You know the songs by heart. But did you know the stories behind them?
John Lennon and Paul McCartney drew from real life more than most people realize. Some of their most beloved songs were inspired by actual people, a grieving child, a lonely woman, a reclusive meditator, even a sheepdog. Here is a look at the real-life stories behind seven iconic Beatles songs.
“Hey Jude” — Written for a Four-Year-Old Boy
When John Lennon left his wife, Cynthia, for Yoko Ono in 1968, his young son, Julian, was caught in the middle. Paul McCartney, who had been close friends with Cynthia and Julian for years, decided to visit them after the split.
On the drive out to Cynthia’s home in Kenwood, McCartney started writing a song. He wanted to offer comfort to four-year-old Julian. The original lyric was “Hey, Jules,” but McCartney changed it to “Jude” because he felt it sounded better.
Lennon later said he always believed the song was really about him. “I always heard it as a song to me,” he said in an interview. “If you think about it…Yoko’s just come into the picture. He’s saying ‘Hey Jude, hey, John.'”
“Julia” — A Tribute to Two Women at Once
Lennon wrote “Julia” while the Beatles were in India studying transcendental meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He later said the song was an ode to two women at once: his mother, Julia, and Yoko Ono.
“It was sort of a combination of Yoko and my mother blended into one,” Lennon said.
His mother had died at age 44 after being struck by a car. Lennon had a complicated relationship with her; she encouraged him to pursue music during his teenage years, but he reportedly struggled to process her death until he underwent primal scream therapy in the early 1970s. The song’s opening lyric is taken almost directly from a quote by Khalil Gibran in the book Sand and Foam.
“Martha My Dear” — About a Very Good Dog
Not all inspiration comes from human drama. McCartney’s “Martha My Dear” was written about his Old English Sheepdog, Martha. By his own admission, nothing especially profound set it off.
“It’s just a song. It’s me singing to my dog,” McCartney said.
But Martha clearly meant a great deal to him. “Martha was my first ever pet. I never had a dog or a cat at home,” he said. “She was a dear pet of mine.” McCartney also wrote in his book The Lyrics that Martha may have helped him and Lennon grow closer. When Lennon came around and saw McCartney playing with her, he reportedly began to warm up in a way he hadn’t before.
“Dear Prudence” — Knocking on a Meditator’s Door
Also written during the India trip, “Dear Prudence” was inspired by Prudence Farrow, the younger sister of actress Mia Farrow. She had come to the ashram in Rishikesh to study meditation under the Maharishi, but she became so intensely focused that she withdrew almost entirely from the group.
“She went completely mental,” Lennon said at the end of a demo recording of the song. “All the people around her were very worried about the girl because she was going insane. So we sang to her.”
Farrow herself has always told a different story. She says she was not going insane; she was simply more devoted to meditation than the others. “They were all serious about what they were doing, but they just weren’t as fanatical as I,” she recalled. Farrow has said she still practices transcendental meditation.
“She’s Leaving Home” — A Runaway’s Story
A newspaper article caught McCartney’s eye and turned into one of the most moving songs on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The article was about a 17-year-old girl named Melanie Coe, who had run away from home. Pregnant and afraid of her parents’ reaction, she left with a man she had just met and lived with him for a week before returning home. Her story appeared in The Daily Mirror.
“We’d seen a story in the newspaper about a young girl who’d left home and not been found…that was enough to give us a storyline,” McCartney recalled.
There is a remarkable footnote to this story. Years before writing the song, McCartney had actually met Coe in person. She was 13 at the time, a dancer on the TV show Ready Steady Go! The Beatles performed on the show, and McCartney was asked to judge a dance-and-lip-syncing contest. He picked the winner, a girl he would later write a song about without ever knowing it.
“Sexy Sadie” — Lennon’s Falling-Out with a Guru
The Beatles’ trip to India inspired brilliant music, but it also ended on a sour note for Lennon. “Sexy Sadie” was his way of expressing his disillusionment with the Maharishi after hearing rumors that the guru had behaved inappropriately toward Mia Farrow.
“I wouldn’t write ‘Maharishi, what have you done, you made a fool of everyone,’ but now it can be told…that was about the Maharishi,” Lennon said in 1970.
Not every Beatle shared his view. George Harrison flatly denied the rumors. “Someone started the nasty rumor about Maharishi…this whole piece of bullsh*t was invented,” he wrote in Beatles Anthology. McCartney said Lennon had seen the Maharishi making advances toward a woman who resembled Mia Farrow, but had not witnessed any assault. Farrow herself never publicly accused the Maharishi. The band left the ashram on poor terms, regardless, and the trip, whatever really happened there, helped bring Eastern spirituality to mainstream audiences in the West.
“Eleanor Rigby” — A Lonely Neighbor Who Shared Her Stories
McCartney has said that “Eleanor Rigby” (a haunting portrait of loneliness) was partly inspired by a real woman he used to visit as a young man in Liverpool. He would do odd jobs for neighbors and ended up taking a genuine liking to this particular woman.
“I found out that she lived on her own, so I’d go around there to just chat,” McCartney wrote in The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. He wasn’t doing it out of obligation. “Hearing her stories enriched my soul and influenced the songs I would later write,” he said.
A lonely old woman, a child of divorce, a runaway teenager, a devoted meditator, a grieving son, a beloved sheepdog, John and Paul were paying close attention to the world around them. And lucky for us, they wrote it all down.