Something that gets swept under the rug in discussions about The Beatles is just how absurdly prolific they were. Granted, it makes slightly more sense when you remember they only toured for half their life as a band. It’s also a little less important than “changing the face of pop culture forever”. Still, though, 13 albums in seven years is absolutely bonkers work.
While Lennon, McCartney and Harrison were churning out songs the way Mr Kipling churns out exceedingly good cakes, it’s doubly impressive when you consider just how many of Harrison’s efforts were left on the cutting room floor. With all that in mind, you realise one can only produce that much art by being inspired by absolutely everything they come across.
The stories behind the songs are legend at this point: ‘Yesterday‘ came to McCartney in a dream; ‘A Day in the Life’ came to Lennon after reading about potholes in Lancashire; ‘Taxman’ came to Harrison from his desire to personally murder Harold Wilson. It stands to reason, though, that few things were more inspirational to the band than the people in their lives.
So, after making some truly heartbreaking cuts (‘Something’, ‘Here, There and Everywhere’, ‘Her Majesty’, classics like them), here’s a list of the five best Beatles songs inspired by real people!
‘Sexy Sadie’ – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – The Beatles
The idea that The Beatles’ 1968 self-titled album, otherwise known as The White Album, was the record most inspired by a single event is pretty ludicrous. The majority of their most diverse, divisive and experimental record came from their experiences at a transcendental meditation retreat the band were invited to in Rishikesh, India, arriving as the honoured guests of the man who inspired this Lennon classic, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Now, one would be justified in being a little confused by this. The man was neither A) particularly sexy nor B) named Sadie, so what gives? Especially when you take into account that this is one of Lennon’s more scathing diatribes against the title character. Well, if the rumours are true. Lennon left in a huff at the way the Maharishi was treating the women in their party, which included famous actress Mia Farrow and her sister (more on her later).
Reportedly, Lennon wrote this song after he arrived back in London, and it can’t be a coincidence that the term ‘Sexy Sadie’ has as many syllables and the same ending rhyme as ‘Maharishi’. Turn lines like “Sexy Sadie, you broke the rules” into “Maharishi, you broke the rules / You laid it down for all to see” and “Maharishi, you’ll get yours yet/ However big you think you are”. Spicy.
‘Nowhere Man’ – John Lennon
John Lennon – Yoko Ono – The Beatles – 1969
I may be cheating about this, but I’m also right, and I will never be silenced. Sure, there’s an argument to be made that every song ever written by a human is, by some token, about the person writing it. To them, I would say you’re quite right. However, this absolute classic from Rubber Soul goes one step beyond because the self-analysis isn’t subtext. It’s right there in the text itself.
Famously, ‘Nowhere Man‘ came to Lennon the moment he stopped trying to write. After a fruitless, five-hour writing session, the man gave up. In trying to take a nap afterwards, though, he was carpet-bagged by one of the best songs of the whole 1960s. Some people just have all the luck, right? In frantically scribbling down lyrics describing a “nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land”, Lennon found that he was describing himself.
The mid-1960s were a time of personal turmoil for him, unsatisfied in his songwriting, his marriage and most of all in himself. In reckoning with this in song form, he began to make the changes necessary to develop into the man he was born to be, for better and for worse.
‘She’s Leaving Home’ – Melanie Coe
Melanie Coe
Despite being considered the band’s commercial and critical peak, none of The Beatles’ most famous songs can be found on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This could have been the case had they done the smart thing and put the ‘Penny Lane’/’Strawberry Fields Forever’ double A-side single on it. Yet that would take the focus away from the absolute gems on the record, like the title track, ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and this, one of McCartney’s absolute peaks as a songwriter.
Those in the know are probably aware that ‘She’s Leaving Home’ was inspired by the story of a teenage runaway that McCartney read about in the Daily Mail (I suppose we won’t hold that against him). However, Paul’s classic weepie is not a one-to-one retelling of the story of 17-year-old Melanie Coe. While she did leave home with her boyfriend, despite her parent giving her “everything money could buy”, some aspects of the story were changed or left out for the sake of the song.
Coe’s boyfriend had worked in “the motor trade” previously, but was working as a croupier when Coe left home, as if the flags weren’t scarlet enough. McCartney also left out the deeply depressing ending to the story, where Coe was found after ten days by her family and returned home, where they later also discovered she was pregnant. The said pregnancy would not be carried to term.
‘Dear Prudence’ – Prudence Farrow
Prudence Farrow Burns – American Author
Let’s head back to Rishikesh for another White Album cut inspired by The Fabs’ fateful days in the company of the aforementioned creep, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. As mentioned earlier, The Beatles headed up a posse containing other famous folks like Donovan, Mike Love and, star of Rosemary’s Baby, Mia Farrow. Farrow was also there with her sister Prudence, who took to the meditation practise a little too heartily.
Within a few days, Prudence wouldn’t leave her hotel room, so fixated she was on delving deeper and deeper into her meditation. In an interview with David Sheff conducted much later, Lennon would recall with his typically sardonic sense of humour, “She’d been locked in for three weeks and was trying to reach God quicker than anyone else”. It got to the point that even the Maharishi himself was concerned with the amount of time Prudence was spending in session.
So Lennon, who’d actually struck up something of a friendship with her, took it upon himself to coax her out of her hotel room with a song inviting her “out to play”. At least her passion for it was real, as the moment she arrived back in the United States, she got her teaching licence, and since 1970, has spent her working life teaching transcendental meditation in Florida.
‘Hey Jude’ – Julian Lennon
Julian Lennon – Musician
Arguably, the most famous Beatles song has the most famous story behind it. Maybe inspired by the personal journey of discovery he’d been sent on while writing ‘Nowhere Man’, by 1968, John Lennon had separated from his wife Cynthia due to his affair with artist Yoko Ono. All well and good for him, but his family weren’t so enamoured with his newfound happiness. Not Cynthia and absolutely not his son Julian Lennon, all of five years old at the time.
Truth be told, no one in The Beatles was particularly impressed by Lennon’s behaviour. Cynthia was a close friend of each member of the band and while misogynists the world over will claim it was Yoko the band were pissed with, the truth was it was John. Paul, ever the one to take control in a crisis, took care to visit Julian whenever he could, trying to make sure he was holding up as best he could, which, understandably enough, he wasn’t.
McCartney, as is his way, turned his feelings into music. Writing a song for the young Julian as a message of solidarity and compassion. Initially, the song was titled ‘Hey Jules’, but, with the permission of the involved parties, it was changed to Jude as it was a little easier to sing. Fittingly enough for such a kind move, the song has since gone on to be arguably the defining moment of McCartney’s whole musical career, and it all came from wanting to comfort a five-year-old boy going through a hard time.