The opening song on Paul and Linda McCartney’s 1971 album Ram, ‘Too Many People’ was a barely concealed attack on John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
There were all the bits at the beginning of Ram like ‘Too many people going underground’. Well that was us, Yoko and me. And ‘You took your lucky break’, that was considering we had a lucky break to be with him.
This song was written a year or so after the Beatles breakup, at a time when John was firing missiles at me 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. I decided to turn my missiles on him too, but I’m not really that kind of a writer, so it was quite veiled. It was the 1970s equivalent of what we might today call a ‘diss track’. Songs like this, where you’re calling someone out on their behaviour, are quite commonplace now, but back then it was a 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’ve 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 actually a fairly upbeat song; it doesn’t really sound that vitriolic. If you didn’t know the story, I don’t know that you’d be able to guess at the anger behind its writing.
The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present
For many years Paul McCartney refused to admit the extent of the Lennon-goading contained within Ram.
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. He’d been doing a lot of preaching, and it got up my nose a little bit. In one song, I wrote, “Too many people preaching practices,” I think is the line. I mean, that was a little dig at John and Yoko. There wasn’t anything else on it that was about them. Oh, there was “You took your lucky break and broke it in two.”
Playboy, 1984
Far from containing “one tiny little reference”, ‘Too Many People’, was an attack intended to cause maximum offence to his former bandmate. The song opens with the words “Piss off,” which McCartney eventually admitted was aimed at Lennon.
Piss off, cake. Like, a piece of cake becomes piss off cake, And it’s nothing, it’s so harmless really, just little digs. But the first line is about “too many people preaching practices.” I felt John and Yoko were telling everyone what to do. And I felt we didn’t need to be told what to do. The whole tenor of the Beatles thing had been, like, each to his own. Freedom. Suddenly it was “You should do this.” It was just a bit the wagging finger, and I was pissed off with it. So that one got to be a thing about them.
Mojo, 2001
Lennon’s response was the even more bitter ‘How Do You Sleep?’ on the Imagine album. Mutually-aimed barbs were launched by the two men in the press throughout much of 1971, although the antagonism waned in subsequent years.
The song was first recorded in Columbia Studios in New York City on 10 November 1970. Overdubs were added in January the following year at A&R Studios in NYC, including some brass during the early part of the song. More overdubs were recorded at Sound Recorders Studios in Los Angeles in March/April 1971.
‘Too Many People’ was the b-side of the US-only single ‘Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey’, released in the US only on 2 August 1971.
Seriously?, why so much insisting on how vitriolic the song is?. How do you sleep is way more vitriolic and I’m sure John knew that well. Also I don’t think Paul “refused” to admit the digs at John, I don’t remember him being asked. In the Playboy interview in 1984 he actually volunteered the information. And I seem to remember he says the “YOU took your lucky break and broke it in two”, not “Yoko”. I mean in the interview, not just the song.
There seem to be two different versions of the interview quote floating around the internet, one version has him saying “Yoko took your lucky break” and the other has him saying “You took your lucky break” like he does in the song itself.
My guess is he did say ‘Yoko’ in the original interview but people corrected the ‘Yoko’ bit assuming he said the same thing he says in the song. But if anyone has the actual interview or scans of it and can confirm one way or the other, I’d be interested.
Playboy Interview with Paul and Linda McCartney: http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1984.pmpb.beatles.html
….the fact remains, if it weren’t for Yoko Ono, none of this would have happened…the egos of both of them became bruised, and 2 big egos are hard to bring back to earth sometimes….but they clearly cared about each other, otherwise they wouldn’t have been capable of hurting each other so successfully…if you don’t love someone, they can’t touch you…Yoko was the cancer, that’s just the way it goes sometimes
It really looks like a money issue to me. Paul has always claimed he wrote songs that John got half the credit for while he wrote half the songs John actually wrote. Paul never wrote a hit song until Yesterday. That’s when the troubles began not with Yoko. Hey Jude , Get Back, and Let it be was the beginning of the end. Paul is writing Hello Goodbye and John writes I am the Walrus then John tries to smooth it over with Glass Onion- the Walrus was Paul. At the same time Apple was being formed and the money squabble got worse. George grew up across the street from Paul. Paul pushed George to John to bring George into the Beatles. George was a spiritual person and not materialistic like Paul. When Geaorge was asked if the Beatles would ever play together again he said he would play with Ringo and John but never with Paul. It speaks volumes that George willingly played on Johns response to Paul “How Do You Sleep”. Paul just got greedy and Yoko got the blame.
