The White Album 50 Project: "Dear Prudence"

The Beatles wrote most of their songs for the White Album at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's spring 1968 ashram in Rishikesh, India, and many of them were based on encounters with their fellow Transcendental Meditation students.  These songs also benefited from an additional influence - Scottish folk singer/songwriter Donovan, who also attended the ashram and taught John Lennon and Paul McCartney chord fingerings they would write songs around. John's "Dear Prudence" is an example of a song musically influenced by Donovan that was about another ashram participant. 

Prudence Farrow (seen at left with Ringo Starr) is the sister of actress Mia Farrow and the aunt of journalist Ronan Farrow.  Now a film producer and a meditation teacher who's been happily married since 1969, she was a lost soul who went to the Maharisihi's retreat in India to meditate herself into pure bliss after an acid trip that was anything but blissful.  While the other participants in the ashram were earnest at reaching inner peace, Prudence Farrow was dead serious about it. She would spend all day and all night meditating in her bungalow. Having already started her own yoga institute in Boston in 1967, Prudence wanted to learn Transcendental Meditation and became a teacher of that as well and so sought to study with the master himself, the Maharishi.  Her sister Mia and brother John went with her.

John Lennon and George Harrison were assigned to be Prudence's classmates in what would now be called a "buddy system" in American summer camps.  It was their job to look after her, but, in the spirit of Paul McCartney's fictional grandfather from A Hard Day's Night, she would look after herself.  "I would always rush straight back to my room after lectures and meals so I could meditate," Prudence remembers, leaving John, George and Paul (Ringo left after three days) to their own devices. "John, George and Paul would all want to sit around jamming and having a good time and I'd be flying into my room."

John had his own recollection of the experience.  "She'd been locked in for three weeks and was trying to reach God quicker than anybody else," he later said.  "That was the competition in Maharishi's camp - who was going to get cosmic first."

John and George tried to coax her out of her bungalow in each morning and encourage her to take advantage of the beautiful weather, but they didn't have much luck.  John turned his pleas to Prudence to snap out of it into a platonic ode to her, reminding her of how beautiful she was, how life was beautiful too, and how she should really give reality a try.  When she returned to America, she didn't do too badly; she received numerous degrees from the University of California at Berkeley in Asian studies, including a Ph. D.  

Prudence Farrow (above, in a more recent picture) was flattered when she first heard the song and thought it was beautiful in its own right.  And it is.  The guitar riff that carries "Dear Prudence" shows the influence of Donovan's jaunty, angular fingerings on John's composing style, and together with George's Eastern-flavored guitar intricacies, they weave a brilliant musical tapestry that becomes more complex as the song progresses, especially as it goes into the middle eight.  Paul McCartney's elliptical bass keeps the rhythm steady, and his crisp drums (Ringo was still temporarily out of the group when this was recorded) keep the beat on course but then burst into a heavy barrage of as John makes one last plea for Prudence to "come out to play."  Throughout, John's call to Prudence to appreciate the singing birds, the blue sky, and the daisy chain of clouds remind us how much spiritual fulfillment there is in the joy of nature.

After fifty years, I think it's time to acknowledge Donovan as a major player in sixties British rock rather than the hippy-dippy fool he's made out to be.  I got angry when a pop critic in my local paper chided the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for inducting Donovan (below, with Paul McCartney in India) ahead of a rap duo he thought was more deserving of such an honor.  One rap record influences another, and they sound just the same - exclusionary, tuneless, and unnecessarily mean.  But if not for the influence of Donovan's dexterous chords, there wouldn't be a White Album as we know it.