Paul – lead
vocals, piano, bass, possibly tambourine
John – harmony and backing vocals, lead guitar
George – harmony and backing vocals, lead guitar
Ringo – drums
Session musicians – two baritone saxophones, two tenor
saxophones
With ‘Lady Madonna’, the Beatles revisited ground they had not covered since mid-1966. The release of an out-and-out R&B style single showed a desire to return to their roots, although Ringo commented at the time, “It’s not a backwards step, it’s just another type of song from the Beatles.” In fact, the record was a temporary, but understandable skip away from both the psychedelia of Pepper and the relative simplicity of the previous two singles, with the blues influence evident for the first time since Revolver. Hunter Davies went so far as to describe the song as “mock-rock”, a satirical look back at the Beatles’ music of 1963.
This examination of popular music’s recent past was reinforced by the release in early 1968 of songs such as Don Partridge’s skiffle throw-back ‘Rosie’, and by the subsequent re-release of Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around The Clock’ and Buddy Holly’s ‘Peggy Sue’/‘Rave On’, both of which charted in April 1968. That summer, the Rolling Stones released their back-to-roots ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, electing not to stray far from the style for the rest of their career. While the Beach Boys’ August number one single reflected “Well, I’ve been thinking ’bout all the places we’ve surfed and danced and all the faces we’ve missed, so let’s get back together and Do It Again”.
As for ‘Lady Madonna’, the tenor of the distinctive introduction was apparently partly inspired by the Rolling Stones’ hit from the previous year, ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’, but more so by a 1956 hit from the Humphrey Lyttelton Band called ‘Bad Penny Blues’ (which was also released on Parlophone, although not produced by George Martin). Paul had also seen Fats Domino in concert in New Orleans, which also helped in the early stages to form the tone of the song. (Fats Domino immediately recognised Paul’s tribute and recorded his own version of ‘Lady Madonna’, which was released on his 1968 album Fats Is Back.) The Beatles were continuing to move towards a piano-based sound, with the guitar licks of ‘I Feel Fine’ and ‘Day Tripper’ giving way to ‘Hey Bulldog’ and ‘Hey Jude’. While Paul’s ‘Lady Madonna’ riff does not have the beautiful simplicity and raw power of, for example, the symmetrical introduction to ‘Hey Bulldog’, it is stark, instant and captivating.
“‘Lady Madonna’ was me sitting down at the piano trying to write a bluesy boogie-woogie thing. I got my left hand doing an arpeggio thing with the chord, an ascending boogie-woogie left hand, then a descending right hand. I always liked that, the juxtaposition of a line going down meeting a line going up. That was basically what it was. It reminded me of Fats Domino for some reason, so I started singing a Fats Domino impression. It took my voice to a very odd place.”
The song also has a second, simpler, but equally chromatic riff – a walking bluesy ‘Hey Bulldog’-style motif in counterpoint, in which both the guitars and saxophones rejoice.
The rich sequence of flattened thirds, sixths and sevenths, also picked on by the bass in its march up and down the scales, combined with the marvellously syncopated rhythm, produce a single of great character and charm. This sequence, a repeated A–D (I–IV) until the final F–G–A (bVI–bVII–I), underpins the whole song. The middle eight moves into the key of C, flirting with Dm–G (ii–V), before resolving beautifully with the fabulous C–Bm7–E7sus4–E7 (I–vii7–III7sus4–III7; in A: bIII–ii7–V7sus4–V7), this fleeting appearance of the dominant, E, making us realise we have been missing it all along.
The semitone slide from C to Bm before the resolution involving two fifth descents, to E7 and to A, with the internal E7 sus4–E7 move itself including a semitone slide from A to G#, is quite simply masterful.
Also notable in the bridge is the relentless descent of the bass line – stepping down a fearless twelve notes from D through to G, with just a single registral break after the first bar.
