Tag: Medley

Beatles – Polythene Pam

This song is on the B side of Abbey Road in the medley right after Mean Mr. Mustard.The song was brought up and recorded on a demo for the White Album. John then brought it up for inclusion on Let It Be. After that he made the statement that he would give it to a “Liverpool Folk Singer.”

John contributed  Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, and Polythene Pam to the medley.

The song was about two people… Pat Hodgett, who was a regular attendee at the Cavern Club when The Beatles played in the early 60’s. It was readily known that Pat was in the habit of eating polythene… The Beatles affectionately referred to her as “Polythene Pat”

John remembering the second girl: So this poet took me to his place, and I had a girl and he had one he wanted me to meet. He said she dressed up in polythene, which she did. In polythene bags. She didn’t wear jackboots and kilts – I just sort of elaborated – and no, she didn’t really look like a man. There was nothing much to it. It was kind of perverted sex in a polythene bag. But it provided something to write a song about.”

The poet’s name was Royston Ellis… The girl in the polythene bag could have been Royston’s girlfriend at the time…remembered as Stephanie.

Paul McCartney: “John, being Royston’s friend, went out to dinner with him and got pissed (drunk) and stuff and they ended up back at his apartment with a girl who dressed herself in polythene for John’s amusement, so it was a little kinky scene…She was a real character.”

From Songfacts

Polythene is a British term for polyethylene, a plastic polymer used in containers, insulation, and packaging. Written by John Lennon, this song has a rather strange background, and fortunately, our Beatles expert Pattie Noah has sorted it out.

Lennon sang this in a thick Liverpool accent. Like the other Beatles, his regular singing voice sounded very American because he grew up listening to US artists.

In the line, “She’s the kind of a girl that makes the News Of The World,” The News Of The World is a tabloid newspaper that specializes in risqué news reporting. Pam must have been a wild girl. 

The Beatles recorded this as one song with “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window.”

Originally intended for The White Album, this was used in a suite of songs at the end of Abbey Road.

Polythene Pam

Well, you should see Polythene Pam
She’s so good-looking but she looks like a man
Well, you should see her in drag dressed in her polythene bag
Yes, you should see Polythene Pam
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Get a dose of her in jackboots and kilt
She’s killer-diller when she’s dressed to the hilt
She’s the kind of a girl that makes the “News of the World”
Yes, you could say she was attractively built
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Beatles – Mean Mr. Mustard

This short song was on the B Side of Abbey Road in the Medley. I really like Paul McCartney’s fuzz bass on this track. The song is right before “his sister Pam’s” song Polythene Pam which continues the medley.

John Lennon: In Mean Mr Mustard I said ‘his sister Pam’ – originally it was ‘his sister Shirley’ in the lyric. I changed it to Pam to make it sound like it had something to do with  Polythene Pam. They are only finished bits of crap that I wrote in India.

John Lennon got the idea for this song from a newspaper article he read about a miser. “Mr. Mustard” was John Mustard, who was described in the story as “an exceptionally mean man.” His wife was divorcing him because, among other things, she couldn’t stand being in the dark all the time – he insisted on keeping the lights off most of the time to save money. The article appeared in the Daily Mirror on June 7, 1967, with the headline, “Scotsman’s Meanness ‘Was Cruel.'”

The article read:

SCOTSMAN’S MEANNESS ‘WAS CRUEL’

“Scotsman John Mustard – an “exceptionally mean man” – gave his wife only £1 in the year before they parted, a Divorce Court judge said yesterday.

Mr. Mustard, a civil servant, was also so mean with lighting and heating that he went far beyond what any wife could be expected to bear, said Mr. Justice Rees.

LIVED IN THE DARK

To save electricity, he would turn off the light while they were listening to the radio, “because it was not necessary to see in order to listen.”

And he would also shave and go to bed in the dark.

The judge said:- “He was at pains to explain that he came from North of the Border, where carefulness was part of the upbringing.”

He added that:- “His conduct affected her health and made life unendurable.”

The judge granted 55-year-old Mrs. Freda Mustard, a deputy head mistress, a decree nisi because of cruelty by Mr. Mustard, who lives at Old Park-View, Enfield.

HE DENIED IT

Mr. Mustard, 65, denied cruelty and alleged that his wife deserted him. The judge rejected that allegation.

The judge said he did not believe that Mr. Mustard was being vicious or unpleasant toward his wife.

But there was “a menacing quality about him to which he wife was particularly sensitive.”

Image result for "Scotsman's Meanness 'Was Cruel.'

 

 

From Songfacts

John Lennon wrote most of this when he was in India at the Maharishi’s meditation camp with the other Beatles in 1967. He didn’t think much of the song, calling it and “Polythene Pam” “finished bits of crap that I wrote in India.”

It wasn’t the first time John Lennon was inspired by a newspaper story: some of the lyrics in “A Day In The Life” came from articles he read in the Daily Mail.

The Beatles recorded this as one song with “Sun King.” It’s part of a suite of songs at the end of Abbey Road.

The Beatles considered using this on The White Album, but decided not to.

Mean Mr. Mustard

Mean Mister Mustard sleeps in the park
Shaves in the dark trying to save paper
Sleeps in a hole in the road
Saving up to buy some clothes
Keeps a ten-bob note up his nose
Such a mean old man
Such a mean old man

His sister Pam works in a shop
She never stops, she’s a go-getter
Takes him out to look at the queen
Only place that he’s ever been
Always shouts out something obscene
Such a dirty old man
Dirty old man