“You can wear a mask and paint your face
You can call yourself the human race
You can wear a collar and a tie
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside”
John Lennon: Crippled Inside from the Album, Imagine
When you look at the personalities and follow the chronology the break-up of The Beatles was inevitable. Because unlike any other group of the time they were the “eggheads” - three of them, anyways. And recording was, more than jot, a search for answers as much as it was a sojourn for musical excellence and experimentation. The Rolling Stones dabbled with the mystic and other themes but after Brian Jones left they drew away from blues and experimentation to being a full-tilt rock band.
McCartney started recording on his own, but for vain reasons. In interviews you could see that it wasn’t vanity that drove him. He wanted to perform again and just couldn’t make his new music in a Beatles surrounding in which the songs were never played live. Harrison was on the edge as well, immersed in eastern religion and music. Lennon had Yoko Ono and a new life as well as music. And Ringo just wanted the Beatles thing to continue.
However, when McCartney released his second album Ram, Lennon followed behind shortly with Imagine and a few jabs at his former writing and singing partner. Besides lampooning McCartney’s handling of a real ram on the record jacket (Lennon held a pig), How Do Your Sleep was a direct jab at him. Some say this was for the picture of the copulating beetles on the jacket and others say Lennon was made about McCartney’s song Too Many People, which it is said he took a shot at Lennon.
The song, Crippled Inside, was thought to be a rebuttal to Too Many People but the lyric point to a civil rights tune and about people who say they are for equality but don’t feel that way. It probably contained some inflections which were spawned by his estrangement from the other Beatles but, remember, Lennon estranged himself from everyone he knew in the past, friends and family included. He was no longer a Beatle and he was no longer and Englishman.
So both albums were partly a knee-jerk reaction to the split of The Beatles and were mildly successful compared Harrison and Starr’s releases, although Lennon’s song Imagine was a huge hit. It wasn’t until Ringo ran out of steam in a couple of years that his sales overcome by the other three.