First of all, I agree that more that what Paul will admit from Ram is about settling scores with the others. I also really dig this song. I am also not one who ascribes the blame to the breakup to Yoko, although I do believe she had a hand in the why, as John’s devotion to her and her artistic outlook moved him away from the others.
However, after reading another statement like this – “Paul never wrote a hit song until Yesterday” – I feel a reply is in order.
Yesterday came out in the summer of 1965, and was recorded that June. Prior to that, Paul either wrote or co-wrote (and by co-wrote I mean actually contributed a large amount to the song) a large number of hits, including Love Me Do, I Saw Her Standing There, All My Loving, From Me To You, She Loves You, I Want To Hold Your Hand, Can’t Buy Me Love, Eight Days A Week and I Wanna Be Your Man (a hit for the Stones). He also wrote or co-wrote a lot of very fine songs that, while not hits, were very good songs that were released as B-sides or album cuts, such as Thank You Girl, She’s A Woman, And I Love Her, Things We Said Today and Baby’s In Black, to name but a few.
Also, George did not grow up “across the street” from Paul. They met because they took the same city bus to school every day. And George was every bit as materialistic as the others (ever see Friar Park?). As to why George was playing with John and not Paul, much of that has to do with the divide immediately after the split. Move away from it a few more years (after the “lost weekend”), and the collaboration ended.
It is possible to be able to not blame Yoko and still understand that it wasn’t any one other person’s fault.
Dave, there is so much rubbish and inaccuracies in your post it makes my head spin.
I’ll leave it at this: You’re entitled to your OPINIONS, however baseless they may be.
Paul was not greedy at all. He left because The Beatles became all about materializing and getting money; not making music. He’s an artist and wanted to create music. Also, George and him did not live across the street from each other and George was materialistic like the majority of them. Paul was the leader of the Beatles and saw them as family, but knew they were breaking apart. John announced he was leaving but Paul finally decided to leave before John did and created tension and resentment. The only reason the other members hated Ram wasn’t because it was an awful record (in my opinion, I think it’s one of the greatest albums of all time), it was because they were extremely angry and hurt Paul left.
Dave, Paul had not written a #1 Hit until “Yesterday”? Which came out in 1965. You been drinking to much of Johans (Lennon Freak) kool-aide. Go back and look up Beatle #1 Hits – “From Me To You” (Written by Both), “She Loves You” (Written by Both), & “I Want To Your Hand” (Written by Both) were #1 Hits in 1963 – “Love Me Do” (Written by McCartney), “Can’t Buy Love” (Written by McCartney) and “Eight Days A Week” (Written by Both) were #1 Hit in 1964.
And then there was “Yesterday” (McCartney) which was a #1 Hit in 1965.
After, the Song “Yesterday” – there was Songs All #1 Hits –
1) “We Can Work It Out” (Written Mostly by McCartney)
2) “Paperback (Written by McCartney)
3) “Yellow Submarine” (Written by McCartney)
4) “Eleanor Rigby” (Written by McCartney)
5) “Penny Lane” (Written by McCartney)
6) “Hello, Goodbye” (Written by McCartney)
7) “Lady Madonna” (Written by McCartney)
8) “Hey Jude” (Written by McCartney)
9) “Get Back” (Written by McCartney)
10) “Let It Be” (Written by McCartney)
11) “The Long And Winding Road” (Written by McCartney)
George was materialistic more so then Paul. George bought Friar Park compare it to Paul home at St. John”s Wood. George use to do Formula One Racing.
There’s no question that Paul was still thinking about The Beatles and all that jazz in his first two albums. In this song, for all we know, Paul and John had a convo about “lucky breaks” in the entertainment industry and Paul just made a dig at John. No hard feelings. But when you’re in the biggest band in the world and everyone listens to your music, you can’t blame John for taking it to heart. Still a great tune to listen…
I think Paul drifted into revisionist history in the Mojo interview. “Piss off, cake”? What does that even mean? No matter how many times I listen, I can’t MAKE it sound like “piss, even if I try.
FWIW, I can’t hear that either. To me, it sounds clearly like PEEECE of cake.
I always interpreted “piece of cake” as Paul saying “this solo career is going to be easy without you John” Piss off cake makes no sense at all. I agree it seems Paul rewrote history on that line.
One of his best solo songs regardless of lyrical interpretation.
Who played the blistering guitar solo at the end?
Just trying to confirm who’s playing the guitar solo on Too Many People,
Hugh McCracken or Paul McCartney. No one seems to agree.
That’s Hugh McKracken playing the awesome solo.
Even the album title RAM suggests Paul is hitting/ramming John and Yoko with a new album by Paul and Linda McCartney.
Too Many People is a great song. Loved it since I was 5 years old listening to my sisters 7” 45 in 1971.