The White Album 50 Project: "Martha My Dear"

On the surface, "Martha My Dear," the song that kicks off side two of the Beatles' White Album, is a standard Paul McCartney ballad, with a sprightly piano introduction and a festive brass ensemble in the middle eight.  Based on a two-handed keyboard exercise that Paul employed to expand his musical abilities, the song is written in the tradition of English music hall that Paul has always loved.  But beneath the bright sound, there's a string section that dampens the mood a bit, and Paul's own vocal is rather forlorn; the song ends with the strings in isolation, sounding quite somber.  Paul seems to sing of this "silly girl" with a good deal of regret.  Clearly, something more serious is going on here.

And people thought this song was about Paul's English sheepdog?  

Yes, Martha was the name of Paul's dog at the time, but there is no connection between the dog and what John Lennon thought was a dog of a song, and Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn made that clear in his book about the group's recording sessions.  Lewisohn wrote that Paul "may have got the title from his canine friend, but that was where the association ended."

So who was Martha, really?  Dot Rhone, Paul's old girlfriend in Liverpool?  An amalgam of girls he'd known before?  The clue is in the song's final verse, when Paul reveals that this "silly girl" has always inspired him, and he urges her for the second time not to forget him.

Now who does that sound like?  Of course - actress Jane Asher, from whom Paul had recently separated.

Paul McCartney and Jane Asher were one of the most celebrated couples in sixties Swinging London.  Soon after they met, Paul moved in with Jane and her family in London, where they stayed together until they got their own place on Cavendish Avenue near the EMI recording studio complex at Abbey Road.  Their relationship was a series of highs and lows, though, which Paul documented in the songs about her.  At happier moments, she inspired Paul to compose beautiful ballads such as "And I Love Her" and "Here, There and Everywhere," but she also led Paul to write antagonistic songs such as "We Can Work It Out" and "I'm Looking Through You."  Jane wanted to devote more time to her acting career than Paul was willing to bear, and he wasn't prepared to make any sacrifices for her interests.  Nevertheless, Paul and Jane managed to persist for awhile, and it was taken for granted that they would eventually marry.  "If I marry anyone," Paul said at the time, "it will be Jane Asher."  Not good news for the many female Beatles fans who had a crush on Paul, and guys who had a thing for Jane weren't happy about that either.

They got engaged in December 1967, and they traveled together to India to study Transcendental Meditation with the Maharishi in early 1968, returning to England part of the way through the Maharishi's course when they'd decided they had gotten as much out of it as they could.  But that summer, their relationship took a turn for the worse: Paul wanted Jane to give up her acting career entirely once they were married, and Jane quite obviously had no desire to do so.  Then a few months later, Jane returned to the house she shared with Paul on Cavendish Avenue in London earlier than planned and . . . uh, found Paul in bed with another woman (not Linda Eastman).  She broke off the engagement on a BBC Television talk show, essentially dumping Paul in public while Paul himself watched on TV.  "I haven't broken it off," she said, "but it is broken off, finished."

It's clearly obvious from hearing "Martha My Dear" that it is meant to be a farewell song from Paul to Jane.  Not just in the undercurrent of sorrow in the music, but in the words.  He acknowledges spending his "days in conversation," a possible reference to the LSD trips he took with friends at his house while Jane declined to drop acid, but he also wishes her well and lovingly advises her to indulge in some of what goes on around her, calling her a "silly girl" as a term of endearment and leaving himself with self-consolation that she may yet inevitably see that the two of them "were meant to be for each other."  The operative word here is "were," an acknowledgement that a reconciliation is unlikely - a point that a brief, sharp guitar riff from George Harrison (the only other Beatle on this song) makes clear by leaping out over Paul's sentiments.  Jane Asher took this much advice from "Martha My Dear;" she was good to him by never publicly speaking of embarrassing details about their relationship.   

But why does Paul call Jane by the name of his English sheepdog?  Is he trying to say that Jane Asher is a bitch?  Not at all; Paul obviously wanted to call her by another name to protect the innocent, he needed a bi-syllabic feminine name to fit the meter, and Martha, because it was the name of his dog, was readily available.  He could just as easily have referred to her as Laura or Thelma.  A private man, Paul McCartney is known for writing songs about real people but calling them by pseudonyms.

Jane Asher, for her part, was not vengeful or bitter over her breakup with Paul.  "I know it sounds corny," she said, "but we still see each other and love each other, but it hasn't worked out. Perhaps we'll be childhood sweethearts and meet again and get married when we're about 70."

Of course, that would never happen.  Paul went on to marry Linda Eastman in 1969.  Jane Asher has been happily married since 1981 to illustrator Gerald Scarfe (you know the artwork for the sleeve of Pink Floyd's The Wall? him), and when Linda McCartney died in 1998, Paul eventually found someone else after getting over his grief.  Unfortunately, his marriage to his second wife, Heather Mills, was a disaster apart from producing a daughter (Beatrice McCartney), and by the time Paul turned seventy he'd found happiness again with another wife, Nancy Shevell.  Jane Asher refuses to entertain questions about her relationship with Paul, finding such questions "insulting" (and who can blame her?), and Paul is only slightly more agreeable to revisit his and Jane's shared past.

Oh yeah, Paul has given three different answers about who "Martha My Dear" is about.  He once said that it is about his English sheepdog, but he has also admitted that it is "probably" about Jane Asher, and another time he said it was about his "muse" - the voice in his head that guides his songwriting.  Trust me - it's about Jane Asher.

At least, in writing "Martha My Dear," Paul gave female Beatles fans with that name - perhaps the dowdiest English-language feminine name in Christendom, a name commonly associated in America with wives of the Founding Fathers - a song of their own to request DJs to play on the radio or at holiday parties.  John Lennon may have hated this song (John on "Martha My Dear" - "Enough said!"), but he failed to appreciate what the song meant for Paul and for his breakup with Jane.  John was being, well, a silly boy.

Below is Paul McCartney in early 1968 with who were then the two most important females in his life.

And we all know that "Martha My Dear" is about one of them. :-)