Did The Beatles create the original diss track in 1968?
Diss tracks are commonplace in popular music nowadays. Most commonly associated with hip-hop, just about anybody with a feud or a bone to pick can lay down a few choice words aimed at someone else in song. For audiences, it’s a fascinating look at airing out dirty laundry in public. But where did the diss track originate? Would you believe it if the answer was actually The Beatles?
While the modern diss track is most closely associated with rap battles and public feuds, artists have long used music as a vehicle for settling scores. What makes ‘Sexy Sadie’ notable is how openly Lennon channelled his frustration into the song, disguising the subject only thinly enough to avoid naming him outright.
You might, because all the elements of a good diss track are present in the band’s 1968 song ‘Sexy Sadie’, famously featured on The White Album. Written as a response to the jilted feelings that John Lennon was experiencing after studying under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India, ‘Sexy Sadie’ was more or less a direct attack with a specific target in mind.
“That was inspired by Maharishi,” Lennon told David Sheff in 1980. “I wrote it when we had our bags packed and were leaving. It was the last piece I wrote before I left India. I just called him ‘Sexy Sadie’ instead of (sings) ‘Maharishi what have you done, you made a fool…’ I was just using the situation to write a song, rather calculatingly but also to express what I felt. I was leaving the Maharishi with a bad taste. You know, it seems that my partings are always not as nice as I’d like them to be.”
At the time, Lennon felt betrayed by someone he had once viewed as a spiritual guide. The disillusionment mirrored a broader shift occurring within The Beatles, who were increasingly questioning the institutions and ideologies they had embraced during the height of the countercultural era.
The reason Lennon felt the need to take the Maharishi down a peg was due to rumours swirling around the Ashram that the Maharishi was having inappropriate relationships with some of the female participants at the retreat. The story was almost certainly a fabrication, concocted by hanger-on Alexis ‘Magic Alex’ Mardas due to Mardas’ jealousy of the influence that the Maharishi had over Lennon.
“Now, historically, there’s the story that something went on that shouldn’t have done – but nothing did,” George Harrison insisted. Harrison was the one who insisted Lennon change the title to ‘Sexy Sadie’, and he later gave a benefit concert for the Maharishi-associated Natural Law Party in 1992. “We were very young,” Harrison added. “It’s probably in the history books that Maharishi ‘tried to attack Mia Farrow’ – but it’s bullshit, total bullshit.”
Regardless of whether the accusations were true, ‘Sexy Sadie’ remains a fascinating example of how personal conflict can be transformed into enduring art. More than half a century later, the song stands not only as one of the strongest tracks on The White Album but also as an early blueprint for the kind of pointed musical criticism that would later become a defining feature of the diss-track tradition.
Check out ‘Sexy Sadie’ down below.
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