The song’s structure and direction, although in many ways following on from ‘Hello, Goodbye’, give it its own unique character. The ascending riff, reinforced by the bass, gives an optimistic glow to the verse. This is reversed when realism is injected, setting off an unremitting downward climb from bass and piano, as the days are reeled off, cataloguing week after week of getting by and making do. Paul’s days-of-the-week lyric looks back to the “Wednesday morning…” of ‘She’s Leaving Home’, and forward to the “Sunday’s on the phone to Monday” of ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’ (which again uses the Dm chord to pivot from A to C for the bridge). The songs form a neat trilogy of the diaries of three entirely different women.
John told Playboy that he felt he may have had a hand at helping Paul to write the song, but in any case did not rate the lyric very highly. However, on the evidence of the lyric’s structure and content, we can guess that John’s help on this song was minimal. Paul, adept at constructing scenarios with a strong cast and memorable plot, conjures up the life of a woman, or womankind as he sees it, in a series of dazzling images and similes. Her string of children, all ages and all types, have one thing in common – the need of their mother.
The inspiration for the title of the song is said to come from a photograph in National Geographic of a Malaysian woman, captioned “Mountain Madonna: with one child at her breast and another laughing into her face, sees her quality of life threatened.” But Paul’s view of women, as Barry Miles points out in Paul’s official Beatlesong biography, Many Years From Now, stems from his post-war northern working-class roots. The matriarchal society that typified the north-west of England in particular at that time bred strong, dedicated, no-nonsense wives and mothers with an uncomplicated attitude to life and sex and the whole damn thing.
“The people I was brought up amongst were often Catholic; there are lots of Catholics in Liverpool because of the Irish connection and they are often religious. When they have a baby I think they see a big connection between themselves and the Virgin Mary with her baby. So the original concept was the Virgin Mary but it quickly became symbolic of every woman; the Madonna image but as applied to ordinary working class woman. It’s really a tribute to the mother figure, it’s a tribute to women.”
And so, as with ‘Let It Be’, but with a much lighter touch, Paul contrasts the religion and the sin – the guilty creeping after a Saturday night (a day pointedly not mentioned in the song) is likened to the stealthy progress of a nun. The impersonal “lying on the bed” while she distracts herself with music, strongly suggests that things are going on in her bed that she really would like no part of. Paul felt that to say ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ was about prostitution was going too far, but his writing here does seem to say that this is one aspect of his fallen Madonna. He still has time for a pun, of course, borrowing a line from ‘I Am The Walrus’ to show her exasperation with the runs in her stockings.
Although John liked the piano lick, he was also dismissive of the song because it “never really went anywhere.” This criticism seems unfair to say the least, because not only does the song feature those exceptionally accomplished moves in and out of the bridge, but it builds evenly and well, and has a number of amusing musical touches, notably the vocal brass interlude. For this, Paul, John and George gathered round a microphone and cupped their hands mute-like over their mouths and delivered the nasal “pah, pah, pah, pah”. This also covers the final verse, giving it a build similar to the end of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or ‘She’s Leaving Home’. The sound created by this audacious overdub, that of a thirties dance band, adds to the aspect of contemplating an earlier time. Also the sound of the baby grand piano itself, recorded on a cheap microphone with limiting and compression, gives an air of modern nostalgia.
The group were scheduled to fly out to India in mid-February and had decided to record a single for release while they were away. So the recording of the song was relatively quick, but nevertheless a lot more involved than its back-to-basics nature would suggest. In the afternoon of 3 February, a rhythm track of piano and drums was taped, with Ringo using brushes instead of sticks. Take 3 was deemed best, and that evening, fuzz-toned guitars, drums marking the off-beat, bass and vocals were overdubbed. Three days later the recording was completed – Ringo was absent for this session, as he was guesting on The Cilla Black Show, broadcast live at 8 pm that evening. John, Paul and George recorded the vocal brass section, with handclaps and tambourine. (Paul also double-tracked the “see how they run” vocal while someone added Mellotron strings, though these would be mixed out of the final version.)
