Who was Paul McCartney singing about on ‘Lavatory Lil’?
Life at the very top of the mountain doesn’t come without its critiques, and so, as one of the most famous people in history, Paul McCartney would have surely garnered a fair few enemies in his life.
But rarely has he ever taken to song to blast them. During his time in The Beatles, he took it upon himself to inject constant sunshine into the band’s discography and offset the darker worlds of John Lennon.
It wasn’t until The Beatles broke up at the end of the 1960s that McCartney started to really show his teeth. Lamenting on the toxic fallout between him and Lennon, he acted as one half of a diss-track trade-off for the ages. His upbeat melody for ‘Too Many People’ was paired with a pointed lyrical diatribe that effectively accused Lennon and Yoko Ono of throwing stones from their glass house.
But really, for McCartney, that was as far as his hatred would extend in musical terms. After all, this is the man who proudly professed that “all you need is love”.
But in 2020, something about the isolation of Covid got his blood pressure rising. As part of his record McCartney III, ‘Lavatory Lil’ sees McCartney reflecting on the behaviour of an unnamed woman, whom he warns the listener to steer clear of.
He sings “Look out for Lavatory Lil / (Look out for Lavatory Lil) / You think that she’s a winner /When she’s cooking you your dinner / But she’s really moving in for the kill / Lavatory Lil”.
On a later verse, he upped the vitriolic stakes, singing, “You think she’s being friendly / But she’s looking for a Bentley.”
But who is it about?
McCartney’s song got the rumour mill turning pretty aggressively upon release, with many speculating that the song was inspired by his divorced second wife, Heather Mills. It was speculation he quickly squashed, however, stating, “I wouldn’t want to upset people like that”.
He did continue on to explain the song in Uncut, saying, “To tell you the truth, she was someone we rubbed up against”.
He added, “You get a few of them in life, these people who screw you over. I thought, ‘I’ll have you. I’ll write a song. You 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.’ So I drew up my dislike of this individual and make her into a song character.”
Because it was McCartney, there was some levity on the track. The rather simple, throwback arrangement of blues rock helped lighten the mood of the otherwise pointed track, giving it something of a playfulness which would have undoubtedly softened the blow for the recipient.
To capture that sound, he used an old vintage 1954 Fender Telecaster gifted to him by his wife, Nancy. While that is a nice technical touch for all of the music heads out there, it’s likely another string in the bow of the more salacious arguments out there, claiming the song is, in fact, about Mills.
