

In response, Lennon wrote " How Do You Sleep?" for his album Imagine, an attack at McCartney featuring musical contributions from George Harrison. And 'You took your lucky break', that was considering we had a lucky break to be with him. There were all the bits at the beginning of Ram like 'Too many people going underground'. Aftermath įollowing the release of Ram, John Lennon pointed out several songs that he claimed were attacks at him, among them being "Too Many People". Additional overdubbing occurred in March/April 1971. Most of the overdubbing, including adding brass instruments to the beginning of the song, occurred in January 1971. "Too Many People" was initially recorded on 10 November 1970 in Columbia Studios in New York City. In this version a stereo phaser was used to produce a sound that music journalist Ian Peel describes as coming from a "psychedelic echo chamber." Recording

McCartney also recorded an instrumental version of "Too Many People" that was released on his Thrillington album. According to Vincent Perez Benitez, this strategy "enhance the coherence of the song," in a manner consistent with McCartney's earlier song " Maybe I'm Amazed." "Too Many People" incorporates guitar solos in both the middle and at the end of the song. This allows McCartney to go from the bridge to a repetition of the introduction music as a means of moving the music back to the verses. The introduction to the song as well as the bridge alternate the tonic chord of G major with its minor subdominant chord of C minor. Rolling Stone stated that "Too Many People"'s "incredibly sweet melody is proof that McCartney could use his charm as a weapon when he wanted to." The line "You took your lucky break and broke it in two" was originally "Yoko took your lucky break and broke it in two" but McCartney revised it before recording the song. So that one got to be a thing about them.

It was just a bit the wagging finger, and I was pissed off with it. The whole tenor of the Beatles thing had been, like, to each his own. And I felt we didn't need to be told what to do. I felt John and Yoko were telling everyone what to do. But the first line is about "too many people preaching practices". Like, a piece of cake becomes piss off cake, And it's nothing, it's so harmless really, just little digs. The song begins with the line "piece of cake" (similar in sound to "piss off, cake") later revealed to be a veiled jibe at Lennon: Oh, there was "You took your lucky break and broke it in two". There wasn't anything else on it that was about them.

I mean, that was a little dig at John and Yoko. In one song, I wrote, "Too many people preaching practices", I think is the line. He'd been doing a lot of preaching, and it got up my nose a little bit. I was looking at my second solo album, Ram, the other day and I remember there was one tiny little reference to John in the whole thing. As he himself recalled in an interview with Playboy in 1984: "Too Many People" contains digs at McCartney's former bandmate and songwriting partner John Lennon, as well as his wife Yoko Ono.
