How Paul McCartney went back to The Beatles to take shots at a “baddie”
The themes found in The Beatles’ songs vary wildly. From the politically charged tracks on The White Album to the stoned serenades of Sgt Peppers, the Fab Four always mixed it up. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were also unafraid of turning the screw and making things personal when it came to songwriting too.
One such song, ‘Lavatory Lil’, was found on Macca’s 2020 album McCartney III. Explaining the track, McCartney said, “‘Lavatory Lil’ is a parody of someone I didn’t like. Someone I was working with who turned out to be a bit of a baddie. I thought things were great; it turned nasty.”
Writing a song about someone who has pissed you off is a perfect way to dig into the understanding of why it is that they’ve rubbed you the wrong way. McCartney continued, “So I made up the character Lavatory Lil and remembered some of the things that had gone on and put them in the song. I don’t need to be more specific than that. I will never divulge who it was.”
Just a year after saying that, McCartney gave slightly more detail on who the person was without giving any specific names. “To tell you the truth, she was someone we rubbed up against. You get a few of ’em in life, these people who screw you over,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’ll have you. I’ll write a song. You’ll never know it’s about you because I won’t tell anyone. But I’ll know. And people who know who I’m talking about will know.’”
However, shortly later, he claimed that the song was rather about people who wind you up in general instead of being about a specific person. “Lavatory Lil’ is about anybody that you don’t like and that you didn’t get on with, and I think in our lives, we have a lot of people like that. It’s not about anyone in particular, but it is a fictitious character,” he said.”
Interestingly, McCartney found inspiration from one of John Lennon’s songs in the way he toyed with a fictional character. “It harks back to one of John’s old songs, ‘Polythene Pam’, and what you do is you take half an idea of someone, you just make a fiction about what they do and what they’re like, so that was ‘Lavatory Lil’,” he explained.
As for the composition and recording of the track, McCartney noted, “It’s a simple little song, and I love playing it. The vocal was the first take. My missus gave me this beautiful little 1954 Telecaster, which I haven’t played too much until this album, so it gave me a great chance on the lead part of ‘Lil’.”
Listen to Paul McCartney’s barbed Beatles throwback ‘Lavatory Lil’.
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