Which Beatles lyrics were actually written about real people?
As chequered and eclectically mosaic as their celebrated album whirlwind, The Beatles also boasted a lyrical body of work that explored many a howling confessional, surrealist transport, or novelty throwaway amid the Fab Four’s songbook.
It’s easy enough to tell a Paul McCartney number from a John Lennon cut, amid the smattering of George Harrison pieces that began to give the principal songwriting duo a run for their money by the band’s close. Aside from the lead vocals’ dead giveaways, but even a Beatles layman understands each member’s lyrical character.
There’s truth to Lennon’s standing as the radical, sonically hurtling toward much of the band’s most lysergically far-out numbers, and possessing a sharper, acidic edge, but there’s always been an unfair perception that McCartney was merely the whimsical counter to Lennon’s raw songwriting pen.
It was McCartney who introduced the quartet to the theories of Stockhausen or John Cage, and eagerly pushed the sonic innovations on the likes of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. McCartney indeed harboured a love for the sentimental, however, embracing the twee end of his music hall fancy to the patience-thinning chagrin of his band members. Ever the dark horse, Harrison would offer many a love song that points could also point toward an affirmation of the divine as much as his sweet heart girl, especially after the turn toward Hindu spirituality.
The Beatles’ oeuvre is littered with a whole host of fictional characters that draw from real life. ‘Lovely Rita’ was reportedly inspired by a meter maid, Meta Davies, who issued McCartney a parking ticket outside EMI Studios, the infamous Bungalow Bill, who “went out tiger hunting with his elephant and gun,” a mockery of Richard A Cooke III, the wealthy son of an American entrepreneur who took time out of his daily meditation to go animal shooting. Even ‘Eleanor Rigby’s lonely wanderer was discovered to have a grave in Liverpool’s Woolton area, as well as a ‘Mr’ McKenzie, buried nearby too.
Yet, The Beatles would also draw their lyrical attention to the people of their lives, both past and present, in their work.
So, which Beatles lyrics were written about real people?
It’s impossible to collate a definitive list, with many songs nebulously skirting around semi-obscured identities or artful monikers, such as the JoJo referenced on ‘Get Back’, often thought to be a dig at Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono.
Ono naturally plays a massive presence in Lennon’s work from 1968, often literally featured in the likes of ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ and ‘Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey’, or proving a more poetic presence on ‘Julia’—despite primarily written for his mother—and ‘Don’t Let Me Down’. All the various partners have numbers written in their honour, Harrison’s ‘Something’ an immortal love song for Pattie Boyd, and a string of McCartney pieces devoted to Jane Asher before his eventual wife and future Winger, Linda Eastman, ‘All My Loving’, and ‘Two of Us’ just some of the myriad respective cuts doled out to his two lovers.
Elsewhere, ‘She Said She Said’ is a direct reference to Easy Rider actor Peter Fonda bringing the mood down during an acid trip, declaring he “knows what it’s like to be dead”, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi found himself the inspiration for both the fantastical ‘The Fool on the Hill’ as well as the acidic ‘Sexy Sadie’, and the shy Prudence from the double album’s sunny cut is in fact Mia Farrow’s sister. It’s hard to keep up, but the sweet tooth behind ‘Savoy Truffle’ is Cream guitarist Eric Clapton, Queen Elizabeth II gets a nod on Abbey Road’s ‘Her Majesty’, and the psychedelic ringmaster at the centre of ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!’ was a real 19th-century circus performer, William Kite.
Most pertinent in The Beatles’ character gallery is perhaps McCartney’s ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Let it Be’ twofer, respectively a consolation to Lennon’s eldest son Julian during the messy breakdown of his parents’ marriage, and the Mother Mary both a wryly affectionate reach to the Bible’s matriarch as well as his own mother who died when he was a boy.
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