single in 1979…6 years after it was released. 

4. I Know (I Know) – Yep…this one is not as well known, but it was reportedly about either Yoko or Paul. It was released on the 1973 album Mind Games. 

5. GOD – He pours out his feelings on the Beatles and everything else. 

6. Watching the Wheels – When listening to Double Fantasy, I like it, but not as well as his early seventies output. This one, though, fits in nicely with his best songs. 

7. Jealous Guy – He wrote this melody with the Beatles, but later added some more words to describe himself. 

8. How? – What makes “How?” stand out for me is its vulnerability. Lennon doesn’t pretend to know the answers; instead, he shares the questions most of us keep to ourselves. That honesty is what drew me to music in the first place.

9. Nobody Told Me – This one he wanted Ringo to do and had planned to give it to him. I think Ringo would have done a great job of it but I’m glad we have John’s version. 

10. Mother – It seems John was looking for a mother for all of his life. His real mother left him with his aunt Mimi, and years later, when he finally started to get to know his mother, she was killed in a hit-and-run accident. 

*Bonus! – How Do You Sleep? – It’s the song about Paul when both were angry at each other. Forget that for a minute…it’s a great melody and song on its own. It’s a brilliant piece of rock and roll with George’s snarling slide guitar and an irresistible groove, but its venom can be hard to swallow. Lennon’s line “The sound you make is muzak to my ears” still makes me wince. 

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John Lennon – How Do You Sleep?

How Do You Sleep? is very powerful…but you do feel for Paul McCartney. Paul did have lyrics on the Ram album about John and Yoko but you had to look for them. In this song…there is no looking…even the average fan would know exactly who he was singing about. To me, the most vicious line is The sound you make is muzak to my ears. 

The song is on the album Imagine. This John Lennon song is direct and to the point. His feud with Paul was in the papers and after what John took as lyrics aimed at him and Yoko from Paul’s album Ram…it culminated with this song.

John has said that “How Do You Sleep” was like one of Dylan’s nasty songs and mentioned, “Like a Rolling Stone.” The big difference though was that Bob veiled the identity of his target. This song was vicious but not as vicious as it could have been if Ringo and other musicians hadn’t intervened.

Yoko and Allen Klein were feeding some lines about Paul to John during the recording. Ringo was upset with the content and simply said: “That’s enough, John”. Alan White ended up playing the drums on the track.

This song can be hard to listen to as a Beatle fan but it is a catchy dark gritty pointed song. I have always liked it. George Harrison’s slide guitar cuts through and doesn’t have the sweet sound he uses for his songs. It also shows you where George was at the time with Paul. This is not John’s best song by any measure but the music has an intensity about it and is very powerful. It’s ironic, but even without Paul being there he helped pull it out of John.

Paul did later admit that a few lyrics on “Ram” were pointed at John and Yoko but John, never one to hint…went for the throat. He would later soften and say the song was more about himself than Paul.

John and Paul would later repair the relationship…never to the point of working together again but on a friendly basis. They would keep in touch over the years by talking on the phone, in letters, and face to face at times.

John Lennon: “It’s not about Paul, it’s about me. I’m really attacking myself. But I regret the association, well, what’s to regret? He lived through it. The only thing that matters is how he and I feel about these things and not what the writer or commentator thinks about it. Him and me are okay.”

John Lennon: “You know, I wasn’t really feeling that vicious at the time,” “But I was using my resentment toward Paul to create a song, let’s put it that way. He saw that it pointedly refers to him, and people kept hounding him about it. But, you know, there were a few digs on his album before mine. He’s so obscure other people didn’t notice them, but I heard them. I thought, well, I’m not obscure, I just get right down to the nitty-gritty. So he’d done it his way and I did it mine.

Paul McCartney: “You hear the stories from various angles and apparently people who were in the room when John was writing that, he was getting suggestions for the lyrics off Allan Klein,” he said. “So, you see the atmosphere of ‘Let’s get Paul. Let’s nail him in a song…’ And those things were pretty hurtful.”

How Do You Sleep

So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise
You better see right through that mother’s eyes
Those freaks was right when they said you was dead
The one mistake you made was in your head

Ah, how do you sleep
Ah, how do you sleep at night

You live with straights who tell you, you was king
Jump when your momma tell you anything
The only thing you done was yesterday
And since you’re gone you’re just another day

Ah, how do you sleep
Ah, how do you sleep at night

Ah, how do you sleep
Ah, how do you sleep at night

A pretty face may last a year or two
But pretty soon they’ll see what you can do
The sound you make is muzak to my ears
You must have learned something in all those years

Ah, how do you sleep
Ah, how do you sleep at night