Over the tip of the Esher demo of “Dear Prudence,” John Lennon could be heard explaining the origin of the tune: “No one was to know that sooner or later she was to go completely berserk under the care of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. All the people around her were very worried about the girl because she was going insane. So we sang to her.” The woman in query was Prudence Farrow, the 19-year-old sister of American actress Mia Farrow. In the course of the keep, Prudence had locked herself away in her hut on the ashram in Rishikesh, India, the place she and her sister had been finding out Transcendental Meditation alongside The Beatles, Donovan, The Seaside Boys’ Mike Love, and others. She was meditating far longer than anyone else, and the others had been starting to fret about her way of thinking.
“Prudence Farrow got an attack of the horrors, paranoia, what you’d call these days an identity crisis, and wouldn’t come out,” Paul McCartney recalled. “We all got a bit worried about her so we went up there and knocked. ‘Hi, Prudence, we all love you. You’re wonderful!’ But nobody could persuade her out. So John wrote ‘Dear Prudence, won’t you come out and play…’.”
‘If she’d been within the West they’d have put her away’
John advised Playboy journal, “Mia Farrow’s sister, who seemed to go slightly balmy, meditating too long, wouldn’t come out of the little hut we were living in. They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us. She went completely mental. If she’d been in the West they would have put her away. We got her out of the house. She’d been locked in for three weeks and wouldn’t come out, trying to reach God quicker than anybody else.”
For “Dear Prudence,” John deployed a fingerpicking model he’d realized in India below instruction from Donovan, a talented people musician who had studied below the likes of Bert Jansch and Davey Graham. Donovan recalled that John was a diligent pupil: “It’s a difficult style that requires perseverance. When John had it down he was so pleased to find a whole new way of songwriting emerge. That’s what happens to a natural songwriter when you get a new set of performing skills. He immediately wrote ‘Dear Prudence’ and ‘Julia’.”
Again in England, The Beatles (minus Ringo, who was in self-imposed exile on Peter Sellers’ yacht within the Mediterranean) moved to Trident Studios in London’s Soho, the place that they had already recorded the grasp model of “Hey Jude,” and it was right here that they assembled “Dear Prudence” throughout August 28-30, 1968.
‘It was a beautiful thing to have done’
Although the ultimate model was labeled “Take 1”, that may be a somewhat deceptive title, because the preliminary backing of John and George on guitars and Paul on drums was recorded many occasions, however, in contrast to at Abbey Street the place all the things was saved, at Trident, it might seem that the trio merely recorded a brand new take over the earlier one.
As soon as the backing – John and George on guitars, Paul on drums – was full, numerous additional tracks had been overdubbed, as they loved the posh afforded by Trident’s eight-track facility. Paul added bass guitar and piano, whereas John laid down double-tracked vocals. John, Paul, and George had been assisted in a observe of vocals, handclaps, and tambourines by roadie Mal Evans, Apple Data recording artist Jackie Lomax, and John McCartney, Paul’s visiting cousin, who additionally sang on the backing observe. Paul even threw in a number of notes on the flugelhorn for good measure, drawing on the expertise of his transient teenage dalliance with the trumpet. The finished observe would turn out to be some of the memorable moments on “The White Album”, a lot imitated however by no means bettered.
As for the tune’s inspiration, Prudence herself claimed to don’t have any reminiscence of listening to it throughout her time in India: “George was the one who told me about it. At the end of the course, just as they were leaving, he mentioned that they had written a song about me but I didn’t hear it until it came out on the album. I was flattered. It was a beautiful thing to have done.”
Store for The Beatles’s music on vinyl or CD now.