The song’s final touch was added at the end of this last day’s recording. In spite of the cod-brass imitations, Paul wanted a genuine saxophone sound. Four saxophone players were summoned at a couple of hours’ notice, Harry Klein and Bill Jackman (baritone sax), and Bill Povey and Ronnie Scott, the owner of the famous Soho jazz club, both on tenor sax. When the players arrived at Abbey Road, no music had been prepared for them, just a sequence of chords. After consulting with Paul and George Martin, each saxophonist played around with riffs until Paul was happy and then each scribbled down his part. Bill Jackman felt that, with a little preparation, “we would have been in and out in ten minutes. As it was, it took most of the evening, recording it in A major pitch with the rhythm track playing in our headphones.” Nevertheless, the subtle contrast of the wayward sound of the real brass set against the rhythmic fake vocal scatting provides a worthy diversion for the middle eight.
Tape operator Jerry Boys told the authors of Recording The Beatles of an interesting coda to the recording. Paul had wanted to record a new lead vocal over his original recording but, having done so, realised that the first version was better. So they somehow needed to rescue to the lead vocal from an earlier take and fly it into the final take. “Seems easy now,” Boys points out, “but it was revolutionary stuff back then.” The original had to be overdubbed almost phrase-by-phrase from the take 3 tape onto take 5, to ensure the timing of the vocal was perfect. In fact, comparing take 3 with take 5 shows small jumps in timing throughout the song, indicating a series of overdubs on the tape.
The piano fades a little early at the end, which is explained by the version on Anthology 2. Paul ejaculates a rather tuneless cod-jazz “Lady Madonna-ha-ha” just as the song fades, which is evidently on the master track. When mixing, George Martin fades out at the last moment to spare us this misjudged spot of vocalising, but unfortunately it is still clear the fade is artificially cut short.
The single was released on 15 March, while Paul, George and John were still in India. The night before, the group appeared on the BBC’s Top Of The Pops in a promotional film for the new single. Except that the song they were performing in the film wasn’t ‘Lady Madonna’. They had been extraordinarily efficient in the week put aside to record both sides of the new single, and had actually completed four new songs. Three tracks were recorded for possible inclusion on the single, one from each of the group’s three songwriters. John’s ‘Across The Universe’ lost out to Paul’s offering, but all three were completed with a couple of sessions to spare. The four met up on 11 February, having cancelled a session booked for the day before, to record the filmed promo. Denis O’Dell, the associate producer of A Hard Day’s Night and head of the brand new Apple Films, arranged the filming. “I wasn’t that experienced in promos, so I’d spent a few days coming up with ideas for ‘Lady Madonna’. When the Beatles wanted to get on with recording ‘Hey Bulldog’, all that went out the window!” For rather than waste a whole day in the studio miming to a playback of a completed song, the group decided to knock off another song for Yellow Submarine, ‘Hey Bulldog’, which was started and finished that day. Adding an audio track of ‘Hey Bulldog’ to a judiciously edited ‘Lady Madonna’ promo allows reconstruction of footage of the group recording ‘Hey Bulldog’ in the studio.
‘Lady Madonna’ – bizarrely, the only Beatles single not to get a mention in the Anthology book – failed to make it to number one in the US, reaching number two on Cashbox, and number four on the Billboard charts. It was the first time since ‘Nowhere Man’ that the group missed the top slot, and the first time since ‘Please Please Me’ for a single also released in the UK. (‘Yellow Submarine’ made number two in Billboard, but did top the Cashbox chart.)
It was also their first release since ‘Love Me Do’ not to have a Lennon song on either side. ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ had shared A-side honours with ‘Penny Lane’; ‘I Am The Walrus’ had given way to ‘Hello, Goodbye’. Although John had demonstrated with the Our World programme that he could still pull out the Big One when it was needed, his interests were now apparently beginning to lie outside the group.