Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner had a bitter falling out with John Lennon, and the Beatle got the last word with a mysterious letter.
According to Joe Hagan’s forthcoming Wenner biography, “Sticky Fingers,” excerpted in Vanity Fair: “In 1974, Wenner received a mysterious cream-colored envelope in the mail, care of ‘Johann Weiner’ . . . Inside was a single Polaroid picture of John Lennon and Paul McCartney hanging out on a garden patio with friends: Linda McCartney, hoisting a pool stick; Keith Moon, in shorts and Roman sandals; and May Pang, Lennon’s then-lover, holding the McCartneys’ daughter Mary on her lap. On the white strip below the image, dated ‘Palm Sunday 1974,’ was the message ‘How do you sleep???!!!’”
The line is the title of a 1971 Lennon song attacking McCartney.
But “now the message was being repurposed to attack [Wenner]. Wenner said he never understood the precise meaning of the picture, but it was obvious it was a bitter joke from the Beatle he had betrayed.”
Lennon accused Wenner of crossing him by publishing an interview without permission in a book.